eqlive open zones spawn & pathing

[sandy]

I have impressions that in eqlive, spawn & pathing in open zones are different than in closed zones

we have today in eqemu the ability to create spawn points and grids

but in eqlive it seems it doesn't work like this

my impressions are that there is in fact not spawn points in these zones, but spawn areas

I can be wrong but I think it works like this :

there is a spawn area
this area have a spawntable
but there is no defined grids or defined spawn points
when a monster spawn, it seems to be at random locations in this area
then the monster roam, it seems to get a wp randomly in this area

i think it would be possible to implement something like this :
we could define an area with 2 points in the database
for example :
area_id spawngroup_id zone_id x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 spawntime maxspawn

with something like that we would then be able to implement nektulos like zones easily
there will be :
- one area with small spiders/fire beetles/moss snakes
from near the entrance of neriak to the central road
- another area with skeletons, bears, venom snakes in the other side of the road
- another area with kodiaks, high lvl skels in the other side of the river
we would add all the static spawns, like guards, camps
and we would obtain something that would fit exactly how it is working in eqlive and that would be more efficient and easy for worldbuilders

and these areas would be expandable for exemple for quests later
entering an area would be trigger an event
leaving an area too

this would be usable for graveyards too

what do you think about that ?

[m0oni9]

From what I've seen in places like west commons, there are no area spawn points (maybe you are seeing it in another zone?), but rather spawn points that can spawn multiple mobs at a time (ie: where you would see 3 spiderlings floating in mid-air together). I'm sure they use wander grids though.

The emu currently implements wander grids, doesn't it? I haven't really looked at it too much. I don't see why a wander grid would need to be confined to the shape of a rectangle, though. Any convex shape shouldn't be too terrible to make work, I think.

Anyway, even if you did want to create a spawn grid, it doesn't sound too bad. Off the top of my head it seems as though you could do the following.

Create an ordered set of points (x,y,z), used as vertices for the resulting spawn grid. From these points, the server might form triangles (ie: four verticies creates two triangles, six vertices creates four triangles, etc). Store these triangles off somewhere. When it comes time to spawn a mob, pick a triangle at random, and spawn it somewhere between the three vertices of the chosen triangle.

This could be turned into a function to generate a point within a grid, and then applied to wander grids, graveyards, etc.