Bazaar bots

[provocating]

The more I think about it, I am not sure this can be done in Perl alone, maybe someone can tell me if it can be done in Perl.

I do not want your standard NPC merchants that I have seen implemented in the past. I want these to have trader satchels with items and the NPC's actually put the items up for sale. This way the player could actually use the Bazaar window to find items, like in live. The NPC's would give random calls pulled out of a table, maybe pull the item names from the table and the asking price, this would be done with variables. The call would be at random times, with the text also being random and pulled from a large pool of possibilities. The merchants would also need to buy the players items if he auctions them, at random times. This would force the player to actually use the auction system and the NPC auctioneer would buy the players items at a lower cost than what he would sell it back for. This sounds like it would be hard to do, but very possible. I am just not sure if I will have to edit the zone file or I could do it all in Perl.

[Akkadius]

Originally Posted by provocating

The more I think about it, I am not sure this can be done in Perl alone, maybe someone can tell me if it can be done in Perl.

I do not want your standard NPC merchants that I have seen implemented in the past. I want these to have trader satchels with items and the NPC's actually put the items up for sale. This way the player could actually use the Bazaar window to find items, like in live. The NPC's would give random calls pulled out of a table, maybe pull the item names from the table and the asking price, this would be done with variables. The call would be at random times, with the text also being random and pulled from a large pool of possibilities. The merchants would also need to buy the players items if he auctions them, at random times. This would force the player to actually use the auction system and the NPC auctioneer would buy the players items at a lower cost than what he would sell it back for. This sounds like it would be hard to do, but very possible. I am just not sure if I will have to edit the zone file or I could do it all in Perl.

Yes, it could be done in Perl. Infact I was just thinking about this once again because I wanted to get to this months ago, but wasn't something I wanted to attack right now. I could have something functional in a short while.

[provocating]

Just the code to make an npc hold the satchel and equip it, then turn on trading would be enough. I am just stuck at this part. Maybe there is some undocumented functions I am not aware of.

[Derision]

Originally Posted by provocating

Just the code to make an npc hold the satchel and equip it, then turn on trading would be enough. I am just stuck at this part. Maybe there is some undocumented functions I am not aware of.

All the bazaar code assume that the Trader is a client (e.g. when you buy something off a Trader, the server sends packets to it to remove the item from it's inventory, add the purchase price, etc.).

As it stands right now, you can't make an NPC a Bazaar trader ... you'd have to cook something up using NPC merchants as you suggest.

[provocating]

That is what I needed, a definitive answer is cannot be done. I will just code up boatload of bots with different gear as merchants, but have them doing random stuff. Random is good.

[provocating]

I am sure this will take a while for me to complete. I was going to go for 5 different NPC's for each spawn point but that really seems counterproductive. Instead I am going to start with 100 npc's with 50 spawn points, 50 percent chance per point. After I look at the Bazaar I may bump it up to more spawns if it looks empty. This is going to take me quite a while to complete. Even after the spawns are complete I will need to script each and every NPC with some type of shouts in the bazaar, random ones. I am thinking a small amount of the bots have a proximity say going, or maybe emotes.

I have a question for everyone though, where does the PEQ database get it's pricing for items from ? I have never paid any attention to the prices of items till now but looking at something as simple as Centi items, I notice two items can have a drastic difference in price.