Ranger Archive

• Tracking can NOT find what the server has not spawned yet. This means that you need to have been in the area long enough for a critter to spawn. Ex. You can not fly into an area on a speeder and jump off and track. The server takes a moment to recognize that you are there and will then spawn accordingly


• Tracking can NOT force anything to spawn. Rangers can not make a critter appear out of thin air. We hope to have a /track command implemented that will grant us this ability (in a limited fashion).


• A typical tracking routine is to set up a grid of waypionts and to serach at regular intervals based on that grid. Remember to wait a few seconds to track when you enter a new area, to allow the server to catch up with you. Other methods include having a group of people roaming around inside an area (this is generally called 'stirring up spawns') while the Ranger tracks within that area.


• The radius of tracking is 500m which means we can track anything that is within 500m of us, that has spawned.


• What does tracking look like to a Ranger? Well, when we issue the /areatrack command, we get a window that asks us to choose what we want to track (based on our skills); Animal, NPC, or PC. We select what we want to track and there is an animation. We then get a list of results, or a message saying there is nothing to track in the area. The list or results consists of a the MOB type; displayed as the full critter name including the baby tag if it is one, or the NPC name incliding it's type [such as Ophelia (a Nightsister Ranger)], or a Player's name (no title or faction affiliation is displayed) and a direction and distance, if we have the appropriateskill boxes trained. There is no waypoint to the target, so multiple tracks may be necessary.

Bugs:

• There seems to be a 'hole' in traking that occurs around 100m from you. Often you can not track critters that are at this distance from you, even though you can see them.


• Another bug is the terrain bug. Often, you can not track a critter that is above or below the elevation you are at. I would actually rate this bug as a 'rare occurrence.' Others see it as more common than I do.


• To reiterate, if the server hasn't spawned something, you can't track it (ok, nota bug, but a very important thing to mention). Almost every Ranger has been in the following situation:




• Ranger: Nope, I didn't track anyhting


• Peep: I am looking right at one!!!

Please feel free to add any comments you wish, and i will keep this post updated, as I am sure I missed something.

Message Edited by Calculus_Entropy on 10-12-2004 04:03 PM

Another method of tracking is to run the route to and from popular POI. Since there is a limit to the number of items that can exist on a planet at any given time, coupled with the fact most spawn is generated by the presence of PCs, it follows that major traffic areas (say to and from the tusken fort) between cities and POI are very good ways to find spawn -- it is also the best way to "wean the population" of unwanted spawn so that others may generate.


Dran Eico

Also note that the maximum number of results you can get back from /areatrack is 50 (I believe) and this can have an effect on your range especially in cities. if the farthest track result you get is 500m or so away, you prolly didn't miss anything. But if 100m is the farthest thing that shows up in /areatrack, it's because you are in a dense area and will need to use the skill more often.

Also, calc you should check your first line for typeos.

Message Edited by Eklectrick on 08-05-2004 11:08 AM

Vertical Terrain (ie: mountainous) is calculated as horizontal terrain, therefore, your tracking range is somewhat lessened.

In other words, the 500 meters is not as the crow flies, but a ground length.

funny thing, is that i got it
ive only noticed that tracking range seems to shorten while on the mountains.

of course i could be wrong, ive been wrong before hehe

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AgonThalia wrote:
Vertical Terrain (ie: mountainous) is calculated as horizontal terrain, therefore, your tracking range is somewhat lessened.

In other words, the 500 meters is not as the crow flies, but a ground length.

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Hmm, implementing a distance metric that measures the distance "along the terrain surface" would be hellishly difficult and/or slow. Knowing that the SOE devs are not known to go out of their way to create difficulties for themselves, I will go out a limb and say that the distace is more likely to be calculated using the classical distance metric in euclidian spaces:

d=sqrt((x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2+(z2-z1)^2) where (x1,y1,z1) are your coordinates in the 3d game coordinate system and (x2,y2,z2) are that of the tracked mob.

This would shorten the effective tracking range where you and the mob are at different altitudes. For example, lets say your tracking range is 450m. If you are at 0,0 and the mob at 0,400 at the same altitude (z1=Z2), then the mod would be tracked. If the mob is 300m higher then you, the straight line distance would calculate as 500m and the mob would be beyond the detection range.

As for the detection hole around 100m, this may be an artifact of the way the data strucures are managed as the player moves around. We know that because of efficiency reasons, only mobs closest to the player are fully realized, eg the AI starts to function at 64m unless something triggers it, lairs and mobs tends to reset beyond 128m, etc. Tracking is one of the few (maybe only) instances where the player interacts with mobs beyond the 128m radius. My guess would be that the tracking code actually has two different subroutines for near and far mobs and sometimes a mob falls between the cracks.

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jedichuck wrote:

What about the "ghost" spawn tracking problem? Very very very often on tracking you see a particular spawn (most usually one you happen to be looking for) and it shows at say 150m NW. WITHOUT moving the slightest bit you /areatrack again and you don't see the spawn any longer. It's there one second and not the next. I don't consider this the same "detection" problem you describe because even if you go 150m NW and look or track again the spawn is still NOT there. No matter how many times you track or how many circles you drive in that area nothing ever spawns even though you did see it on tracking that one time. (and no, it's NOT because someone killed it and left. there are never any corpses nor any players around, just nothing at all like the spawn never existed.)

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OK, one more SWAG:

The spawn are despawned, probably as part of a server load compensation, e.g. someone forces creation of a mission lair elsewhere on the server, and the load manager poofs one of the lairs in an "empty" area to keep resource usage below certain limits. When you track just after this event, of course, you don't find the lair.

I have seen this happen to individual mobs and lairs. For example, I might be working a lair, with some other lairs in the vicinity. Usually, they stay where they are, and I can see the same lair and mobs appear and disappear in my radar over and over again as I move in and out of detection range. Then, poof, one of them disappears while out of range and doesn't appear again.