UO Second Age

Ok so we all notice the difference in monsters following/attacking you now yea?

So here's the problem, and I'm sure this did NOT happen back in the day... or at least something was different.

You are in your house and random spawn has surrounded your home. (Attacking you NOT following you). You get off your horse and not even one second passes before the spawn outside attacks (not follows) your mount. Before you can get back on your mount you need to clear all the spawn outside your home. Argg.

This is worse in dungeons, esp if you use the all follow me bug to refresh your mount stamina... Your going to need to clear an entire section of a dungeon in order to get back on your mount (Or gate your mount out and get back on).

yeah i dont remember anything like this happening at all. my memory may be foggy but it doesnt even make sense that mobs can see/target you through walls.. when did UO get xray vision?

Yup Unreal

This was discussed some here: Subject: Updates For Testing

If anyone has anything to add to the accuracy of this it'd be much appreciated. Possibly a thread in Suggestions & Era Accuracy though as this is not considered a bug, but at this time it's intended and believe accurate behavior.

RoseRIP wrote:You are in your house and random spawn has surrounded your home. (Attacking you NOT following you). You get off your horse and not even one second passes before the spawn outside attacks (not follows) your mount. Before you can get back on your mount you need to clear all the spawn outside your home. Argg.

Actually, I do remember this. It's also a PITA with pets you're controlling inside your house, behind walls. I believe this is accurate.

BUT... each monster has a certain pace at which it attacks. In fact, based on behavior, I think it's a cycle. So for a lich, once every say 4 seconds it will look for a target. If it doesn't find one, it waits 4 seconds, then checks again. If a blue is nearby during the check moment, it gets attacked. Now, some monsters have a much shorter cycle. Balrons and Ancient Wyrms, for example, seem to be on 1-second or less cycles. Again, this is just my interpretation of the behavior I see.

So, if there's just one monster outside your house, and it's a 4-second cycler (like most of them seem to be), you probably have a decent chance of hopping off and hopping back on without being off the horse during one of it's checks. If you have 11 of them, then they all have their own timers, and you probably have no chance of getting off during a "lull" in all of their cycles.

One last thing, which is the code regarding the monsters switching targets. When you get off your horse, you should be on the same tile as it. AFAIK, since you are already being targeted by the monster, it shouldn't switch. It should only switch if your horse is closer to the monster than you are. Otherwise, tie-goes-to-the-already-targeted, as far as I recall.

This is actually pretty much exactly how I remember it. It sucked. Every dungeon was a pack of mobs stuck to a wall following some guy on the other side. Such a pain in the ass.

I'll admit to never riding mounts back in the day due to my 56k dial up that made horses useless to me. So I'm not coming from a place of knowledge on this matter.

Derrick I wish I could tell if that horse was being agro'd in that picture (here http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic. ... 64#p174864), if anything it looks like the Ogre on the front steps is attacking him, but I see no "You see an Ogre attacking a horse" in the bottom corner.

Also, note that the Horses tail is down in mid stride indicating that its in a "walking" and not "running" state.
Here horses enter a running state when in combat and their tail goes about half way up. Now... if the coding in horse animation is at all the same, then I would suggest that that horse in Derricks Chessy picture is Not being attacked. My photo evidence Below.

Can anyone else shed some light on this matter?

Mikel123 wrote:

RoseRIP wrote:You are in your house and random spawn has surrounded your home. (Attacking you NOT following you). You get off your horse and not even one second passes before the spawn outside attacks (not follows) your mount. Before you can get back on your mount you need to clear all the spawn outside your home. Argg.

Actually, I do remember this. It's also a PITA with pets you're controlling inside your house, behind walls. I believe this is accurate.

BUT... each monster has a certain pace at which it attacks. In fact, based on behavior, I think it's a cycle. So for a lich, once every say 4 seconds it will look for a target. If it doesn't find one, it waits 4 seconds, then checks again. If a blue is nearby during the check moment, it gets attacked. Now, some monsters have a much shorter cycle. Balrons and Ancient Wyrms, for example, seem to be on 1-second or less cycles. Again, this is just my interpretation of the behavior I see.

So, if there's just one monster outside your house, and it's a 4-second cycler (like most of them seem to be), you probably have a decent chance of hopping off and hopping back on without being off the horse during one of it's checks. If you have 11 of them, then they all have their own timers, and you probably have no chance of getting off during a "lull" in all of their cycles.

One last thing, which is the code regarding the monsters switching targets. When you get off your horse, you should be on the same tile as it. AFAIK, since you are already being targeted by the monster, it shouldn't switch. It should only switch if your horse is closer to the monster than you are. Otherwise, tie-goes-to-the-already-targeted, as far as I recall.

What you mention about "how fast mobs attack" sounds right. Is this currently implemented?

Low mobs def don't attack as fast as AW and balrons.

It is implemented, as far as targeting players at least. I assume it is for targeting pets too - i.e. they use the same process.

I don't think it was simply a "hard monster/weak monster" thing. I think it was based partly on the dex of the animal too. Drakes and Frenzied Ostards, I think the two highest dex monsters (besides balrons) targeted pretty fast. White Wyrms were lightning fast. Dire Wolves were lightning fast too. If you saw them onscreen, they were already heading towards you, because they were so "aggressive" in supposed temperment.

NPC's are not suppose to be running Rose and it's not era accurate currently.

Monsters attacked pets. They especially liked packies! (Packies were always running off to fight some mob, and had to be called back repeatedly to get them to follow.)

Can't say for sure if I remember having my mount attacked through the walls in a house, or if I'm imagining it, but I think that too is accurate. (When dismounted, of course.)

Rose, as Faust said, monsters/animals should not run on UOSA, they never did on OSI. The only time you could get them to run was with particular monsters in particular situations, like when they were trying to flee (a harpy or dragon would start flying - run animation). Is this (targetting through walls) not checkable in the demo?

Speaking of this, I do remember an OSI accurate "bug". If you dismounted your horse, or stood on the same tile as a tame, monsters would never target you first. They would always target the horse/tame. This was useful for some things. Does anyone else remember this? Is it the same here?

That was a UO:R thing though and I do know that monster AI was recoded when UO:R was released so perhaps it is not era-accurate to T2A. I also believe if this (targetting through walls) is era accurate, it was changed with the UO:R patch - hence why most of us wouldn't remember it.

I've updated test center again, specifically dealing with NPC/Monster aggression, fatigue, and auto-defend. I don't have it in me to publish a synopsis tonight though. Will post in morning.