Adding to mobs to zones
 

Hello everyone. I am sorta new to EQEmu and I appreciate all the good work folks here have been doing.

Before I get started on my server, I understand the importance of the DB and how people are still trying to packet sniff data from Live to add info to future DBs to populate the zones and such. I work with SQL and databases in my 9-to-5 job so I am 100% comfy in the database world and I thought I'd just begin to input data into my database to populate more zones. But then I stop for a sec and I can't help but wonder if I am missing something obvious, or else other people would have done this already... so am I being overly optimistic? Or can I just sit down, look at the tables and start plugging in data to populate my server's zones to make it however I want?

Also, I couldnt help but notice on the couple servers I just visited that the few mobs that did move or when mobs chased a player, the appeared to "blink" from one spot to another and when a mob finally reached you, it would fight you while looking in a different direction from you. ie, the mobs wouldnt face whoever has generated the most aggro. Is this a database issue or a coding issue? And is mob movement a database issue (like a mob is missing information in the database telling it where to go) or is this also a coding issue?

Thanks in advance and I hope I can help contribute to world building.

I just read the "facing bug" was a code issue and is corrected for next release...

Welcome.

The mobs facing away from you is a known issue. As for the DB, you can insert records to populate spawns but there are a handful of tables that relate to each other that you have to make sure you insert records into all of them. If you check out the Third Party forum, there might be some GUI tools that'll give you an easier way to create mob spawns.

The problem with the mobs facing the wrong way was fixed in the latest code. I know its in the perl enabled code fix that Khuong put out, since I added it when I fixed the perl problem.

In addition, I added a feature that when an EVENT_SAY or EVENT_ITEM is triggered, the mob will turn to face you.

Myra uses this feature when world building to turn a mob the way she wants it before saving it to the database, since the mob will turn whether or not there is a quest file for it when you hail it. :-)

OK I have mastered the art of creating a mob and then creating a spawn for said mob and saving both the mob + spawn the my database. However, after studying the SQL tables for a few hours, I can't figure out how a spawn timer works... Anyone have a quick 101 link about creating and editing spawn timers?

spawn timers ????
you mean the field "respawntime" ?

Yes, is the "respawntime" field in ticks, seconds or minutes? So a value of 1200 in this field is how long? Also, the field name "variance" is that in minutes or something? Or is it a multiplier? What is the timeleft field used for?

In game, when i type #spawnstatus the last field listed for every spawn always says "disabled"... What is disabled?

My guess is that that's the number in ticks. So 1200 would be (aprox) 120 seconds or 2 min.

From memory, it is seconds, so 1200 is 20 minutes.

Disabled just means that the mob is not currently respawning. This could happen when a mob only spawns when a quest condition is met or most commonly when the mob is currently spawned the timer does not start until someone kills it so they will list disabled til they die.

ahhh cool i just went back to my server and killed Terris Thule and did a #spawnstatus and watched her respawn time begin to tick down.. thats very cool to see how that works.

Do I dare ask to pick more of everyone's brains by asking how variance in the spawn timer works? I see there is a field for it, but all the examples I have seen so far just have a 0 in this field. If I want a named spawn on a +/- 12 hour variance, what should i place in the variance field? Is it really that simple or are there other fields i will need to edit?

Speaking about spawn timers, i have a little problem.
I use a fresh 0.5.5 DB (Not MW55 like a lots of users) that i want to source. EQemu version is 0.5.5.

In world.exe i have this error when i enter a zone.
When i use my 'old' MW55 DB and EQemu 0.5.5, i dont have this error ... so ?

EDIT : Wild, go check my website. We are building a vaste eq glossary to prepare our server, click glossary then enter keyword.
You will find this with 'Tick' :