Content Phase 2: Initial Placements
-
John Adams
- Retired
- Posts: 4583
- Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:40 am
- Location: Phoenix, AZ.
- Contact:
Content Phase 2: Initial Placements
Phase 2 (after planning) is the actual placement of Content in the world.
INITIAL PLACEMENTS
"Initial Placements" will be our first pass through migrating content into the world. You have seen from the first round of New Telon data what I considered "single placement" NPCs - those NPCs that only had 1 x,y,z location in the entire database - and still it was thousands. Those are Trainers, Vendors, Taskmasters, Quest NPCs, etc... once that were *always* in their one spot.
Well, we're tossing ALL that data and starting over New Telon data was garbage (as you could see in Halgarad). On the Content server, I have already popped nearly everything in the immediate Starting chunks that were "single placements" again, with the exception of non-NPC spawns. Meaning, I popped all crafting tables, sign posts, bind/rift/altar stones, etc.
CONTROLLED MIGRATION
So your first task will be -- everything else. Mostly it is the "chunk trash", the encounters, the NPCs we fight/grind or receive quest rewards from. These all have to be placed in the world one-at-a-time, due to the sheer volume of them collected (1,000's upon 1,000's). One of my latest videos shows you an over-populated Moth/Cat/Snake area in Halgarad that I was demonstrating .spawn combine commands with. My hope is that you do not have to .spawn combine much, because you will place >exactly< what you need, saving yourself time and effort (and keeping my database clean).
CONCEPTS
Pick a chunk, any chunk - almost...
While I want you guys to enjoy your task, I cannot have you start in Stiirhad and then jump to APW, and so forth. Players play in level 1-10 areas first, so we should make an effort to finish those areas, first. You familiar with this?
[img]http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/image ... spiral.gif[/img]
The Radius/Spiral
Look down at your chunk map, and work from the Newbie Area "center" outward. Starting areas have a radius where Quests send the players and where it is "safe" for little lowbie level 10's can go. Example:
[attachment=1]Tursh.jpg[/attachment]
^ We know we start at level 1, in the Dormitories. We get quests, skills, and tasks from here for our first 3-4 levels or so, then we move on to Tursh Village (township) where we get level 5-10 quests like Rindol Storehouse, and then on to the bigger stuff - spiraling AWAY from the place the player was born.
There is other content in these newbie places as well, for higher levels or different spheres, so there's plenty to do there for some time. Lots of dialogs to build, lots of quests - but first, placing those MOBS!
More than NPCs
There's lots more to VG than just fighting monsters. We'll need to validate Doors work, that Signs have their text, that apples and books and dummies and carts and all that kind of stuff are present - especially if they are needed for Quest Steps! It's okay if you don't have them right now, but when you come back to write Quests and can't find the spawn you need - revisit the Migration tools.
Altars and Bindstones need to work, and at least for now, Riftstones too.
Pick a chunk, any chunk - still not entirely...
What I do want you to do is pick a starting location you favor. More than 1 person can help in a single area, too. But kindly do not avoid doing a starting location because you hate the race. They all need to get done.
Once you place every NPC imaginable in your entire chunk (Tursh Village) then logically determine the next path a player might take and head there. On a global level, spiraling outward. If we follow this linear path through the game, Content will follow Development nicely, since we certainly will not have Raiding implemented for some time (likely not until after the server is playable for level 1-50 entirely)
CLEANUP ON AISLE 5!!!
Even though we are controlling the population with manual Migration, there will be moments when you come up over a hill and realize you spawned one too many Ash Saplings.
[attachment=0]ScreenShot_00202.JPG[/attachment]
You are the ones most familiar with this game, so if you know for a FACT the grove should be thinner, go chop a few down (.spawn remove) It's okay if you remove too many, because you can always plant more (migrate).
This will be more obvious with NPCs or Quest collection items (flowers and such), but you should always check Signs or Posts or even buildings/carts/objects laying around the terrain. If you "see" more than one, clean it up! If you cannot (not clickable), we'll show you how through the DBEditor->Game Content menu.
FILLING IN THE BLANKS
There inevitably will be NPCs missing even from our Raw Data (Mekalia, anyone?) Soon (hopefully) we will get you a .spawn create tool in-game so you can re-create NPCs manually. The idea is you will .spawn create a specific model, paint it how you want it to look (appearances), give it some gear (attachments) and set it loose on the player population. Loads of fun.
.spawn create is currently in development, but you won't be needing it for some time anyway so we have time.
A CLOSING THOUGHT
Work in a level-progressive, linear pattern from starting locations outward. You can choose to work alone on an area, or team up with others to knock it out faster. However you wish. You can spawn everything and go back later and build LUA, or pop a spawn and design it's LUA right there [TBD].
Edit: Finally, on June 20, 2015 we're ready to start..... ?
INITIAL PLACEMENTS
"Initial Placements" will be our first pass through migrating content into the world. You have seen from the first round of New Telon data what I considered "single placement" NPCs - those NPCs that only had 1 x,y,z location in the entire database - and still it was thousands. Those are Trainers, Vendors, Taskmasters, Quest NPCs, etc... once that were *always* in their one spot.
Well, we're tossing ALL that data and starting over New Telon data was garbage (as you could see in Halgarad). On the Content server, I have already popped nearly everything in the immediate Starting chunks that were "single placements" again, with the exception of non-NPC spawns. Meaning, I popped all crafting tables, sign posts, bind/rift/altar stones, etc.
CONTROLLED MIGRATION
So your first task will be -- everything else. Mostly it is the "chunk trash", the encounters, the NPCs we fight/grind or receive quest rewards from. These all have to be placed in the world one-at-a-time, due to the sheer volume of them collected (1,000's upon 1,000's). One of my latest videos shows you an over-populated Moth/Cat/Snake area in Halgarad that I was demonstrating .spawn combine commands with. My hope is that you do not have to .spawn combine much, because you will place >exactly< what you need, saving yourself time and effort (and keeping my database clean).
CONCEPTS
Pick a chunk, any chunk - almost...
While I want you guys to enjoy your task, I cannot have you start in Stiirhad and then jump to APW, and so forth. Players play in level 1-10 areas first, so we should make an effort to finish those areas, first. You familiar with this?
The Radius/Spiral
Look down at your chunk map, and work from the Newbie Area "center" outward. Starting areas have a radius where Quests send the players and where it is "safe" for little lowbie level 10's can go. Example:
^ We know we start at level 1, in the Dormitories. We get quests, skills, and tasks from here for our first 3-4 levels or so, then we move on to Tursh Village (township) where we get level 5-10 quests like Rindol Storehouse, and then on to the bigger stuff - spiraling AWAY from the place the player was born.
There is other content in these newbie places as well, for higher levels or different spheres, so there's plenty to do there for some time. Lots of dialogs to build, lots of quests - but first, placing those MOBS!
More than NPCs
There's lots more to VG than just fighting monsters. We'll need to validate Doors work, that Signs have their text, that apples and books and dummies and carts and all that kind of stuff are present - especially if they are needed for Quest Steps! It's okay if you don't have them right now, but when you come back to write Quests and can't find the spawn you need - revisit the Migration tools.
Altars and Bindstones need to work, and at least for now, Riftstones too.
Pick a chunk, any chunk - still not entirely...
What I do want you to do is pick a starting location you favor. More than 1 person can help in a single area, too. But kindly do not avoid doing a starting location because you hate the race. They all need to get done.
Once you place every NPC imaginable in your entire chunk (Tursh Village) then logically determine the next path a player might take and head there. On a global level, spiraling outward. If we follow this linear path through the game, Content will follow Development nicely, since we certainly will not have Raiding implemented for some time (likely not until after the server is playable for level 1-50 entirely)
CLEANUP ON AISLE 5!!!
Even though we are controlling the population with manual Migration, there will be moments when you come up over a hill and realize you spawned one too many Ash Saplings.
You are the ones most familiar with this game, so if you know for a FACT the grove should be thinner, go chop a few down (.spawn remove) It's okay if you remove too many, because you can always plant more (migrate).
This will be more obvious with NPCs or Quest collection items (flowers and such), but you should always check Signs or Posts or even buildings/carts/objects laying around the terrain. If you "see" more than one, clean it up! If you cannot (not clickable), we'll show you how through the DBEditor->Game Content menu.
FILLING IN THE BLANKS
There inevitably will be NPCs missing even from our Raw Data (Mekalia, anyone?) Soon (hopefully) we will get you a .spawn create tool in-game so you can re-create NPCs manually. The idea is you will .spawn create a specific model, paint it how you want it to look (appearances), give it some gear (attachments) and set it loose on the player population. Loads of fun.
.spawn create is currently in development, but you won't be needing it for some time anyway so we have time.
A CLOSING THOUGHT
Work in a level-progressive, linear pattern from starting locations outward. You can choose to work alone on an area, or team up with others to knock it out faster. However you wish. You can spawn everything and go back later and build LUA, or pop a spawn and design it's LUA right there [TBD].
Edit: Finally, on June 20, 2015 we're ready to start..... ?
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
-
John Adams
- Retired
- Posts: 4583
- Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:40 am
- Location: Phoenix, AZ.
- Contact:
Re: Content Phase 2: Initial Placements
Here are some links related to content design from the myriad of topics I have talked about this on (sorry for being so scattered, it happens when I take a year getting tools ready)
Wiki Articles
The Content Designer Handbook (WIP)
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/Content
Content Design Tasks (WIP)
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/Content:Tasks (placeholder doc from EQ2's Wiki, but should be about the same)
DBEditor Docs (WIP) - lots of WIPs, huh?
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/DBEditor
The Migrate Data Wiki
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/DBEditor:MigrateSpawns
Forum Posts
Content Design Videos
Migrate Data (old version of migrate tool, but principle is the same)
Spawn Combine Tutorial
In-Game Commands List for Content
VGOEmulator Official Server Ruleset
You guys have the DBEditor->Migration steps down, so I won't need to post any more about that but should you have questions, please ask. Don't guess. Guessing leads to Purge Chunk, Start Over
In the opening post above, I stated that I had pre-popped all the starter locations, when in fact I have rolled the DB back since then so I'm putting that task back on you - as a good place to start as Single Placements are easy and will help you get familiar if you do it 300 times per chunk
Update (2015.07.29): I actually will be mass-spawning all Singles again myself, leaving the encounters for this team to build.
The only thing I will ask/add is that when you encounter an NPC/Object with the exact same name and you ponder "Why are there 2?", please investigate it, see if we can merge them. SOE had some dupe data in their world, or some minor data (posture) is different causing a unique spawn ID to be created unnecessarily. ONE extra spawn ID is no biggie, but if you see 6,0000 "grassland snakes", let me know as we should fix that.
Wiki Articles
The Content Designer Handbook (WIP)
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/Content
Content Design Tasks (WIP)
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/Content:Tasks (placeholder doc from EQ2's Wiki, but should be about the same)
DBEditor Docs (WIP) - lots of WIPs, huh?
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/DBEditor
The Migrate Data Wiki
http://wiki.vgoemulator.net/Docs/DBEditor:MigrateSpawns
Forum Posts
Content Design Videos
Migrate Data (old version of migrate tool, but principle is the same)
Spawn Combine Tutorial
In-Game Commands List for Content
VGOEmulator Official Server Ruleset
You guys have the DBEditor->Migration steps down, so I won't need to post any more about that but should you have questions, please ask. Don't guess. Guessing leads to Purge Chunk, Start Over
Update (2015.07.29): I actually will be mass-spawning all Singles again myself, leaving the encounters for this team to build.
The only thing I will ask/add is that when you encounter an NPC/Object with the exact same name and you ponder "Why are there 2?", please investigate it, see if we can merge them. SOE had some dupe data in their world, or some minor data (posture) is different causing a unique spawn ID to be created unnecessarily. ONE extra spawn ID is no biggie, but if you see 6,0000 "grassland snakes", let me know as we should fix that.