Deprecated Darkstar fourms

Hey again everyone,

Now that I have my server up and functional again, I have decided to start working on quests, missions and various cut scenes that are bugged and/or not working properly or at all. Now I am just starting to learn how to do this and have been doing quite a bit of reading through the how to script a quest/mission tutorials and must say they are quite in depth and well written. That being said I have a few questions that I was hoping someone may be able to at least point me in the right direction to start and I will figure it out from there.

1. I guess this being the most important, when I update the .lua script for a specific NPC, does the script reflect real time changes or do I have to reload/recompile the server to test them?

2. When I manage to get a quest/mission/cut scene working correctly, how to I submit it to the developers to be included in the project changes?

3. The first project I have tasked myself with is fixing the opening cut scenes for the various areas when creating a new character. Particularly the opening dialog cut scene for Windurts Woods zone. That particular cut scene locks up once the NPC Nanaa Mihgo enters the second line of her dialog and her visual presence is missing from the scene itself. I have cross referenced the script with some of the other area openings and haven't found anything amiss. I have come down to 2 possible conclusions that I can think of. First is that the CS ID in the Zone.lua is an incorrect value. I haven't run through all possible cut scene identifiers as that is going to take me some time, but I am speculating that the CS ID being used is some form of producer ID. Second thought is, that somewhere that I haven't managed to uncover yet, is the code that specifically pieces that particular cut scene together. I am confident that if someone could take the time to point me to the correct file I will be able to resolve the issue and once done, after a few quests/missions/cut scenes, I could begin coding them out at a fairly high rate of speed and accuracy.

Now I am surely not as adept at coding as the fine developers that we have here, but I figured while you all are hard at work coding skills, spells, core workings etc. I can manage to get a good head start on these and leave the heavy coding in your expert hands. Just want to do something more to help out and I figured this would be the best possible option given my being a novice to programming. Thanks again for all the hard work and hope that I will be of more help to the project in the future.

1. You should not have to recompile the server to test changes made to Npc scripts.

2. You should submit a pull request to the project on Github after testing your changes locally. Whoever gets to it first will typically review it and add comments for you to go back and make changes or improvements if required, or merge the pull request if everything is all set.

3. Event Ids never change so it is not likely the wrong one. I can easily dump all of the events for that zone for you if you need them. However, the fact that that Npc is missing from the event should be your first indication -- if an entity is missing from the event, then the event will typically (but not always) lock. If that is the case, then the information for that Npc needs to be parsed from incoming 0x00E packets from retail and added to the npc_list. It isn't the server that pieces the event together, it's the client.

Let me know if you need any more information on and related to events.

Thank you for the reply Deviltti,

So basically from what you are saying is that the information has yet to be pulled out from retail packets and implemented into the npc_list for that specific npc, if I am understanding correctly. That would make sense since the rest of her cutscenes, last I checked, where missing her character model as well. If it wouldn't take up to much of your time, may I ask, how would I go about parsing the incoming packets from 0x00E to add into the npc_list? If you could gimme a rundown I will do all the work needed, just need the process on how to do it is all. Thanks again for answering my questions it helps a lot in expanding my programming knowledge.