Post: #12

Mobiles are all done on my end and I don''t use templates on mobiles, I do all of their loot in @Death triggers. The magic items are processed through a few functions which check certain information from the NPC profiles and run equations and begin compiling a list of intensities and amounts of attributes to apply to an item (up to seven) with chance for prefix/suffix naming. I sort of figured out how EA does loot and it is literally based on one SOLE property NPC's share.

Vendor templates are reworked on my end, but I would have to cut out everything custom and do naming by sphere standards (which is three retarded conventions that no one on the team wanted to get on board with fixing this issue in the packs). I use strict naming. Sphere uses strict, <type> name, name <type> in the definition names in scripts. Seems stupid and people keep feeding it. I am currently redoing every silly wall, floor, window, archway, stairs as we speak and doing better organized axis categories. This is just a work beast no one ever wanted to do because it means redoing the entire script pack. Which, I am not too far off on getting done.

We don't anything beyond a basic home computer or amazon hosting. Sphere doesn't need anything more powerful than that for 100 or so actives. As long as item counts are down in the vendor templates, it should be okay. Honestly, vendors just need an overhaul in the buy/sell and be done with the stupid templates. Templates are great for newbie starting and such and maybe static reward packs, but otherwise they are outdated. A SQL database call for a list of items would be easier and it would remove every item in play from vendors. Just increase and decrease items in the database for a vendor. Sphere would run way more smoothly. It just means redoing the dialogs and such and building the database.

This is why I get PM's for server work lol. Logical and functional coding. Those packs are a monstrosity.

Any developers left reading this who are solely working on sphere, focus on moving things from the hard code to soft code support for anything and everything possible when it comes to spells and skills. Adding functionality is nice, but try not to run too much in the core if possible beyond basics. I know this is where the fallout began with all of us, but that was the plan between Thomas, myself, and ShiryuX when we came on. The less the server has to parse, the better.

Also, Xun, since I know you will read this. Spawn bits need more than you did. Not tested yet, but they should be able to handled a weighed range in ONE ID in the SPAWN templates. It needs to be made so it can spawn groups of various NPC's at once and possibly multis/Items as well. This would allow for pirate ships and merchant ships to work a lot better. If not, I will just make a new spawn system and post it, then I am sure someone will want to be a poop head and just add it to the core. But that is my two cents on spawn bits.

---

Also, not tested, but DEFNAME2 is still in the hardcode. It seems to only apply to items, either myself or someone still active should re-implement that into templates, spawns, mobiles, et cetera. It would make for naming to backwards compatible without calling on the lists to make for every server for it all to work if this pack ever went public. This also allows for other naming processes to be handled and everything would be handled from the definitions of the item. It would just need to be carried from original item to any new variants as it would have in a list. No need to parse a list if it is just in the definition itself and would be less resource intensive.

---

Oh. Alignment should be readded (It might even still be in there, but I get errors when attempting to add it to creatures) for AI handling. Good never attacks players or pets, unless they are evil and will attack monsters if evil, or when struck by a player or pet. Neutral doesn't attack anything unless attacked first. Evil attacks anything that is a player/pet or is blue (possibly neutral?). I think it was removed in the R series due to some oversight and a developer not understanding its use. EA checks this property for AI. Their parsing is not entirely karma checked when it comes to AI attack as there are monsters with about -10,000 karma which are still neutral.

---

Weight NEEDS to be RW at some point. They are now adding in attributes that can reduce weight I was reading. This might be something that finally needs to be done or to have an override on the weight property. Otherwise, we cannot keep up. GOLDINCREASE was a property I missed on items by the way and they added in Antique and a few others besides Brittle for negative attributes on items when generated. GoldIncrease I think is more of a hidden property and on players, but should be on Items/Mobiles alike, as I think that is part of how luck works. Refer to clilocs to confirm.

There was more stuff that needed to be done in the core, but I don't remember it all right now. I have been scripting for the past 6 hours and my brain is fried.

---

And fix the WinServer downloads in the nightly (It was attempted with IE and Chrome and still gives the same error. Compiler isn't doing its job again.) It is busted. I can keep recompiling, but others cannot in all cases and it is kind of lazy that no one fixed that by now.