[trevius]

After thinking about it a little more, there would probably have to be a few extra things done to make sure this system was pretty flawless. Most importanly is to make sure that if the NPC is following a running player that it won't poof once the player gets too far away from it's spawn point. So, if IsEngaged, then it negates it from despawning.

Also, we might want to consider adding extra code to make sure that people can't exploit the system by pulling a single mob that is just barely within range to spawn so they can avoid pulling the other spawns that would normally be near it. But, most likely this wouldn't even be a factor if we set the radius range to something like 300+, since I don't think anything can pull from that far anyway.

Here is some unmodified code from the source I found quickly to maybe start looking at to base this code on:

zone/aggro.cpp

//look around a client for things which might aggro the client.
void EntityList::CheckClientAggro(Client *around) {
	_ZP(EntityList_CheckClientAggro);

	LinkedListIterator<Mob*> iterator(mob_list);
	for(iterator.Reset(); iterator.MoreElements(); iterator.Advance()) {
		_ZP(EntityList_CheckClientAggro_Loop);
		Mob* mob = iterator.GetData();
		if(mob->IsClient())	//also ensures that mob != around
			continue;
		
		if(mob->CheckWillAggro(around)) {
			mob->AddToHateList(around);
		}
	}
}


	LinkedListIterator<Mob*> iterator(mob_list);
	for(iterator.Reset(); iterator.MoreElements(); iterator.Advance()) {
		Mob* mob = iterator.GetData();
		if(mob->IsClient())	//also ensures that mob != around
			continue;
		
		if(mob->DistNoRoot(*from_who) > d2)
			continue;
		
		if(engaged) {
			int32 amm = from_who->GetHateAmount(mob);
			if(amm == 0) {
				towho->Message(0, "... %s is not on my hate list.", mob->GetName());
			} else {
				towho->Message(0, "... %s is on my hate list with value %lu", mob->GetName(), amm);
			}
		} else if(!check_npcs && mob->IsNPC()) {
				towho->Message(0, "... %s is an NPC and my npc_aggro is disabled.", mob->GetName());
		} else {
			from_who->DescribeAggro(towho, mob, verbose);
		}
	}
}

Also, another idea that would help bandwidth and could replace this idea would be to just make it so that only mobs withing X radius of a player will send their current position information to them regularly. The entire zone would still be spawned exactly like it is now on the emu, but the client would only get updates from nearby mobs instead of every mob in the zone. It wouldn't really effect server load, but it should definitely help bandwidth and may be a better solution than the one I am suggesting in this thread. But I don't know how possible this second idea would be.

I am trying to figure out why WoW Emulator servers can handle 2000 players with only 1 or 2MBs of upload bandwidth (at least that is what I have heard). If it is true, then there definitely has to be something we can cut down by alot to help reduce bandwidth. And, I am almost positive that WoW doesn't send all spawn information to all players, I think they do a radius type thing like I am suggesting.