New mapper ideas

[Arus]

I am thinking of writing a Mudlet mapper that uses all of the information available from COORD1-25 (exits, terrain, mobs, player characters). Eventually I want to track the movement of MOBs in the neighborhood and match them to POPPERS in EQList database. But in order to do that first I need AREA_VNUM in REPORTED_VARIABLES and MOB_VNUM replacing MOB in COORD1-25. Thanks

What's the deal with ROOM_RNUM being always lower than ROOM_VNUM by 22856? As far as I understand, ROOM_RNUM starts with AREA_INFO like 113 "Newbatia"+44 "South Gate". But why do we need ROOM_VNUM? Why do you have two room identifiers?

Akaya, where are you? Have you stopped developing for SlothMUD?

[*teker*]

I can't speak as to the (MSDP?) variables you mentioned, but I can describe how RNUMs and VNUMs work in the game.

Builders are given a range of VNUMs for building their rooms/mobiles/objects. It's a unique value that never changes once it's assigned unless the room/mob/obj is deleted. The VNUMs are assigned in contiguous blocks for zones and usually gaps are left between zones for later additions.

The RNUM refers to where the room/mobile/object is stored in memory. It would be a waste of memory to allocate space for VNUMs that do not exist, so the game skips these. The RNUMs can and do change when new rooms/mobs/objs are added to the game because the RNUM lists are stored in VNUM order. So if I create a new room with VNUM 45000, the RNUM for all rooms with VNUM > 45000 will increase by 1.

So you really want to save VNUMs on anything that persists long-term.

[Arus]

Okay, but why did COORD1-25 report ROOM_RNUM not ROOM_VNUM? Bring them back please.

[Arus]

Why does msdp.ROOM_VNUM report two events during movement?
First it reports RNUM and only then it reports correct VNUM.
If RNUMs are not permanent, then why does COORD1 report RNUM in Room?
I could use ROOM_EXITS for adjacent room VNUMs, but its being reported every second while standing to report STATUS...
So I *have* to use COORD1 with its unreliable RNUMs. Please change COORD1 to report VNUMs instead.

[*Splork*]

If RNUMs are not permanent, then why does COORD1 report RNUM in Room?

The original COORD code did use rnums because we used a previously coded function(Map command) for the map coordinates. This code was developed using Rnums because they were never intended to be reported and was done well before MSDP. Later on, I switched this to use vnums. It was during this time that we began experiencing issues with game performance and because this project was experimental, I removed it. At least I thought I had. Apparently, I had somehow left in the COORD Rnum code which you somehow found.

On reboot, the COORD code will use vnums, as it should.

Why does msdp.ROOM_VNUM report two events during movement?

This is also resolved. MSDP is still reporting twice but you will probably not notice it because its just a backup.


Splork

[Arus]

Could you please add AREA_VNUM to COORD1-25 (just for the room not the exits)?
Thank you very much!
This will help tremendously