Adding Doors to a zone

[Randymarsh9]

Is it relatively easy to add maybe just a couple of doors to a zone?

[trevius]

If your definition of "relatively easy" is "something that can take a long time and be annoying", then yes :P

Seriously though, it all just depends on exactly what you are trying to do. Adding 1 door isn't bad. Adding a full zone worth of doors can be quite a pain. The rough part is that you have to zone out and back in to reset the zone each time you want to see the results of your door changes. The other semi-complex part figuring out which door models are available in that particular zone.

The best way I have found to find the names of doors available to a zone is to use S3DSpy (from GeorgeS' site) and look at the zone file in your EQ directory. Most doors will have the word "DOOR" in them, so it isn't hard to tell which ones are in there. But, to see what each one looks like, you would have to try each one out in-game. It can take a while lol.

I would recommend looking at the doors table and getting familiar with it. Then, check the wiki page here for more details on that table:
http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka...uDBSchemadoors

[Randymarsh9]

well, I am trying to add them to PoWar because it doesn't have any, so I don't know how I could figure out which ones work there

[trevius]

Go to GeorgeS' Site here:
http://wizardportal.dyndns.org/eqemu/eq.html

Download S3DSpy and set it up. Then, just open the powar.s3d or powar.eqg file (whichever type it is). That will show you the list of file names inside that file. Each file name is some part of the zone, whether it is a door, object, effect, texture, etc. You need to look for ones that are named similar to what you are looking for. So, if you are looking to add a bridge, try finding one with BRIDGE in the name somewhere. Then, add that to your doors table at any loc you like. Zone out and back in. Then, you should go to that loc where you set the object to spawn and should be able to see what it is. Some might not show anything at all, but using this method, you can definitely find them all. One thing I did for Dreadspire was to find a nice open area and then update the doors table with locs all around that area and fill in each of the file names into each row. So, when I zoned back in, I saw every door type all lined up and could basically figure out which were which from that point. It could definitely take alot of time and patience to find them all and get them all setup perfectly.

There is a much better option for adding doors and objects to zones, but it wouldn't work for PoWar. Basically, if you knew what you were doing, you could zone to the zone you wanted doors and objects for and then collect the packets for doors and ground spawns. Then, break those packets down and convert each one into a table entry. That too is a pain, but it does work and gets everything set perfectly. I used that technique to get the doors and objects all set for the new zone I am working on, Crescent Reach.

Hopefully at some point, the packet collectors will be working again so we can have tools to automatically populate the database with logs from Live. That would make this SOOOOOO much easier. But even then, PoWar would still not be an option for that since it never made it to live. Even if you added the doors and such, the ceilings are all missing, and there are invisible objects out in the field that we have no way to ever really know what they are supposed to be. So, people might be running and just run into something that they can't see. Definitely too many issues for my tastes, but I am just anal :P

[Randymarsh9]

Alright, I will try to find some doors. I just need them for a rogue quest I am going to make there. I like the invisible floors.

[Randymarsh9]

ok I don't get it though. How will I find a door when there are no doors listed in that file?