Content:Content Designer

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Content - Content Designer

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A content designer's task involve spawning signs, objects, widgets, ground spawns, and NPCs in that order. This is achieved by using a combination of the web database editor, commonly known as DB Editor, and the client itself. Below is information to help turn a unpopulated zone into one filled with everything from harvest nodes to monsters.

1. Signs Signs are usually found on sign posts, hanging over doors, and are the main triggers for zoning in EQ2Emulator (ie., click on a door which is actually a "sign" and you zone to a new location). *Verify Sign text/descriptions are accurate. *Check the sign "type" is set (Generic equals a sign on a wall/post, Zone equals a zone point) *Verify Heading/Location information is set properly *Remove duplicates, or spawn new signs where one may be missing from the collection *If a Zone sign, verify zone_id and destination x,y,z coordinates

2. Objects Objects are things like Statues, Rocks, Fences, generally objects in the zone that are not interacted with. Along with verifying most of the same information as with NPCs regarding placement and appearance: *Verify position, size, heading of all Zone objects *Delete duplicates of static Objects, like tents, sign posts, statues, etc. *When object placement/correction is done, disable name, attack, targeting, level, etc.

3. Widgets Widgets are interactive objects in the world, such as Doors or clickable objects for quests/triggers, etc. The biggest issue with doors is the open/close coordinates are off, or backwards. Due to a math flaw in the parser/population routines, 50% of our doors are wrong and must be fixed. *Verify open and close heading of doors. *Elevators/Lifts are not parsed properly, and must be setup. *Verify coordinates (x,y,z), location and heading settings of all doors/clickables *Build functionality of levers and switches Tutorials coming soon

4. Groundspawns Ground spawns are harvestable items usually picked up by Gathering. These items are made up of things like harvest nodes, ? or shiny, ! or pages, and quest items on the ground. Observe Live - Observe the same area in EQ2Live's version of this zone and identify the Ground Spawn placements *Pop Raw Data and observe areas to clean up *First Node - decide where you want your "main" node to spawn *Combine Nodes - Combine all nodes in the surrounding area to build an estimated spawn percentage value *Remove excess nodes *Offsets - Create valid Offsets for spawn location placements to emulate seemingly random spawn locations *Pop/Depop - Determine depop/repop rates for a node. *Groundspawn Items - Build the Ground Spawn Items lists *Advanced Groundspawns - Advanced Groundspawn "grouping" options

5. NPCs NPCs are the humanoid, interactive spawns in a zone that players communicate, accept quests from, and engage in combat with. *Verify Spawn Locations - spawns are in their proper positions (static spawns, x,y,z,heading) *Verify Spawn Appearances - that their colors/equipment are reasonable to what is in EQ2 Live *Wandering Dupes - starting point and paths, plus remove duplicates *Consolidate Spawns - that have level, size, or appearance differences only (see note) *Linked Spawn Groups - (multi-spawn parties) of 2-6 NPCs and/or Boss encounters *Entity Commands - the right-click menus for each spawn *Special Setups - special Equipment, Skills and Spells so they behave accordingly *Spawn Scripts - Design, develop and assign spawn scripts