Pathing Question And Offer To Help DevTeam

[Glasswalker]

Hello... I am an experienced C/C++ coder who used to be a huge EQ addict... since my discovery of this project I have been interested in getting back into the game... And I would love to help out on development of the emu... (anyone on the dev team contact me at: glasswalker@cogeco.ca if you are interested)

But I would just like to aska quick question in regards to pathing for now...

How does EQ impliment pathing? could it not be a string of values as a database field tied to that specific spawn? that way it is part of the db, it is a relatively small amount of data, and it does not require fancy editors... Also people could simply capture moving mobs in each zone and use a simply filter to break down their paths and store the waypoints...

My idea is this: could you not simply write the following functions: (pseudocode)

SetFollowTarget(TargetName)
{
Store the Follow target into the player struct
set a flag in playerstruct for "follow mode"
}

DoFollowTarget()
{
Read in Player's Followmode flag
if followmode=true then:
Read in player's current follow targetname
Find TargetName's X,Y,Z
SetWayPoint(X,Y,Z)
endif
}

StopFollowing()
{
Read in Player's Followmode flag
if followmode=true then:
Set Followmode flag to false
endif
}

SetWayPoint(X,Y,Z,WalkMode)
{
Store The Waypoint Info into the Player Struct for X,Y,Z, and the walkmode. (walk/run)
Set a flag in the playerstruct for "autopilot mode"
}

DoGotoWaypoint()
{
Read in the waypointflag from playerstruct
if autopilot flag is true then:
read in target x,y,z and walkmode from playerstruct
Calc a vector to those coords from current x,y,z
Set current facing to that vector
Calculate direct distance.
If directly in front of me is an obstacle (building, zone wall, whatever) Then:
Modify my vector to the left/right (attempt simple obstacle avoidance)
endif
if distance > attack range then:
Toggle on the ingame walk/run command for this player/entity to move at designated speed.
elseif distance <= attack range then:
Toggle off the walk/run command
StopAutoPilot()
endif
}

StopAutoPilot()
{
Read in Player's Autopilot flag
if autopilot=true then:
Set autopilot flag to false
endif
}

The above code would quite nicely in most 3d environment... The mobs would have issues with getting around zone walls and houses and such... but they would eventually do it... and if I remember correctly the obstacle avoidance in the actual eq is pretty crappy anyway...

Also, now wandering mobs is easy simply provide a string of waypoints... There could be a function to maintain the current path, and if the mob strays from it it remembers the last waypoint... so when it is done chasing someone or whatever it resumes back to it's last target. That would also make it easy to store the path data in the database...

Also, would it be possible to add a function to set a flag in the database that disables all god like commands to basic users... (so you could actually run a normal server without users running rampant with whatever items they want and whatnot... maybe a database table of the advanced # commands of the emu, and associated access levels needed? this way serverops could customize what different access levels could do...

I would gladly help code this too... Anyway... let me know what you think, any feedback you might have, and if you are interested in the help on the dev team...