Good Job, Staff

[Songweaver]

A thread for various shout-outs.

http://www.middle-earth.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1775

Best news I've heard in a while. Are the nest spawn-points entirely randomly for the whole map, or random to specific areas of the map so that the danger of some regions is still generally greater than the danger of other regions (such as the regions closest to Utterby and Vadok Mal)?

[Alcarin]

To answer that question: It is 100% randomized. I'm not yet clever enough to force it not to put too many spawners in previously safe zones, though it's on my list of enhancements to make in the future.

The spawners themselves have a ramp-up time, however. Eggs will take time to hatch after they are placed, and the wolf and warg spawners have 3 phases, which take a bit of time to build up - the first phases will be no worse than what the safe zones already experience regularly.

The bear spawner is the one that is most immediately dangerous; it doesn't have phases and it doesn't care about anything except the season. Spring is most dangerous since bears are plentiful, hungry, and having children. Summer and autumn are not too dangerous, though there will be a few bears. Winter will not spawn bears unless you provoke them in their den.


So, in essence, for the moment, your best bet is to patrol the safe zones regularly and make sure to proactively drive off any spawners that appear. It shouldn't be too often or too bad, unless you get extremely unlucky or inactive.

[Matt]

I don't think these nest spawners are working.

[Nezerin]

I don't think these nest spawners are working.

I've seen a wolf den so I think they are. Just maybe need a speed tweak?

[Matt]

I don't think these nest spawners are working.

I've seen a wolf den so I think they are. Just maybe need a speed tweak?

I haven't seen any aggro NPCs at all since like Monday.

[Alcarin]

Players have been pretty seriously proactive in killing off the spawners.

I've upped spawn rates a bit to compensate, the aggressive NPCs should start making appearances again soon.

[Hawkwind]

Love the Moonflower lore.

[tehkory]

Players have been pretty seriously proactive in killing off the spawners.

I've upped spawn rates a bit to compensate, the aggressive NPCs should start making appearances again soon.

Poking my head in, briefly, but Krelm/Smooly/Matt/Someguy/Workerdrone should have some excellent input about nests, player-side. And Songweaver should, Admin-side.

[Droll]

I'll stick my head in even though I'm noob and not any of the mentioned hardasses. The wolf den should at least spawn a trio, large bro and two other runts gaudring him. Too ez just one large wolf. Haven't seen any others.


I don't have combat skills so maybe I'm wrong.

[Matt]

Game crashed earlier when I was sneaking around and when I came back I was standing next to a large wolf den that spawned a pack of like 9-10. So I think we're good now haha.

[Alcarin]

Yep. Mobile spawning is still being tweaked. We went from none at all to every warg who ever lived, ever would live, and was currently living meeting for a powwow to what will now hopefully be a stable, reasonable number of mobs spawned.

Please keep the feedback coming, I'm trying to find the correct balance on this so that it will self-regulate without me.

[MrDvAnt]

Yep. Mobile spawning is still being tweaked. We went from none at all to every warg who ever lived, ever would live, and was currently living meeting for a powwow to what will now hopefully be a stable, reasonable number of mobs spawned.

Please keep the feedback coming, I'm trying to find the correct balance on this so that it will self-regulate without me.

Is there a prog command that will check for existing instancs of the mobs currently on the port? If so you could have it make a check every 30 minutes or hour and spawn a pack if none exist. Or something similar. That might help keep it regulated a bit.

[Alcarin]

Unfortunately, no, the progs cant look at hiw many mobs exist on the port. I have to instead balance average spawn rates with the time it takes mobs to disappear themselves.

[MrDvAnt]

Unfortunately, no, the progs cant look at hiw many mobs exist on the port. I have to instead balance average spawn rates with the time it takes mobs to disappear themselves.

Meh, guess that would've been too easy.

[Songweaver]

There is a way to keep a total count.

Step One) Create a counter token in your admin room that you're going to use the oval values to store your total count of specific mobs on.

Step Two) Set the mobs' initial fallbacks to 0. Do an on_hour check for each of them that mcues an mprog. The prog does a set random 1d100, then does delay &(random) xcount to run a second mprog. You do this so that every mob in the game isn't running the math and storage checks from Step Three at once, which can become very buggy and create lag.

Step Three) The second mprog checks their fallback; if it's 0, it sets their fallback to '1' and grabs the oval value where you're storing that mob's count on your counter token from Step One. It uses math to add 1 to that oval value, and setval to plug the new count into the proper oval value on your counter object. If their fallback is already 1 (they've already been "counted), nothing happens.

Step Four) Create an on_death or on_health (<15) or the like mcue that runs another mprog. This mprog uses the same methods as Step Three for math, but instead subtracts 1 from the proper oval value, acknowledging the mob's death.

Step Five) Have your den spawners check against the proper counter oval values to determine whether or not you've reached your "cap" for that mob. If you have, then it doesn't spawn. You can also use some maths to keep it from over-spawning beyond the cap if you're doing randomized pack sizes (which I do suggest, to make it all more dynamic).

Step Six) Remove the morphto 86s on your mobs and let the mobs live until they are killed off, since you have hard caps in place now.


This is the system that I used in ARPI ALPHA for spawning mobs. You can also use a counter/cap system like this to put a cap on how many nests of any certain type can exist at any point, which is another good thing to do.

Hope that helps!

[Alcarin]

Oh, that could definitely work. Itll take me a while to figure out, test, and take live... but ill look into doing spawns that way this weekend.

[Songweaver]

Now that I think about it, I might've just had the mob spawner itself add numbers to the storage counter, instead of the fallback/mcue trick. I think that's what I moved to once I realized that there's no reason to not do it that way.

Even easier!

[MrDvAnt]

Oh, that could definitely work. Itll take me a while to figure out, test, and take live... but ill look into doing spawns that way this weekend.

Yay! I made an idea!

Thanks for the help there Songweaver.

[Songweaver]

Kudos on taking some steps to fix the hunting skillset and economy system. I support all of the changes that Taurgalas posted yesterday.

Suggestion: Make small game hunting crafts actually kill the rabbits/squirrels/small-game, or change the crafts to just "flush" out the animals and not require setting a trap; it just doesn't make sense to create a snare, and then have your loaded mob Road Runner away from you. A simple craftprog using the rend command and an atecho can accomplish killing the NPC outright. I'd be happy to help if you wanted to do this.

Another solution is to let the craft load a hidden trap object (another craftprog set that loads the hidden trap object into the PC's hands, then forces them to "hide it"). That trap object can run an on_hour check for a chance to trap its desired small game, and when it succeeds, it sets its oval0 to 1 and changes its sdesc/ldesc to show a trapped rabbit/etc. Then, the player can run a prog to kill the trapped mob (so long as oval0=1), and hunters can set traps and then go back out and check them later. This is probably the most immersion solution.

In short, it'd be nice if the hunting crafts made sense, especially since they do require materials to make their traps (generally).

[BashSkull52]

Following an IG "trap line" sounds amazing.

[Taurgalas]

Unfortunately, as we'very explained before, code traps do not work. We have other systems that take precedence before anyone can focus on that. Which isn't to say such thoughts aren't on our list. Just pretty far down.

[Songweaver]

I'm not suggesting code traps. I'm suggesting adding a script to the end of your hunting crafts. Like I said, I'm willing to help you out with it, just as I'm always willing to help out with scripts.