Suggestions for these tools

[eski2]

What about an automatic backup of the db with say date/time stamp, and backups every x minutes ?

I was looking over the NPC editor and I can't see where the faction part of it is? As an example of a need, I've come across a lot of errors in the peq db with faction (e.g. nothing seems to give positive Firiona Vie Inhabitants faction).

Ideally faction for an npc would be chosen by dropdown boxes (maybe combo is too ambitious?). That way, when choosing which faction someone was, the tool would hide the faction id so that the user just sees "Faydarks Champions" or whatever.

Final suggestion: that the changes made could be exportable in a form that other users could see posted to a forum, and decide whether they want it for their server or even incorporated into the main peq db. (e.g. a .pl text file)

I used to program VB back in the version 2 days, over a decade ago(!), but only on a simple level and I haven't done anything to do with databases really.

However I'm supposed to be studying VB.NET in 2010 and i'm pretty sure SQL is part of the training. I can try to help with this or even do it myself given the source code, although i confess to being apprehensive.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

there are like 20k + various factions and sub-factions- so no- drop down box not gona work =)

Factions are one of the more complex things of Emu, and use 3 different Db tables, and there is really no easy way to edit them other than in Db directly...

[eski2]

what about just so that you can assign a faction to an npc, I can only see 491 factions in the peq db faction list? From hazy memories you should be able to type a partial match, like "seru" and just get citizens of seru, Eye of Seru etc and then just click on that value then an "add" button.

The kelethin banker, for example, is on some weird faction and starts of KOS to iksar monks etc (this was always very amusing on live servers, because they might be ally to the guards and merchants etc and then get slaughtered when they tried to bank!) To me, the flow would be to look up that npc, look under the faction column, clear any factions that shouldn't be there, then add in just banker, or Kelethin Merchants or whatever.

I can only see faction_list and faction_values in the peq db, what am i missing?

I'd love to be able to easily add faction hits to mobs, so that killing the skeletons in befallen gave positive adjustments to Priests of Marr, for example. Maybe that is harder to do?

[Lillu]

I deleted Lillu's comment as it's useless here and does not contribute to the discussion
GeorgeS

[ChaosSlayerZ]

eski2

The 500+ factions you see are the PRIMARY FACTIONS

However there is such thing as sub-factions
The listed in npc_faction table, and their interrelation is in npc_faction_entries table

The sub-faction used for variosu reasons.

For example: you have a primary faction Guards of Qeynos
You have common guards, killing which gives you 25 points penalty, then you have officers, killing which gives you 100 points penalty, and you have faction leaders, killing which gives you 500 points penalty.
To represent all of that you need to create 3 different sub factions (in fact there are like 10 of them)

Also, guards as you know attack mobs. And for each zones, in PEQ, guards have separate sub faction set to oppose specific mobs/animal in that specific zone. All that need a separate sub faction. You could probably get away with making just 1 sub faction and setting it to attack ALL posible other factions of creatures, but PEQ was build after how SOE did it- and thats why when you add all that crap up- you end up with few THOUSANDS of sub factions

The only improvement I could think of for George npc editor, is when faction field is selected, the little help window could track and display which Primary Faction this sub faction belong too - ID and name