New Concept: Proximity Spawning (to reduce bandwidth usage)

[trevius]

Still looking into this, it seems like this would maybe not be too hard to implement into the spawn_conditions code. Instead of just checking the time of day, it could have a separate option to just check player range from the spawn point before spawning and then depop if they get out of range of the NPC once it has spawned if they don't have aggro on it already.

I am trying to think of this on a per mob basis to make the concept easier to grasp which should hopefully make coding easier. Basically, all we need is a way for the server to spawn an NPC when a player gets near a spawngroup location without using any kind of placeholder to spawn it. It would have to check if an NPC is already spawned at that location before it tries to spawn another. Then, there needs to be a similar setup to depop the NPC when they get out of range if the NPC isn't engaged/aggroed.

I am sure this could be done with quests fairly easily, but it would be much easier to do it for entire zones at a time by setting a simple setting in the database. I think we could even potentially just have the check run as a client location check vs. the spawn group location and radius settings. Then, every spawn location in the zone wouldn't be looking for players to enter their radius, the check would only be done from around the client if they got within the radius which might reduce server load as well.

it looks like the spawn_conditions are checked before anything else when deciding to spawn an NPC, so that would be a good thing to reference when setting up this system.

Doing the coding work for this is probably a bit above my skill level, but I will keep looking into possibilities of how to write code for it.

[trevius]

Another thing I thought of is that the spawn group IDs, the spawn locations (X, Y, Z), and the spawn_radius setting will probably all need to be loaded into memory when the zone boots up. This way, the system can work without having to poll the database constantly for the spawn locations when it is checking the radius.

[KLS]

Personally I really hate this idea, not because i'm against the idea behind it but because I think it's the wrong approach. We really need a more involved spawn conditionals system so people can setup their events in an intelligent manner.

Perhaps a system where npcs can spawn and despawn based on certain conditions set by the quest system. Ex: In this case your boss is engaged and you have it set boss_one_engaged flag for the zone and all npcs that aren't essential despawn. Or perhaps you have a linear zone and only once a boss is killed the trash and next boss will spawn. etc etc.

[KLS]

Oh yeah and how wow works is just more efficient, it's also facilitated by the client.

Every continent is separated into zones which are separated into smaller areas which are all separated into smaller map nodes. Npcs in a node are only active if a player is nearby. At least this is how the emu basically works; not how the official servers work.

Perhaps we could have npcs freeze and not do ai if they're a certain distance from player characters. Might cause some problems for existing events.

[ChaosSlayer]

Originally Posted by KLS

Personally I really hate this idea, not because i'm against the idea behind it but because I think it's the wrong approach. We really need a more involved spawn conditionals system so people can setup their events in an intelligent manner.

Perhaps a system where npcs can spawn and despawn based on certain conditions set by the quest system. Ex: In this case your boss is engaged and you have it set boss_one_engaged flag for the zone and all npcs that aren't essential despawn. Or perhaps you have a linear zone and only once a boss is killed the trash and next boss will spawn. etc etc.

well this may work for sort of ldon/raid/encounter instance, but then you don't realy need anything special - when boss is engage you simply send a signal to depop entire zone exept the econuter


the real issue comes to handlign somethign as large as West Karana or Dread Lands which supose to have crap load of trash mobs running around

[KLS]

The more I think about it the more I think having npcs freeze if there's no pc nearby would help a lot with the situation and have less of a downside than popping and repopping based on proximity.

[trevius]

We have already been testing a quest system to depopall() on all trash mobs when a boss mob or named is being killed. It seems to completely stop all lag as compared to previously people would go LD and lag extremely bad in some cases.

But, I really don't like the quest solution, because then anyone else in the same zone will then see an empty zone, which not only looks bad, but also lets them roam freely without clearing anything and basically negates all of the work to create the trash mobs in the first place.

Any special settings like the radius_spawn idea or freezing them to stop all AI and pathing would have to be specified by a setting in the NPC_types table so it could be done on a per mob basis. Then you can decide which ones you want to be affected by any of these ideas, and which ones to remain normal all of the time. So, bosses, scripted NPCs and maybe some roamers might want to have this setting turned off, but other than that, almost all trash mobs aren't always needed.

By turning off the AI or freezing the mobs like KLS mentioned, that might help the server performance, but I honestly don't see any issues at all lag-wise on my local lan, ever. I only ever hear about the lag, so it is pretty obviously a bandwidth issue. I have 1MB upload bandwidth from my ISP, which is fairly decent as far as home connections go. If 1MB up can have lag during a raid of about 3 groups with maybe 70 people logged into the server, then I think there could be some definite improvements to improve bandwidth utilization.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to not send regular updates of the current location of every spawn in the zone every second to every character in the zone. So, the only solution I can think of is to not have trash mobs spawn unless a player is within range. The only other option would be if someone could figure out a way for the server to only send location updates for NPCs within a radius of the client.

[AndMetal]

I wonder if we might be able to look at this a different way, especially since this seems to be more a bandwidth issue than a processing issue (which could also explain the issues with Warrior Rampage in AoE situations).

While roaming around in a zone, what kind of information is transmitted to the client on a regular basis? Spawn information, etc? Also, are there any kind of limits? So, is everything being sent to everyone, or are there proximity limits on these? If there aren't proximity limits, I think that's where we need to start.

Anyways, just a thought...

[KLS]

Spawn info is sent on login and new spawn. Or if a spawn has to change shape for some reason, typically walking around you wont see many spawn infos. Movement updates are the big thing... which if it's a mob far away they only send movement updates once every 60 seconds, close npcs ie ones you can see send movement updates every few seconds.