So Your Into Corpses Now?

For the past few weeks we have been toiling away the wee hours of the mornings tinkering with corpses. Taken out of context, no doubt this would be a scandalous headline indeed. For the duration of our project thus far corpses have remained an enigma. We thought we might discuss the challenges faced.

Firstly, what is a corpse in Anarchy Online? Although they have a tight coupling with the NPC from which they were generated, they are actually closer to the "chests" you find in missions. In fact, the messages that drive the presence of a corpse are in fact extensions of the same messages that spawn chests, with the addition of a few key attributes like textures and meshes for the body, who the body belongs to, etc.

When attempting to bring to life a feature like corpses (ironic - I know), which are virtually a black box, it can be quite a challenge to identify what is going on under the hood of the client to make it functional and seamless for the player to interact with.

Status - Get On With It!

I know, this is likely what you're thinking:

So what is the status? Will we see those corpses hit the floor spilling their wonderful goods for the people of Rubi-Ka to loot?

Yes! We have most corpses working. In fact, bodies have been hitting the floor in clan backyards all over Rubi-Ka. But, as is often the case, things are not so clean cut. Some NPCs appear to not despawn when the Corpse message is sent to the client. We have yet to identify what is causing this problem. We suspect there is some sort of character flag or animation uniqueness to those mobs that cause the NPC to remain.. and the corpse to not appear.

The other thing yet to be written is the loot table system. We have collected large amounts of loot data and statistics. So we have data to run with, but we will need to wire it all up. But the good news is, the mechanism of looting itself is working. In fact, this was actually quite simple, as it follows a similar message structure as bags and other containers.

So, without further adieu.. the obligatory video that has been on loop in my head through the writing of this post:

Stay tuned!

Sincerely,

Portaler

Developer | Co-Founder