Question - That orc is holding a rusty dagger. How do I know this?

[BlankStare]

Hi all,

One thing I've always wondered is if MacroQuest-like programs can read the inventory of NPCs. I believe loot is generated upon death/corpse-creation nowadays, but what about visibly held weapons, robes, etc? I can definitively tell the mob has something because it's visual, but can MQ2 detect that item and generate the inventory/contents of that NPC?

The dagger in this scenario must reside on my system's memory somehow, because I see it. Am I reading only that:

• EQ is telling me this orc has a dagger in its hand, so I visually see that scenario
• Do I see the dagger as it exists, and it is currently equipped to the NPC which is an orc

I figure it must be one of these two options.

I might be wrong, but I'm curious how this is processed, if anyone knows.

 

[Esquire]

ShowEQ has something like this. It gives generic names for model of the weapon instead of telling you the ACTUAL weapon, but if you know what the mob drops you can make a very educated guess on what item he's wielding, if wielding anything at all.

 

[kaen01]

i keep hearing that people believe loot is created on death, i still see absolutely no logical reason for people to arrive at that conclusion.

mobs are a number in a database, that number is linked to another number that contains infomation about what that mob can be and where to be and what to carry.

you dont leave your house naked, and then get mugged and then you tell the mugger okay i would carry a wallet and a phone, and pling here they are.

you can see visual items on some mob types that use certain models from the olden days, because thats how it worked back then, mobs had an inventory you give htem staffs weapoins, chamared mobs and buffed them up nad gave them sick weapons and set them loose and they would tear up groups or soloers.

evne some strats had you attempt a weapon transfer that would allow for the mob to not dual wield or use a weaker weapon thatn its innate attacks etc.

but i do not believe that is the case with newer models anymore, and dont knkow when the switche happened, i know when i played back in the day stopped around ldon, it was working like that, and we could see primary and offhand stuff with eqshow or showeq or whatever it was called.

sorry i got onto a rant lol. and i might be wrong, but when you ahve a 15 year gap in the game. then things sometimees change.

 

[Eltai86]

If I remember correctly the devs have stated at some point that loot is generated on spawn not on death.....

 

[TheFiddler]

Aye aye, on spawn, not on death per my memory as well.
Have not yet done anything w/ showEQ. That would be interesting to see.

 

[Razkle]

in my experience there is 2 types of loot, quest loot and generated loot. Quest loot like swords and bile (dragon bile) can be seen before you kill it, but other loot is generated randomly after the kill, both are true.

 

[Sic]

If I remember correctly the devs have stated at some point that loot is generated on spawn not on death.....

This is why games like EQ2 changed to chests dropping from mobs

 

[Eltai86]

Okay Raz so just to play devils advocate here how can you differentiate between the two just on your end? I've heard multiple people that aren't interconnected for example comment about seeing blue pixel effects on a mob that dropped a rare weap which would indicate it is prior to.

 

[kaen01]

razkle, think about the logic behind it, generate on death vs spawned with

you program, you know when you call a sub routine, that you parse some data, the sub routine handles the data and returns a result. thats like spawned with loot.

generated on deaath, is like everytime you want to call a sub routine, you dont, you just write that code again to parse the data, your finished code becomes miles long, becasue you dont nkow what kind of datat hat needs parsed, or the needed result yet.

so no spawned on death would require too much cpu cycles, even the chests you loot after missions and taks are spawnd with the loot i can guarantee you that. its simply illogical to do it any other way.

 

[Sum1]

razkle, think about the logic behind it, generate on death vs spawned with

you program, you know when you call a sub routine, that you parse some data, the sub routine handles the data and returns a result. thats like spawned with loot.

generated on deaath, is like everytime you want to call a sub routine, you dont, you just write that code again to parse the data, your finished code becomes miles long, becasue you dont nkow what kind of datat hat needs parsed, or the needed result yet.

so no spawned on death would require too much cpu cycles, even the chests you loot after missions and taks are spawnd with the loot i can guarantee you that. its simply illogical to do it any other way.

You're talking about a 19-ish year old game, though. Do you really think the bulk of it was done logically?

 

[kaen01]

yes, iam fairly certain on this, specially when we consider 19 years ago you could load a mob with plat and weapons and it would be there on death, if it was different it woulndt be there.

 

[Eltai86]

It even came up semi recently again with the charm mob no drop gear exploit.....

 

[Razkle]

from a programming standpoint it is simple, a quest drop mob has a separate algorithm that says if it has the item or not when it spawns, the loot one is generated after the mob dies. its 2 completely separate things. If you ever did a quest where you had to kill 300 of something to get your quest item then you have ran into this. SOME quest mobs will show the item before death, hence upon spawning, but loot like rares and shit are calculated and populated at death, these are facts backed up by 17 years of DEVS telling us so.....

 

[kaen01]

remember when you went to lower guk to get a ssoy and a fbss, and you was able to see the ssoy on the frog when he spawned? remember when the frenzied ghoul would kick your ass cause it had a fbss and was hasted by it?, remember when the rogues got rich because they would pickpocket the plat of the mobs before they died? was even a chang to the system so rogues pick pocketed from another loot list than what was on the mob when it was spawned.

quest mobs that drop quest items only when you have the proper task is an entirely different system than loot on spawned mob or loot on death.

and probably internally the mobs have hte item all along but only lets people with the proper task loot it. as in being visible to them.

being able to control when cpu cycles are used is very important for an mmo, and thats why they have heartbeats, or 6 seconds rounds, thats the cycles where things happen that they need to do. having them randomly generate loot for 1 to 50mobs at random intervals is just not feasible.

i run through sebilis and pull 50 mobs and nuke couple times, thehy would need to run cycles everytime a mob died, just not something that is done in systems like that.

but now when a heartbeat spawning a mob from a preset configuration in a database and populating its inventory is much more controlled when done at certain intervals.

i will agree there might be some situations now where the loot is generated on an ending of a sequence ie a mob dies or something, but normal mobs, no.

 

[Esquire]

I might be wrong but I didn't think mobs equipped/benefited from the loot they are carrying unless it's a wielded weapon.

Ie: Frenzied Ghoul doesn't benefit from FBSS haste because Frenzied Ghoul can't even equip it.

This is to contrast Frenzied with Eashan of the Sky (NToV) who essentially wields the 2 different weapons with 41% haste. Here, since Eashan DOES use the weapons, Eashan then benefits from the equipped haste.

 

[fuzzymelon]

Interesting point esquire. I've noticed that with weapons, if the mob can equip it, it is visible on them. (so obviously they spawn with it) A recent example is:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=128641

When their class can't equip it, it doesn't (always? sometimes?) show. A recent example of one where it does not show on the mob:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=50968

 

[BlankStare]

This is essentially the point I brought up with the dagger/orc in the beginning. Same thing. I was thinking ghoul lord with SSOY as well, but was keeping it simple.

Are there two loot sources (one visible one not), or are they spawned with all the items? You can disarm a froglok and it's no longer gonna drop that FSLS, because it's on the ground able to be picked up.

 

[kaen01]

trust me in the olden days when camping frenzied ghoul, the tank and cleric would know when he had the fbss, becasue he would eat the tank alive.

 

[Sic]

trust me in the olden days when camping frenzied ghoul, the tank and cleric would know when he had the fbss, becasue he would eat the tank alive.

can confirm