Populating your world!!

[Epsilon]

Hey,

I'm wondering if anyone has come up with an easy way to get a decent ammount of NPC's (vendors, monsters, etc.) into your world so its actually "playable" withought the tedious process of spawning everything by hand...

...My ultimate goal is a small easy to manage shard that i can bum around on with some friends and actually have fun playing the game (ala. killing stuff)...any suggestions on how i should go about this?¿?...

...I've looked up all the other uo emu's i can find...RunUO won't even work (not to mention the community is a bunch of a-holes...at least those who've responded to me)...The download link for POL is broken...Sphere works great and was relatively easy to set up ALTHOUGH it doesn't have anything but an empty world either and all anyone will say is "Spawn it yourself" *rolls eyes* (I actually have a life outside of UO and don't want to spend weeks trying to populate my own world from scratch NOT TO MENTION trying to figure out how to do so)...So i'm stuck with UOX3 (which has been by far the easiest to use...and has a good community [cheers Xuri!!]
...SSOOOO...now that yall know where i'm comming from whats the fastest way to accomplish this goal???

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated (seeing as how no one else in the other emu sites ahs been kind enough to offer advice)

---Epsilon

[Xuri]

Unfortunately UOX3 does not have anything but a empty world either, though you can download the default worldfile from the downloads page which does include item-decorations for most of Britannia - so at least you won't have to do that part.

There are a few ways you can go about spawning NPCs though. The first method isn't really "spawning" NPCs, but still something you can use, especially for the vendors and shopkeepers. Just add them from the 'ADD menu. They'll be invulnerable, so generally you'll only have to spawn them one time.

The second method is adding a spawner-object from the ADD-menu (GM-section-> Spawners I think). Place those on the ground, and they should start spawning the predefined NPCs. You can also create your own custom spawner-objects like this ingame, check out section 2.06 of my UOX3 Guide.

The third method, which is probably most useful for spawning monsters and creatures in forests etc, is by using Regional Spawners. In UOX3\DFNDATA\SPAWN\SPAWN.DFN you'll find a commented out example of a regional spawner. Fairly straight forward to use; Use either ITEM=, NPC=, ITEMLIST= or NPCLIST= to specify which NPC/Item you wish to spawn in that spawnregion. Use NPCLIST= and a section id taken from UOX3\DFNDATA\NPC\NPCLISTS.DFN to spawn multiple types of creatures at the same time in a single spawn region.

You might have to restart your server before any changes you do to spawn.dfn go into effect.

[Grimson]

The third method, which is probably most useful for spawning monsters and creatures in forests etc, is by using Regional Spawners. In UOX3\DFNDATA\SPAWN\SPAWN.DFN you'll find a commented out example of a regional spawner. Fairly straight forward to use; Use either ITEM=, NPC=, ITEMLIST= or NPCLIST= to specify which NPC/Item you wish to spawn in that spawnregion. Use NPCLIST= and a section id taken from UOX3\DFNDATA\NPC\NPCLISTS.DFN to spawn multiple types of creatures at the same time in a single spawn region.

Is there somewhere a nice map or an overwview with contains the coordinates of the different regions (like Brittania is from x,y to u,v)?

[Xuri]

Hm. I actually have a program called "UOX3 Region Display" on my computer(made by Abaddon I think), though it's written for an older version of UOX3 and thus doesn't work for the current UOX3 versions.

What it does, is display the entire world map, and then overlays it with blue and red squares showing guarded and unguarded regions, as well as details concerning each region when you hover over it with your mouse.

I'll try to fix it up though so it's useable with our current UOX3 version.

[Xuri]

Well I seem to have gotten it to work, more or less - now I'll just try to enhance it a bit before I put it up for download. First thing I noticed after getting it to display the regions is that some of the regions are way out of whack, and needs to be fixed - so I'll do that too I guess =)

For instance, the Delucia region (in the Lost Lands) covers the GRAVEYARD but not the actual town of Delucia itself Someone has obviously just gazed quickly over the map in InsideUO or something and made a region for what they thought was Delucia.

And the Yew region has some numbers reversed (Second X & Y coordinate set), and there are more errors as well.

[Xuri]

I also found another program lurking in the depths of my UOX utils folder; Ghostlord's Spawnregion Editor. Allows you to create spawnregions on an overhead map of Britannia, and will display those spawnregions on the map as well. Nifty, but written for older version of UOX3 (again), so the spawn.scp file it saves in the end needs to be manually updated to the newer spawn.dfn format... some tagnames have changed, and in the new format there's = between the tags and their values, while in the older version there's only a space.

I don't have the source for this one, unfortunately, so can't fix it for newer UOX3 versions. Anyway here it is, if you want to try it.

EDIT: OOooo! I need to make a catalog of every tool on my harddrive, or something. I just found a working Spawnregion-Editor for the newer UOX3 versions! =) Download here! Using this one seems very easy, and makes it extremely easy to create new spawn regions.

EDIT 2: Note that the Spawnregion-Editor requires a bitmap image (a .bmp file) of the UO world to display the map. An easy way to get one is by using InsideUO. Go to the map-display part, right click on the map and select 'save'. Then choose to save the Full map (with or without patched/altitude data, up to you). Save it as map1-1.bmp in the Spawnregion-Editor folder. Alternatively, download a zipped version of a map1-1.bmp here (7.0mb!)

[Grimson]

I have choosen another path .

I took the spawn.scp from the Ripper's World (available at the Lonewolf site) and converted it by hand into a spawn.dfn. It seems to work together with the UOX default worldfile, at least a little bit .

You can get it at: http://home.arcor.de/matthias.nies/binary/dfndata.zip

Give it a try, and if you find some bugs or have anything else to say about it please post it here.

One problem I found, although the firegargoyle is defined in the gargoyles.dfn, uox complains that it doesn't exist. Adding it to the spawntags.dfn didn't help eighter.

Edit:
I just tried mspawnf_v1_2, but I don't seem to get it working. It needs a bitmap, which I don't have. I tried the Bitmap UOAM created for felucca (I had to rename it) but it didn't fit the spawnlocations in my spawn.dfn. But they do fit in game, as far as I can tell.

[Xuri]

Nice work, Grimson! *downloading dfndata.zip*

Oops! Found the bug with gargoyles. Notice that there are ending brackets for most of the npc sections in gargoyles.dfn, but there are no start brackets! Add { under the section headers for all the npc sections, and it should work fine (I hope).

[Grimson]

Oops! Found the bug with gargoyles. Notice that there are ending brackets for most of the npc sections in gargoyles.dfn, but there are no start brackets! Add { under the section headers for all the npc sections, and it should work fine (I hope).

Yeah, it seems to work now, at least uox doesn't complain anymore . So, you can change the NPCs in spawnregion 408 and 425 back to firegargoyles.

[Xuri]

By using InsideUO you can easily generate a map that works with the Spawnregion-Editor. I did that just now, and it seems to display the spawnregions in the proper locations

Btw, what changes did you do to npclists.dfn and reptiles.dfn?

[Grimson]

By using [URL=http://uo.stratics.com/heptazane/index.shtml]InsideUO[URL] you can easily generate a map that works with the Spawnregion-Editor. I did that just now, and it seems to display the spawnregions in the proper locations

Thanks, seems to work now.

Btw, what changes did you do to npclists.dfn and reptiles.dfn?

In npclists.dfn I added:

Code: Select all

[NPCLIST insects]
{
giantspider
frostspider
dreadspider
scorpion
}

[NPCLIST flails]
{
reaper
corpser
swamptentacle
}

And renamed giantscorpion into scorpion as uox couldn't find a giantscorpion.

In reptiles.dfn I corrected the spelling of [icesnake] it was written as [icenake] .

[Xuri]

Alrighty =) I've added your changes to the default UOX3 scripts (with credits), so they'll be included in the next UOX3 update. The question now is whether or not to include spawn.dfn in the default distribution, or let it be an optional download (like the default UOX3 worldfiles already up for download).

[Grimson]

Alrighty =) I've added your changes to the default UOX3 scripts (with credits), so they'll be included in the next UOX3 update. The question now is whether or not to include spawn.dfn in the default distribution, or let it be an optional download (like the default UOX3 worldfiles already up for download).

Hmmm, I would put it together with the default worldfiles. Seems more logical to me.

Btw. when will normal players be able to move and pickup items?

[Xuri]

Doh. Yeah that kinda makes sense =) Why didn't I think on that? ;P

Normal players will be able to move and pickup items the next time the UOX3 cvs is updated. *nudges giwo with his elbow*

[Grimson]

I have uploaded an updated version of the dfndata.zip, in the first one item spawns weren't working. Now there should be quite some regs out there .

Edit: After running a bit around on the in various locations I would advice to everyone to have a close look at the npclists.dfn and adjust the different lists to his personal favor. Because lists like the forestlist currently contain many NPCs that don't belong into a forest .

[Xuri]

Again, nice work =) But I notice that the new spawn.dfn has no names for each spawnregion, was that intentional?

For instance, previously one of the regions looked like this:

Code: Select all

[REGIONSPAWN 517]
{ // Arctic Island regs
etc.

Now the same region looks like this:

Code: Select all

[REGIONSPAWN 517]
{
NAME=new create
etc.

Also, there are three commented out sections at the start of the file instead of one =)

[Grimson]

Again, nice work =) But I notice that the new spawn.dfn has no names for each spawnregion, was that intentional?

Also, there are three commented out sections at the start of the file instead of one =)

Well, this time I used mspawnf_v1_2 to edit the file instead of doing it by hand. So, no it wasn't intentional. I'll do another batch of handwork and move the names into the "name=" tag, so the tool won't erase them anymore. But this will take some time .

[Xuri]

Hehe alrighty Sounds good.

[Grimson]

Hehe alrighty Sounds good.

I'll also add some non-vendor NPC spawns and domestic animal spawns to the towns so they don't look so lifeless. Let's see how much UOX can take .

[Xuri]

*grin*

I once spawned over 27 000 characters and 327 000 items in UOX3 - without using any spawners. Worldfiles were 300mb total Took forever to save hehe..

But with your spawn.dfn file right now, as well as the default worldfiles there seems to be a little over 3500 characters and 46000 items on my shard - and that takes 5.3 seconds to save on my computer.

Now, if I increase the MAXAMOUNT= tags of the spawns by double in many cases (and probably double of double in some places) - and now have 8918 characters and 71152 items in my world, the worldsave takes 5.3 seconds still. And will take 5.3 seconds still if I increase that by double again. And again.

EDIT:
Latest test numbers:
Characters: 42 637 (fourty two thousand)
Items: 1 199 936 (one million two hundred thousand)
Savetime: 6.36 seconds
Ramusage: 305mb