Where to get help?

[Xenithar]

Alright I have had my own private server up for a few days now and love playing 1.12.1 again, but I have run into numerous problems, such as herbs growing in the wrong places, spells doing the wrong effects, and even areas showing up as contested instead of one team or the other. Going through the database has not helped me figure this out. Where can I go to get help with these bugs? I posted one question here but got no responses in over a week, so I am assuming that nobody has an answer here.

[Unkle Nuke]

Maybe the team that has formed to develop MaNGOS for 1.12.x will be more forthcoming with the answers you seek.

You can find their home page here... MaNGOS Zero Project

Honestly, I have no idea why you've waited so long on an answer. It may be the holiday season has absented a great many that would otherwise help.

As for your database issue, that would be best answered by the developers of your DB. MaNGOS primarily concerns itself with the core, although several of the various database developers also haunt these halls, contributing patches to the core for DB functionality. The Zero Project is an all-in-one team that works on the core, scripting, and database together.

MaNGOS, on the other hand, has independent, but affiliated projects, for scripting and database. You may also find answers at one of these database groups:

UDB is the oldest, but their forums tend to be rather quiet. This is in part due to the many hosting issues they've had, keeping people guessing when the site is online or not, but the devs work strongly in the background with regular commits to their subversion repository.

YTDB has risen in popularity lately, and also has a dedicated team with a very active community. The problem is the language barrier. Although they do have an English language sub-forum, their site is primarily in Russian and online translation tools are sketchy, at best. Once you've managed to puzzle your way past the registration page, Google Translate does do a decent enough job that you can grasp the meaning of what is being discussed.

Project Silvermoon used to be another popular alternative, but I am unsure of their status. They have had problems with maintaining a stable roster in their dev team and project leadership. I am also unsure if they still support MaNGOS.

There are a few others, but those have, historically, been the Big Three for MaNGOS database development.

[Patman128]

You can find their home page here... MaNGOS Zero Project

That site has been largely deserted. It was even down for a long time but seems to be back on now.

If you want help with mangos zero you're probably better just asking here. You can find the repos at github: https://github.com/mangos-zero/ Maybe you are using the wrong DB?

[Unkle Nuke]

@Xenithar:

Another possibility is you may have installed updates in the wrong order or incorrect database sections. It's easy to do when there are a lot of updates to be applied.

Keep in mind that you do not need the world SQL ( mangos.sql ) provided with MaNGOS if you're using a pre-packaged DB, such as UDB or YTDB. Always use the SQLs from the project for which you are creating or updating a database section. This ensures you have the most current table structure and data. The SQLs for realmd and characters should be the only ones you'll need from MaNGOS itself, aside from the create_mysql.sql for generating the templates for the database sections.

I usually break the create_mysql.sql up into separate statements for world, characters, and realm so I can instead use the create SQLs from my database provider, if needed. It's also helpful in the event I need to drop a database and start over with a re-install without wiping my other sections, like realmd or characters.

Sometimes it is better to start over with a fresh world database release, that has many of the updates you would otherwise need to apply already added. When you have an older world database and must apply a long list of updates, it does increase the odds of making a mistake like skipping an update.

One other thing... Backup, backup, and backup again! Once you have things stable and set up to your liking, make a daily backup of characters and a weekly full backup the entire database. Make a backup of realmd only as needed, when accounts are created or deleted. This will allow you to easily recover from corrupted tables, bad updates, and a host of other troubles that can afflict you. The longer you run a server, it becomes a matter of not "if" but "when" a catastrophe hits that hoses your database beyond hope of repair.

MySQL has free tools that allow you to make manual and automatic, scheduled backups. They are available as separate downloads at their website.

@Patman:

I did not know the Zero Project's site had died off so quickly. It reinforces the suggestion that, perhaps, Zero and One ought to have their own sub-forums here.

[Xenithar]

I'm not worried about backups. You see, in the real world I am an IT lead and have multiple clients with AD setups or Linux networks. I have also been programming since I was six (started on an Atari400 using a cassette drive) and don't have much problem with updating and such. I'm am a genuine computer geek!

With that said, I am on a fresh install. I installed the database provided with the zero project. Upon installation I only had to apply the last two patches in the updates section. My server is online and working (online meaning LAN, I do not host publicly), but I have several issues. Issues like WAY too many herbs and mining locations, rockbiter cuasing flametongue damage, flametongue causing the casting animation instead of allowing me to mace NPCs in their faces, and NPCs dropping through objects or floating through the air even with vmaps enabled. Just minor things that destroy the illusion of a perfect 1.12 world!

I am open to suggestions however, and have some changes that I want to make on my server as well, such as turning off shrinking pets and allowing pets to deal special damage as it was prior to 1.09 (ie: Lupos used to deal shadow damage even when tamed). I am patient though, and can work through things one problem at a time, and my first goal is to get the genuine deal-killers fixed first.

[Unkle Nuke]

You may have to get your hands dirty and dig around in the SQL code of the database to make your own fixes, if some problems are caused by developer errors or unimplemented features.

It does seem odd that you'd have so many huge bugs, but things like incorrect gathering node placement are typically due to developer errors. They may have used incorrect values when generating the SQL data from the DBC files. I was under the impression that MaNGOS-Zero was by far more polished and closer to retail play and content than any other version of MaNGOS. Perhaps the quality has eroded over time in the same fashion that the Zero Project site has crumbled?

I'm not sure if you can add customizations like the one you proposed into the server, since restoring features from a previous client version would mean using that client's DBC files (which won't work with a newer client) or editing the DBC files of your current client. Unfortunately, editing client files is considered illegal in many jurisdictions, which makes it a forbidden subject in these forums.

My first brush with hardware resembling a home computer was the old Commodore PET. Later, I bought my very first computer, a C-64. I had done fairly well with learning 6502 assembly and BASIC, culminating with programming the frame buffer of the VIC chip to render animated sprites of Star Trek ships... my first brush with game development. Then life got in the way and I took a 20-year absence from my first love. I'm trying to recapture the magic these days, and I hope that I still have enough brain cells to master C++. 8)

No school like the old school! :cool:

[Xenithar]

I started with 6502 and Basic on the Atari, but I had (have) a C64 also. I then learned QuickBasic in DOS on a 286, moved on to QB4.5 on my 486SX, then C on a P2/233, and finally C++ on a P3/866. I also toyed with Pascal, and know web languages (PHP, HTLM5) and basic MySQL. Then again, I do IT/IS for a living, so I need a toolbox of skills!

As for the DBC stuff, I did not know that. I assumed that I could modify some of the pet-handling code on MaNGOS to deal with the damage-types. Are you saying that I cannot modify the core to do what I want without doing DBC mods, which I am not interested in doing anyway?

[Unkle Nuke]

Your mods may work, but I'm skeptical. MaNGOS does get its data for the database by extracting the information from the DBC files and converting it into an SQL format. However, it still requires human interpretation and tinkering to correct errors because the format and locations of specific data is not necessarily understood completely. Upon inspecting the DBC files, you will find redundancies, data seemingly unrelated, and even data leftover from previous client versions.

Since you're using a much older version on the client, it may be possible to override certain behaviors by plugging your own values into the database, but I just don't know for sure if it will work for restoring features from previous client versions.

Every new patch and expansion release of the client began using more and more hard-links to the DBC file data to prevent such modifications like the one you have in mind. One good bit of news is you can create all the custom items you wish. Hard-linking items wasn't introduced until after 3.2.2a.

This is why I had hoped there would have been a great deal more interest in PseuWoW over the years. With an equally open-sourced client to match with the server, you would be free to apply whatever modifications you wished to create your own custom-tailored game with the spells, items, creatures, races...and much, much more... all balanced and tweaked to fit what you believe is the "best" way to play WoW.

Heck, you would even be able to create your own expansions with new content for truly unlimited play. I have always wished Blizz had not ditched the Emerald Dream expansion in favor of developing Wrath instead. A working PseuWoW would make it possible for someone to create their own vision of what this "lost" expansion might have been.

[Patman128]

MaNGOS does get its data for the database by extracting the information from the DBC files and converting it into an SQL format.

This is almost completely incorrect. Next to none of the data from the database is from the DBCs. It is taken from WoW client cache files and packet logs. This is why it is so inaccurate generally.

The abundance of mining/herbalism nodes may be because you don't have pools working. They limit the number of nodes that are spawned in a group, so instead of spawning all of them, it will pick 5 at random, for example.

Your spells problems I really don't know about. You would have to look into it deeper to see what is going on.

[Unkle Nuke]

I was under the impression that database data could be extracted from the DBC files. Otherwise, why have the dbcextractor, dbceditor, and the numerous dbc-to-sql converters?

[Schmoozerd]

"dbc" is a database format of its own. (afaik one table per file)

The content can be viewed by dbc-editors, read by some tools or converted to sql if required.

MaNGOS reads various tables from the dbc files extracted out of the client and puts them to use.

with "database" in MaNGOS content we usually refer to the sql-databases )like characters) which are required for MaNGOS to be started.

The somehow most important database is the world-database which contains the content of the game. These datas are usually not shipped with the client, and hence are filled by content providers

[Patman128]

I was under the impression that database data could be extracted from the DBC files. Otherwise, why have the dbcextractor, dbceditor, and the numerous dbc-to-sql converters?

It's generally more convenient to search through DBC tables using SQL queries than messing with the various DBC viewers. SQL databases are designed to do relational (inter-table) queries very easy.

For example, if I want to find every spell which is in CreatureSpell.DBC and has a certain bit set in FamilyFlags, I'm not aware of a DBC viewer which can do this, while it would be possible in SQL.

[Unkle Nuke]

I never knew that. Thanks, Patman and Schmoozerd!

I had always thought the basic DB was built from the DBC files and the WDB data used to fill in missing information or correct inconsistencies.

My SQL skills are still pretty basic, is there any special format used to query the DBC files? I've always just used one of the DBC utilities. I'm assuming you load the DBC files into an SQL editor. Would you instead have to add them to a MySQL database in the same fashion as you do with the MaNGOS database?