What would the ultimate EQ RPG GM tool look like?

[Malevolent]

I've been thinking of reorienting a lot of my stuff over to a kind of utility kit for GMs. I'm curious what peeps would consider an ultimate GM tool. We've got such a big heap of stuff going right now, in addition to the mods I've got floating around, you could do quite a bit.

Off the top of my head, here is what we have

* Mob factories - where you can set a spawn to reproduce itself into different looks and classes (including merchants, bankers) and have them auction the goods in their merchant list (ok, a bit more than mob factories;)

* Having a particular mob faction group attack a zone

* Questing and all the eq emu goodies

* Storm's legends code for webpage viewing

What would be uber nice:

* On the fly zone creation (random dungeons anyone?) using a seed method where you send a seed to each client and it generates a zone that maybe overwrites the tutorial file. Lotta work to do something like this, but it would be neat.

What else helps a GM gm?

[Hmm]

hmm how about reverse of gosackzone which means all other factions attack the targeted faction? ie: you set 10 BIG gaints rambing around in SK and orders all factions to attack the gaints.

simple but quick: #spawnbunch which spawns few copies that walks around but same command type as #spawn but added parameter of number of mobs ie: #spawnbunch blah blah 100 spawns 100 lions to run around

heh possibly fun command: #randomspawn ( name, level ) but dunno how to know which zones supports what models etc.. it spawns random location and everything is randomized to certain parameter ( you dont want 2000 level 1 hp mobs do you? )

hmm im out of ideas for now lol

[Lyenu X`Arie]

well.. as long as you realize that means you'll have to reverse the encrpytion methods of ZoneCovertor. Til then you can't even do anything. Other than that you'll have to knwo 3dsmax really good to even attempt to mess with them really, and how the files work.

[Malevolent]

Like I said, it'd be a lot of work Anyone want to make some sort of client that sits with the eqclient and does this zone generation? *scrounges in his pockets* I'll pay

Now all this zone talk has given me an idea.

What if in a zone you could set up preset quest conditions, that would automagically change the entire zone over as a kind of overlay on the existing content?

A zone would have the capability, and indeed already does, to modify itself from eqlive to a different content filled version by doing a massive repop, and maybe when you do this repop, it pulls in from a different set of quest files. That way, you can take the time to setup a zone quest and then bring it in at any time. A lot of this has already been accomplished, and you could add in various new mixes.

I'm thinking it might work something along these lines:

A GM Appears in WC and issues the command #StartQuest 1

It begins to snow.
A few shouts occur from the natives.
A massive number of undead creates pop.
All the quest files shift from normalWC to WC.Quest1 files.

I do like the idea of a random spawn. It would also provide a framework for a kind of spawn generator I've been thinking of building: one that spawns a mob within your level range x units away from you. Oh, I should mention the random name generation code too that could go with this.

I'm also thinking that maybe there should be something that does autowriting into books. So, you can then have a GM write into your questbook. This, in theory, would be pretty easy to do and would have all the players involved in the ongoing story -- they'd even be able to have their names in the book. E.g.,

The druid Lars called upon the spirits and brought forth a great wind that cleared the skies of the many flying creatures.

]

Then at any time later in the game, a player could look at the book and read a huge ongoing story of whatever a GM had written in there (using a command like #GMWrite maybe).