Beastlord Pet NPC question
 

Anyone know the process to determine the NPC type for a beastlord summoned pet?


Celestial

The spell will have a pet reference in the 'teleport_zone' field. That will match up with a record in the 'pets' table, which has some flags and settings and will point to the npcid in 'npc_types'.

Also, because a Beastlord pet's race is determined by the race of the caster, they have special handling in the server code.

It's currently hard-coded which caster race gets which pet race. Customizing this will require changes to the code:

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob.../pets.cpp#L334

Ahh! That is what I was wondering, was the pet race hard-coded. I wanted to add woodelves as beastlords and was looking for the reference for a npc type for the pet. Would your first post be a way to set that?


Celestial

Looks like for Beastlords I would possibly have to make (just like magician pets) another set of Pet Types with corresponding NPCIDs. I think...

Wonder why Iksar is not an alligator in the code?


Celestial

Wood Elf Beastlord is a popular customization, I think.

It would use the same pet entry and npc_type as the existing beastlord pets. You'd simply update the spell record and spell scroll to support the Wood Elf race, and add a WOOD_ELF race check to the pets.cpp code linked above:

This special code handling saves you from having to make hundreds of pet entries to specify different npc_types for each different race's level 1 pet, level 4 pet, level 8 pet, etc.

Well, to allow you to specify race without a source change, you can change the pet spell to a different effect ID, 106 is Beastlord pet which then checks the source code for the aforementioned pet race, but you can use 33 (Normal pet), 71 (Necromancer pet), or 108 (Familiar) to avoid the Beastlord pet race logic.

Thanks guys! The source might not be too bad to do, make the change then recompile. Guess that would be my first foray into a customization.

Celestial

This one is actually not based on the spell effect id, but on the `petnaming` field in the `pets` table.

So you could change the pet naming type for the pet reference to something other than 2, and the race coding would be avoided without any source code changes, though the pet wouldn't be named Soandso's Warder anymore, either.

Would likely be easier to just do what I suggested, as you wouldn't have to maintain your custom changes when you update your source.

Edit: Haven't messed with pets in a while, doing it my way does nothing, I realize that now. Just change pet naming. I forget what I remembered that was related to the pet effect IDs.

In thinking about it, it might be easier to change the pets.cpp. I would just need to notate to add that change back into that file if that file gets updated from the source. I wonder would it be difficult to somehow integrate this into the source and reference a DB flag to enable or disable wood-elf beast-lords.


Celestial

For customization's sake, it would really be better to have a db table for it.

pet_races
owner_race (int)
pet_race (int)
pet_gender (int)
pet_texture (int)
pet_size (float)

If I had a beard, I'd be stroking it thoughtfully.

Watches intently as Shendare pretend strokes his beard...


Celestial

Why would that be better? Pets are just an npc_types entry that has all of those fields, except of course owner race.

Just as another thought, the pets.cpp list wolf, alligator, tiger, bear. Where is this referenced and could other NPC Types be used? I may not have looked too closely yet and that might be in that file.

Celestial

Referenced in races.h in common/races.h, line 25 to line 58:

The whole point is that beastlord pets use the same npc_type, but display a different race depending on the owner.

The alternative would be to have a different npc_type for each race for each level of beastlord pets, which would be... extremely cumbersome.

The current hard-coded values work, but a database table would make customization easier.

You could also just do a rule-based pet system so like RuleI(Character, OgreBeastlordPet) or something like that with a race ID, as well as the texture, gender, and size as separate rules.

Hmm... true. Could have one for each player race, with defaults for any pet race, texture, gender, and size not specified.

Can the Chokidai 356 be used for Iksar beastlords? Or is it limited to that value range?

Celestial

EDIT: So I should be able to insert into races.h #define CHOKIDAI 356 since its referenced within the $races_table = Array(

This would allow the IKSAR bst to have the correct pet. Can this list be added to in order to enable Underfoot models?

Do you mean be added to the source by you yourself, or are you asking for someone to make an actual commit to the main branch?

For myself, although if its accurate would that qualify for addition as a commit to the source? I am referencing the Iksar pet model.


Celestial

Update:

Woodelf worked great, just need to increase the size of the pet.

I also added the above to the races.h for Chokadai as the Iksar BST pet and recompiled. but on pet summon it defaulted to a human model. Will try to test again.

Celestial

That means that either the model is not in your GlobalLoad, or it is not set to the correct gender. Most NPC races are gender 2, neuter. If a race has male and female versions, though, then it'll use those genders instead (0 male, 1 female).

To reference as I work on this, GlobalLoad is located where?


Celestial

Resources\GlobalLoad.txt in your EverQuest directory. The latest clients also have a GlobalLoad_chr.txt for loading individual race models from zone package files.

Roger that, I am able to #race myself for that particular model.

Cool. Sounds like the gender was off, then.

That was it, I recompiled and now the Iksar BST has the correct race of pet. I want to look to see if there are different models of that race as I think the one that is spot on is orangish in color. Once I get it set, would this be a submission for commit to source?

Is there a tool that I could use that will tell me if gender or other options are available for a particular race?


Celestial

Race models often have different textures defined that can be set to display different appearances. Chokidai may be one of them. Bears use the same 3d model, but different textures for black, brown, and white (polar) bear NPCs, for example.

Not sure about the change submission. If it's a bug fix that makes EQEmu behave more like EQ Live, then it gets added to the master source. If it's a customization, it does not get added to the master, you simply keep it in your own code, generally as a branch forked from the master.

As far as being like live currrently the source is set as wolf for the Iksar BST. On live it has always been the Chodakai. Would I submit a change to someone for evaluation or testing?


Celestial

It's also technically possible that the wolf race has a specific texture for the chokidai.

If that's not the case, though, it sounds like a good candidate for a post in Development::Server Code Submissions or Development::Bug Reports.

Is there are way to view these different textures outside of just spawning and changing them in game?

Celestial

I think there are a couple of places that have race graphics in the server dev wikis and threads. There's an old EQEmu Quest Manual pdf that had a bunch of them. Akka's EOC has been incorporating graphics and videos where it can, so it may have race graphics as well.

Really, though, hopping in-game and using the #spawn, #race, #gender, and #texture commands is gonna be the most effective!

Roger that Shendare! thanks for your help!


Celestial