Programs

I've been meaning to ask this for awhile now..

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1) Would it be possible in DoT to set up a room program that randomly generates Atmospheres from a pre-defined list?

By "Atmospheres" I just mean text that is outputted to add to the flavor of a room i.e..
>"A waitess passes by, carrying a plate of roasted meat."

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2) Would it be possible in DoT to set up a room program that randomly generates Mobiles/Objects from a pre-defined list?

Example of a Pre-defined list being..
A. A huge black bear (mob)
B. A dead tree branch (obj)
C. A red squirelly (mob)
D. A deer corpse (obj)

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3) How difficult/complex would these two programs be? If a gave each (or most) rooms these two programs (or a single program should I need to combine them both), would it seriously lag the server?

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4) For rooms that would use the same Pre-Defined list; be it the Atmosphere or the Mob/Obj Gen. List, could I link them (each room's program) to a single List; so when I need to edit those room's Lists, I would only have to edit a single Pre-defined list as apposed to a hundred.
..If you can understand that, it's rather difficult to put into words.

Thanks for any help.

Easy enough to do this. Redit the room in question where you want these atmosphere messages and use the addecho command.

Syntax: addecho <firsthour> <secondhour> <percentage> echotext"

For the echotext to be displayed to all in the room the following must be meet.

***TYPO ALERT KAL :) meet should be met***

IC time hour is inbetween <firsthour> and <secondhour> (inclusive).

A random number between 1 and 100 must be less than or equal to <percentage>

e.g. addecho 19 22 10 a owl hoots in the distance.");
(will be displayed from 7pm to 10pm 10% of the time on the tick)
e.g. addecho 7 5 3 a bird sings.
(will be displayed from 7am thru to 5am the next day 3% of the time on the tick)



This also is possible, but currently Dawn doesn't have room programs per se, but you can simulate that by making an Unseen (which is an act flag) mob and give it an mprog. Any mob that is set as unseen will not be shown to morts (unless they're in OLC mode :) Basically you make a mortal-invisible (unseen) mob, set it to act as a Sentinel and write a simple mob prog to load your critter or object.



The programs are ridiculously easy to write. I'd like to make a small suggestion however. Although the ambiance strings are totally cool and can really spice up an area, don't go overboard on the room echoes. They get pretty spammy and IMO if overused it just becomes, umm, tacky (for lack of a better word). IMO placing a few scattered echoes here and there has a much greater impact, especially with a small percentage value. That way, players will stay surprised longer. May take a player 10 good hunting trips into a zone to see just 1 echo and it'll be like they're seeing something brand new in a familiar place.

Not going to quote #4 since this is getting long, but I don't think there's a way to manage a database with mprogs. If you really plan on having loot tables, a much better solution would be to support that from a code level. This is something I always wanted to do, to randomize an area a bit, but alas, like many of my other projects... hehe... no comment :)

Anyways, getting longwinded. Hope this helps somewhat.

Ker

- RL sucks but the graphics kick ass.

Kerenos,

Thanks alot, this really boosts my moral, especially your comment..



I'm not very advanced in DoT since I've been playing around with countless code bases (so I only know the basics of each inorder to choose one). But I'm possitive I'll eventually be able to understand your entire post (some of it is over my head)!



I never thought of that, to many would get annoying now that I consider it. But what about this..

Having a huge list of echos, but have their % of being displayed set very very low, and a "non-echo" (blank-no display) % set very very high -so that although there will be a wide variety of echos, the chances of each one getting displayed is very very low and all the echos being offset by having a high "no-display" %.

This would allow for a wide variety while still not "over-loading" the players screen.
I'm sure this is what you meant by "small percentage" and I am just re-iterating to make sure I got it.

What would happen if two echos had a 10% chance at being displayed, how would the server choose between them?

Also, I (hopefully) assume there's some admin command that will list all a rooms echos.



That was another thing I was wondering, if certain echos could be given a higher chance of being displayed at certain times. Your example being perfect: at 7-10pm, a night owl could hoot, while in the day it couldn't (it sleeps).

"19" and "22" times refering what? Game-time or Real-time?

Sorry for so long a post, but these questions have been eating at me awhile now.

Would it also be possible to have the mob/obj generating program do the same as the echo program and generate certain mobs/obj only at certain times.. i.e. "A street Thug" that will only be generated at night (like in a dark alley).

Thanks for the help. You've saved me several headaches!

A few notes about addecho.

- Addecho can be done on a room and per area basis.
- You dont need to add a blank echo as the percentages dont have to add up to 100% or anything like that.
- If you had 3 echoes setup in a room, each with a 1% chance of triggered, in theory all 3 echoes could be echoed to the player one after the other in a single call to roomecho_update(), though the chance of this is 1 in 1 million.

- Kal

I get it now, so basically each echo runs on it's own percentage table rather than the same one (i.e. one echo set to 1% could be outputted while another also set to 1% may not be - but it is possible (however unlikely) that they both could be outputted.

What about this though..

Having alot of echo's for each room (say between 100 and 5000), along with a mob/obj generating program with a large "pre-set" list of random mobiles and objects to generate: would this seriously lag the game or cause any problems?

Also, would it also be possible to have the mob/obj generating program do the same as the echo program and generate certain mobs/obj only at certain times.. i.e. "A street Thug" that will only be generated at night (like in a dark alley).

You can use area echoes partly for this. In 1.69Q which is going to be released soon there is a 'no_area_echoes' room flag. Regarding making mobs appear etc... I think you are trying to be too complex when you haven't been running the codebase a long time. A lot of people seem to want to do a major change/detailed feature before they really understand what they are doing. I would recommend biting off something a little smaller to chew first, but that is your choice of course :). Dawn can do what you are wanting to do using mobprogs, the mobs can even purge themselves at a later date, but there is no nice clean way to handle 100 to 5000 different situations.

- Kal

You can use roomecho, as they said before...but if you want a really REALLY rare room echo, possibly a quest gecho or something, make an unseen that has a random load of ANOTHER Unseen that has the echoing progs on it. That will make it even more rare.