Khazarad

[Stalkerr]

I'm sure people thought it was funny to attack the wandering cleric and get mobs of 30+ spawned out there.

?? I feel like this is nonsense.  Is this nonsense?

[Gardner Denver]

I appreciate Gardner cleaning out the majority of Khaz.  But can he please clear out the way to the kobold king (a sub lvl 10 area).  I'm sure people thought it was funny to attack the wandering cleric and get mobs of 30+ spawned out there.

I did this about a week ago

[Vitoc]

Working on it...

[Vitoc]

Monster groups

there are like fuck I think 40 groups, groups 0-5 are lair/wander/npc/living/wander/guard  technically these all have information hard coded about them that changes their behavior (example they all can ignore group limitations when moving, patrol routines, and specific blocked exit types).  I don't think we mimic any of it. The next 30 groups 6-35 are named group 1/group 2/group 3/etc.../group 30(these are standard monster and represent most of the monsters in the game) and the last 4 are Arena/Angel/Quest/Other Its possible that all of these have despawning mechanics, I can't recall off the top of my head I feel like they do though.  Techincally the Angel group despawns when it has had no viable target ---This is *of course* bugged.

There are multiple issues with the way despawning mechanics work in majormud, as a result you can prevent monsters from despawning, or even force them to despawn.  There is no real need to mimic any of that behavior.  I would suggest that angel type mobs should attempt to return to the room they spawned in once they've lost a target for 6 combat rounds.  Once they return to their spawn room, or find that their path is blocked by too many mobs or a door or w/e they should wait until they haven't had a new target or checked to see if a player in the room *should be* a target for like a minute then seppuku or sit down and meditate.


The list of monsters in the angel group are as follows
Angel/0 -- Zanthus the Lich(215), Argak the Grey(609), Choira Pyromancer(610), Lallim Whitemane(611), Sharh'Kur(612), death chicken(843), Dark Mage(850), giant locust(892), crimson mist(904), guardsman(905), Lorzina(1032)

Angel/1 -- guardsman(13), bounty hunter(32), warlock mercenary(70)

Angel/2 -- giant roc(1120)

Angel/100 -- dying slaver leader(365), ancient sand dragon(434)

Angel/999 -- obsidian statue(347), Kai Master(448)

Angel/9999 -- greater hellion(181), huorn(279), dwarven guard(396), dwarven royal guard(426), guardsman(538)

Its possible that you may think that several of these monsters normally don't despawn.  Given the proper circumstance they do but keep in mind majormud to like run on a 386.  So the active monster database to for majormud is cycled over slowly.  And without going into exactly what an area is in majormud, areas without players in them get skipped. So a monster, might stay in the same room for a long time and then despawn as soon as someone enters the room with him, or not attack back for a couple rounds then despawn, or might jsut decide that the new target looks good and start fighting like normal.  This action of skipping areas is one of the despawn mechanics don't always work how they should.

A despawned lord of the hunt does not have his kill timer reset, so he could respawn at any point the game rolled his number.  As a side note the skipping areas while cycling the active monsters database can also lead to monsters failing to receive a heal tick, failing to have active bless/curses removed, or even worse can create psuedo-immortal zombie monsters that take 65k damage to kill again.

I think, and I could be wrong about this, the initial creation of the lawful good 'dwarven guard(396)' is something that has to be willfully done by a player or their megamud unless all 'Good' type (type 0) monsters attack evil on sight. If good/type 0 alignment monster do this then they should not.  And the lawful good(alignment type 4) spawns which are group type Angel (which is like..group 37 or 38?) should  despawn at some point( wouldn't suggest cleanup because we have too much already happening at cleanup, lightball removal hype).  I was able to spawn large armies of Dwarven Royal Guard by enslaving dwarven noblemen and because we don't mimic despawning they stayed around until someone felt like dealing with them, which for players is no small task. 

Side note ---The angel group should despawn but as for following, their movement should not be restricted by group type, only exit type. This is of course an extremely minor issue with the angel type and only comes up with a few monsters...but this is significant in some areas such as silvermere where the guard type monsters should be able to move more freely around town. 

This was quite the ramble, please ask for clarification where needed.

If I ever run into who coded this I'm going to punch them in the face.  Why in the holy hell would they not make this an ability on the mobtype?  I mean what competent self-respecting developer would actually put this into the engine code:

Code Select Expand

if (mob.group == 37)
{
  //do something
}
Regarding:
Angel/0
Angel/1
Angel/100
Angel/999
Angel/9999

Where are you getting this second number (after the slash) on the angel thing?  I don't see anything in the content.

Only thing I see close to those numbers is the Charm Lvl and Charm RES.  Please, please, please tell me that's not it...

[Stalkerr]

There are quite a few oddities that just --developed-- over time.  If you remember what release mud looked like a lot more stuff was hard coded and there are legacies all over the place for that.

Angel/0 /1 /9999 etc are GROUP/INDEX

[Gardner Denver]

Why in the holy hell would they not make this an ability on the mobtype?  I mean what competent self-respecting developer <snip>

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  Vitoc you do have a sense of humor after all!  How could you type this with a straight face when talking about WCC/Metro?

[Stalkerr]

Obvious he wrote that you in mind gard.

[Gardner Denver]

Obvious he wrote that you in mind gard.

Well I appreciate it.  I needed a good laugh.

[Blake]

So Royal Dwarven Guards are still a problem.  You can't complete evil third quest without running into about 40 of them surrounding the king, making it impossible not to die to complete the quest.

[Rage]

Can we just delete all dwarven royal guards?

[Blake]

Sorry to bother, but there's a mob of the bastards on the main road through Khaz right now.  I've picked up a few foreign DP's from there, so I'm not complaining, but just wanted to let you know there are about 30 of them there.

[jim gilmore]

Wouldn't an evil quest that resulted in some evil only item be a better work around than fixing the khazad problem be a better fix