Necro Pets

[Jakkal]

Okay, I found a screenshot: https://telonite.files.wordpress.com/20 ... _00003.jpg

The pet ability bar is the one with the pawprint. The screenshot above with the "Abomination" on it with the sword icon and the other colored icons, that's the minion bar. Pets also got the minion bar which shows up on that screenshot in the top left. But I know the minions ONLY got the minion bar.

[OncaLupe]

Yup, minions were the throwaway cannon fodder. They had low HP and you basically had the choice of setting them 'aggressive', 'defensive', or 'do nothing'. Necros could summon up to like 3 or 4 at level 55. Rangers could choose their minion when they got the ability at like level 12, and change it in a mini quest, but they all acted the same. Druids could summon 2-3 elemental minions of a few types, but those only lasted 1-2 minutes.

Pets were nameable and had toggleable abilities with more HP. Necros could enhance their Abom pet with grafts that gave stat boosts or new abilities. Druids could get a pet at max level, possible due to epics? Not sure as I never got it on mine. DK got a pet at level 50 and Rangers could summon a pet version of their minion if they had both epics equipped. However the DK/Ranger pets were prone to bugging out.

[zippyzee]

Was a little slammed at the office this week (good for my future, not necessarily for coding) so had just a little time to play with this.

I now have the pet following me around like it should. I can tell it to attack something. It will. When it has killed it, it returns to me.

For the general public, this means that we now have a system to a) spawn npcs at will, b) assign them as pets (and minions, down the road), and c) set npcs to 'follow' other npcs or characters at will. For necros we now have some limited pet capabilities for combat purposes.

For content designers, start keeping those things in mind. There are npcs that have associated "pets", perhaps just in the sense of other spawns like dogs or whatever that follow them around. I will soon have a Lua function for you to assign an npc to follow another npc. It will still react to combat, etc. as normal, but when idling it will follow its master whenever it moves around. Also, there are quests where you are going to need to spawn other things. I have a few that I want to implement very soon in Isle of Dawn. These tools should be ready soon.

I will probably start some other threads on pets for the more detailed parts involved in coding and scripting, but wanted to share some of this in this thread to update the progress.

[Moldew]

This apply to does/fawns? What if one kills the doe, does the fawn remain?

[Jakkal]

Fawns had social. So if you fight the doe, the fawn will attack you. Though if you kill the doe in one shot, I think it just stood there awkwardly.

[zippyzee]

And...pretty soon we need to add social. And then start turning on all the aggro. And adjusting npc stats. This game needs an enema...

What is with does/fawns? Not sure I've heard it put like that before.

[Jakkal]

We used them as an example of followers from earlier. They're the ones that wander around Tursh. The fawns wander and the does follow. We were asking about how to set it up, which we couldn't do.

[Moldew]

Got it! Social's going to be fun! Let's be social...

[zippyzee]

[quote="Jakkal"]We used them as an example of followers from earlier. They're the ones that wander around Tursh. The fawns wander and the does follow. We were asking about how to set it up, which we couldn't do.[/quote]

Haha I love it when I'm working on something just for my own selfish reasons and it turns out to be useful to everyone. I really just wanted my pet back. I missed him.

Note that following is now an npc state, such as roaming, leashing, in-combat, idling, etc. It's as simple as npc->SetIsFollowing(true) and npc->SetFollowingTarget(target_spawn) in the code. I will make Lua commands to accomplish those, and they can go right in the Spawn scripts if you want. After that they will act the same as any other npc but keep trying to follow their target. I still have to program their behavior when their following target disappears through death or despawning or their character owner zones or logs out.

I will try to get some of this up by next week for your scripting pleasure and preliminary testing.

[Moldew]

I enjoyed the DK pet - had his own stances and abilities. I never understood the purpose of minions though - seems more like a vanity pet. Something I'm missing about minions? Did they boost stats or something?