Droid Engineer Archive

Hmm... he sounds a bit irritated. The DE forum has rather ignored the specifics that were posted, and focused on hurt feelings about the weakoverall content andlikely nerf that Publish 7 has turned out to be. Apparently, everyone was supposed to be very excited by the 5 fixes and 4 modules that were identified for Pub 8. Actually there is, for me, one big item: the "Merchant Barker module." This is finally an implementation of something that appeared in the original documentation at release, though subsequently withdrawn, whose absence left a huge hole in the Merchant Profession.

I am concerned, though, that the actual delivery will prove useless. The description only says:"This would give droids the ability to bark advertisements, give waypoints to shops, have additional information available so players could list prices, services, etc through a radial menu command."

Now, to be of real value to a merchant, the droid would have to persist in a city, and continue barking, for some significant amount of time (as long as the batteries lasted?) when the merchant wasn't there. For best value, this would mean after the Merchant logged out, but at least it has to persist after leaving town on a shuttle. I seem to have had mixed results with this when using my "marching moron" droid that had an ad in its name, it certainly didn't last long after I logged.

Also, for reasonable coverage, the droid should be able to patrol over a good distance and still have the new radial features functional. The potential customer should not have to keep within a short range to keep a dialog window open that would deliver the optional information. The droid will continue on its way, and I don't want the customer to have to chase it. Ticket terminal windows stay open even after a shuttle ride, so this should not be impossible to implement.

It would be really great if the listing of prices were drawn from the actual vendor in real time. I would hate to see many of these droids with bait-and-switch ads, or worse yet pointing to empty vendors. That would soon make them almost useless as customers could not depend on the accuracy of their information.

Related to this is the persistance and ease of entry of the information delivered. If it took me too long to program one to start barking, I would tend not to use it. Either the contents has to persist in the droid between stores and logoffs (like commands), or has to be programmable via command lines so I can make a macro. The big thing that kept me from using the marching moron more (besides the limited ad space), was the time required to program a reasonable patrol pattern for it.

I think, too, it is important that the droid give real waypoints, not just text that the user has to convert to one. I have done it myself, and don't want a customer's typo to make him think the shop was gone when he arrived. The waypoint should also be named.

This module should be usable in many kinds of droids, a BLL would be a good platform in town since it is visible and easy to click on, but a Protocol Droid would be more sophisticated looking. It would seem really strange on an R2 or other beeping droid, since that would suddenly become a talking droid.

There isn't any mention of a cert for this droid (as there was on the entertainer droid). Since this had been the primary content of the Ad 4 box in merchant, which is now effectively empty, that would be the appropriate placement. I suspect, however, that the devs are going to make this a feature available to anyone who owns one. Poor Merchants!

All my BLLs lasted till server reset at 4:45 in the morning, following the same patrol routes.

But aye, this seems to be the only module of any real value in the upcoming stuff. And even then it doesn't really benefit anyone in any tangible way (none of the modules do). I'm telling everyone, the way it stands now is publish 8 is coming out the way they said now (and even then some of it sounds 'MAYBE"ish) so either be prepared to be disappointed or be prepared to get ready and do something soon.

Hum,
scout trapping module require novice scout,
scout harvesting module require novice scout,
medical module require novice medic,
detonation module require novice smuggler or bh,
crafting station require the relevant crafting skills,
stimpack dispencer require pharma 4 to fill in,
...

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Kaque wrote:

Does anybody know at what range the droid will recall itself. I noticed that if I leave a barking droid on Theed and travel to my house about 1k away that the droid will be back in my data pad by the time I get back. What's the use of using it if you can't go off and do other things?

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It isn't intended to do that... doesn't sotp them from autostoring, but it's not like the devs intend for the thing to poof like that. It's a bug that affects all pets, droids and creatures alike.

I've heard grouping with the droid helps, and setting it to patrol. Just tell the droid to stay, THEN start adding patrol points... you can add from 50m away from the droid, and if the droid moves it doesn't usually register the points. Or something like that. It definately works if the droid isn't moving, tho.

Anyone know if you can get these programed for your own use if you do not have advestising 4?

Thanks!

I just dropped advertising 4, still have advertising 3.

My droid doesn't bark anymore.
But people still can get the waypoint.