New Years resolutions anyone?

[Zengez]

I dunno, I kind of agree with Angelox here, Which is why I wanted to institute something along the lines of a wiki style database server... which was laughed out of hand and dismissed, oh well.

But I think what Angelox is more aiming toward isn't the fixes and patches and items that are addressed as a community things (i.e. doors, quests, and zone lines) but rather the raw and pain in the ass spawning of a ton of mobs throughout all the zones that aren't being touched. I know Angelox is ALSO talking about doors and zonelines etc, and that shouldn't be by any means overlooked as without them it doesn't really matter too much if stuff is spawned correctly, but at the same time being able to zone into an empty zone isn't much of an accomplishment either.

Seems to me the problem is that people are going one of two routes;

One: This is an Emulator, and as such, should be open to customization and so it doesn't matter if we aren't spawning things similiar to live, as that isn't the point,

Two: We don't even have all the stuff that we have 'done' finished, so lets finish that and fine tune it before we move on.

My response to these are as follows;

One: Very true, and a perfectly good point, if you just want to build your own world, litterally, custom tailor your own spawns and zones, great, and good luck, you needn't care any further. (this is arguable, but I'm tired and I'll leave that to someone else)

Two: Also a good point, but as has been said so very many times, this isn't live, this is an emulator. As such it will nearly be impossible to make zones exactly the same. Even if we got everything spawned as perfectly as possible, a bunch of other things are still broken. More importantly, I'd argue (in my currently limited capacity) that having most all the zones 90% spawned is far better than having 20% of the zones 100% spawned. Most of the spawn work is not terribly difficult at all, just mass production of static and/or basic roaming mobs. The other 10% is the quest triggers, named spawns, and special loot stuff that takes actual knowledge of the spawning system and time to dedicate to correctly crafting, and as a result might be beyond the abilities of a large portion of basic admins and spawners.

But, here is my issue with this, I simply don't know the stats of the mobs.
Sure, I could go about spawning mobs and probably getting the pathing right, and I'd have a bunch of lvl 1 mobs with 10 hit points and no damage wandering around the countless zones as glorified placeholders for whatever they should be. I've even re-activated my account in live to try and gather some data to get better info on spawns, but that will still take far too much effort than what it's worth, since at most I get some very rough damage stats and some equally inaccurate hit point guestimates.

So, Thats why I think something that may be a good start would be for people with true massive population experience to type up a thread on how they decide stats for mobs. Things like what really goes into the max damage in a mob, will their strength matter? or is it entirely off the 'maxdmg' stat? how many hitpoints do mobs tend to have by level and expansion? dmg? special abilities? etc etc...

Finally, perhaps a semi-public server if wiki is such a terrible idea, where we have a select few that are allowed to log into a 24/7 server and spawn as they desire to ballpark a full pop of every zone in as short a time period as possible, even if the mobs aren't quite right, or some zones are only half spawned, it's better than nothing. I myself stopped truely exploring expansion zones since PoP so my experience is limited, especially since I never did any Raiding, so there isn't much for me to go on, but I'm sure others have. If this were done then more serious database developers like Angelox and the PEQ team would merely have to make (hopefully) minor edits, some tweaks, and some crafting of quest mobs and whatnot, and the database could grow and develope much easier since the bulk work would be more or less completed.

Anyways, thats my 2 cents, perhaps it will spike some debate and get somewhere /shrug

EDIT:: As a clarification, that semi-private server would just be a database breeding ground, the updates would be made public and everything would thus would be for the good of the community.

[rojadruid]

On a personal note I plan to try to quit smoking.

[CrabClaw]

Resolution #1: to help write as many quests as I can, now that I have learned a simple knowledge of *.pl quest coding (I helped I did know Java).

Resolution #2: Don't make resolutions(hehe - joking).

Yes! By all means! You have to accept you can never be 100% live like. So it is far batter to have more zones well spawned, and organized to be playable then being by the book about things. Besides it opens the door to make some improvements to things as well (EQ-Live still has a ton of unfinished stuff and broken quests). Even on Live they re-shuffled and re-did zones so all the old world content (Freeport, Oasis, Commonlands, Nek, and the like. Even the PoN was re-balanced back in just-pre-OoW days), and is really open for reinterpretation. So I say make the old zones a good inspired-by-live play re-do, and give yourself some license for creative additions (more modern drops and updated quests, new Nameds and such).

Oh and by the way,

Happy new Year!

[John Adams]

What I'd like to see for EQEmu'2007:
-- Drive a stake in the ground and name a new "stable" build. I propose focused, organized testing by the Emulator community players and admins. There are test plans posted in the Wiki (which are in dire need of updating), everyone should take a chunk and go to town, report bugs, get them fixed. If a dev or two knows that for a month, community members will be posting details on specific bugs, maybe they will offer their time to help stablize the code.

-- Wikiwakkawoo my gods, please start updating the Wiki! This is my personal resolution, because this is absolutely something any of us are capable of doing. If we see posted info that might help others, let's start adding it to the wiki. We've preached it, now let's do it.

-- Bring the spawns for newer zone layouts up to Titanium standards. If you are going to say "Titanium only", the data should support that client, not just 6.2. Renaming lavastorm.eqg is not moving forward, nor supporting the only "legal" client for this emulator.

-- A repository for fixes that isn't a VBulletin code tag! If we make Diffs, I'd like to see a file upload area where we can stick these raw snippets of text. A forum is no place to paste code fixes. Many people have pointed links back to their own shares, but those go inactive almost as quickly as they appear. History lost. This goes for databases, too. God forbid, what if Angelox or GeorgeS got pissed off and closed their sites? A year from now, we'd be begging someone to post their database or tools from the archives.

-- Quest Helpers. So much effort is being put into making quests more stable, add missing ones, or create custom ones to aid lower population servers. I'd like to see more dev help (or maybe a nice tutorial how to add functionality to the questmgr) so quest writers lives will be easier. While the current system works quite well, there are some things you simply cannot do... yet. Also, finding someone dedicated to incorporating all this quest work into an official package would ensure 1) acknowledgement and 2) preservation of effort. The PEQ /quests site is perfect for this, but seems understaffed (?)

-- More awareness that community input IS acknowledged. It seems there is this cloud that pops up once in a while, members posting that no one but a small handful do anything. If you shovel through the archives over the past 3 years, it would become evident how many people offer their time, expertise, and solutions, but vanish after burnout or feeling ignored. People contribute here, daily. It's time we notice that and be happy it's as good as it is. However...

-- And finally, to go along with the theme of this thread, more community members who CAN code, helping with the base effort and not just their own server(s). Customizing is great, but if you fix a core bug while customizing your server, please share the core fix it so this project continues to move forward. Like Boats. How many times has this been fixed, then re-broken?

Ok, flame away. And yes, Mattmeck - I volunteer to do EVERYTHING myself ~yawn~

[sfisque]

Fix or find a work-around for bind-zone-disconnect-on-death bug

This one irritates me to no end. i've poured through the code for days on end, down several dead ends and finally back to start. i'll get it sooner or later.


Split the database imports

The database imports need to be split into specific tables so that people can "update" or "diff" specific sections if they have custom mods they do not want to whack. a good example, importing the faction fixes from wildcardx would be great without having to whack the entire database.

== sfisque

[Angelox]

I didn't mean to harp on anyone here with my post. I know a lot of you all out there are doing what you can, and have helped me out a lot. I really appreciate that.

[ArChron]

New Years Resolutions?

Get off my butt and finally put together the Rails project that has been stewing around in my head since I found EQEmu, and wanted to figure out the database.

I use MySQL 5, and have a few trivial items constructed to help make sense of the DB... like adding a classes table and a races table so that I can see real names of values in a query...

USE `ax_peq`;
CREATE TABLE `ax_peq`.`classes` (
  `class_id` INTEGER UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT COMMENT 'ID',
  `class_name` CHAR(30) DEFAULT 'Un-named' COMMENT 'Class Name',
  PRIMARY KEY(`class_id`)
)
ENGINE = MYISAM;

USE `ax_peq`;
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 1, 'Warrior');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 2, 'Cleric');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 3, 'Paladin');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 4, 'Ranger');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 5, 'Shadow Knight');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 6, 'Druid');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 7, 'Monk');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 8, 'Bard');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES ( 9, 'Rogue');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (10, 'Shaman');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (11, 'Necromancer');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (12, 'Wizard');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (13, 'Magician');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (14, 'Enchanter');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (15, 'Beastlord');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (16, 'Berserker');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (20, 'GM Warrior');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (21, 'GM Cleric');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (22, 'GM Paladin');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (23, 'GM Ranger');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (24, 'GM Shadow Knight');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (25, 'GM Druid');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (26, 'GM Monk');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (27, 'GM Bard');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (28, 'GM Rogue');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (29, 'GM Shaman');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (30, 'GM Necromancer');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (31, 'GM Wizard');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (32, 'GM Magician');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (33, 'GM Enchanter');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (34, 'GM Beastlord');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (35, 'GM Berserker');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (40, 'Banker');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (41, 'Shopkeeper');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (60, 'Adventure Recruiter');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (61, 'Adventure Merchant');
INSERT INTO `classes` (`class_id`,`class_name`) VALUES (63, 'Tribute Master');

and you can create some views out of SELECTs that are useful as well...

SELECT s.id, s.race, r.race_desc, s.class, c.class_name, s.zoneid, 
  z.long_name, s.itemid, i.Name, i.filename FROM starting_items s 
  INNER JOIN classes c ON s.class=c.class_id 
  INNER JOIN races r ON s.race=r.race_id 
  INNER JOIN items i ON s.itemid=i.id 
  INNER JOIN zone z ON s.zoneid=z.zoneidnumber 
  ORDER BY s.race, s.class;

and

SELECT l.id, l.name, e.item_id, i.Name AS itemName, e.chance FROM lootdrop l
  INNER JOIN lootdrop_entries e ON l.id=e.lootdrop_id
  INNER JOIN items i ON e.item_id=i.id
  ORDER BY l.id;

I can build stuff as I have time, but there's a fairly steep curve for the database, so it's largely hunt and peck thus far.