Hey everyone, I have been around BYOND off and on since 2002, you would think by now I would have an incredible grasp on DM, right? On the contrary with numerous lapses in my BYONDing of a half year or more at a time, I haven't been diligent enough to build up solid lasting skills. So here I am to gain as much working knowledge as I can for future reference. I have big plans for my project and over the course of the last year or so it has really grown into the bones of a great if not epic (by BYOND standards) representations of a morpg. But as with anything I have reached the limits of my own personal abilities and now I am hoping to tap into the skills of other more experienced coders in order to complete the task at hand.

before we get into the nitty gritty, I just want to politely request that, if you do not absolutely know for a fact that you have a firm grasp on DM and can give me concise help in solving this issue, then please do not post. I would like to make this a productive topic, with great answers and little pointless speculation. Thank you so much in advance,

Now my first question;

For my project I have two social entities, a singular character and a group of characters, I would like these two groups to have the ability to own and control areas of the map, specifically in project buildings and be able to drop items within them. I need a way to not only save the owners but the objects automatically so that it does not require a manual save prior to a shutdown. so far the libraries I have looked into do not adequately take care of my problems that is why I turned to the forums yet again.

boiled down I need:

Create purchasable buildings within my project;
-I would like these buildings to be corporately owned or privately owned,

-I would like this system to be universal, meaning one small block of code can be implemented over the 70-90 buildings that will have the ability to be purchased,

-I would like the objects dropped within it as well as the owner list to be saved and recovered automatically without a manual command by the host.

Question two;

Instead of manually placing npcs and monsters on the map, as is so predictable and bland, I would like to have a unique spawner system that handles any kind of object and or mob placement within a certain radius. I want this system to be accessable in project, and I would like these spawners to be visible only to those with controlling access. These spawners could drop a given group of creatureson a varying timer, within a varying radius of the spawner location I would love for there to be a spawn probability so that certain creatures would be created more often than others, also I would like to have the spawners placed into groups so that they can be universally altered at once to crank out any foe, for an event or a special holiday item drop.

boiled down I need;

- A system that can handle non-aggressive shopkeeping npcs, attackable townspeople, aggressive monsters, town guards and objects,

-I would like these spawners to be placeable in project, alterable and viewable only by those with access, i e limited visability.

-I want to also implement a way to universally alter similar groups of spawners (as I will implement weak monster spawns npc spawns etc with a group number variable) so that they can be manipulated to drop specific items or spawn specific monsters at runtime without a recompilation of the code, and perhaps a default value stored that can be restored once the event etc is completed

- I would like a way to set the probability of a specific creature or item to spawn.

- I would like a spawner to handle multiple objects and or mobs

- I would like the spawner to place objects or mobs within a set radius of the spawner that can be altered.

in conclusion I want a flexible universal spawning system that has a default value and layout coded and compiled into the project that can be altered effectively, efficiently and practically while the project is running.

My third and final question,

for confrontations I have a very in depth system for calculating damage, chances to hit speed etc, based on both skills and equipment. This is wonderful, but the implementation of it is weak. Instead of having a button mashing fest (although that would do no good considering the speed limitations), I would like to have a toggle that sets the player in either attack/war mode or peace/non-aggresive mode. If in war mode, the player will attack his/her target if the enemy comes within range and will continue to attack after their attack delay elapses until their death, their enemies death, or their cessation of hostilities by toggling the switch again or clearing their target.

boiled down I need;

-a flexible universal target system that will handle melee combat (certain melee weapons will have a range of 2), ranged combat using archery be it with bows spears darts or what have you, and or the casting of spells with magery.

-with the magic system I would like the user to have to cast the spell but with ranged and melee I would like it to be an automatic check and attack.

-this is where I need help with proper procs and ways to call them.



Thank you for taking to time to read my post and I hope that with your help we can come up with a decent viable and effective approach for handling this.


-Richard S.