Thread: [Guide]The Ultimate GM compendium of Knowledge

Waypoints, and the presumed broken commands

Waypoints, are one of the fun commands to tinker with, and are used in many things, from Events, Battlegrounds, Or to make a base. If you aready know the basics of Waypoints, but the "Working .waypoint emotes!" got your attention or somehthing like that, Scroll down a bit until you reach a red, bold title saying "PART 2". The first part is simply to teach compleatly new GMs how to use waypoints.

Waypoints work on a few simple commands, and a few that only appear to not work.
This guide will teach you how to use waypoints, setting them up, setting some in a formation, and How to make some of the command that normaly do not work, Work.



First of all, for this guide, We will use several easy situations. For the best result, i whould suggest to do the same in-game, as you read. So start up WoW, log on, move it to windowed mode, (to troggle this on, go to the "video" Section on the options menu, and on the top right there should be the buttons for this).
If your not a GM yet, well you will have to just read along.

Waypoints are just that, They are spots in the world that only NPC will interact with, and will cause the NPC to follow them in a connect-the-dot type of thing.

First, we are going to make a very simple situation. One NPC, that runs in a streight line, and turns to the right. Spawn that NPC of your choise and DO NOT MOVE. Select him, and type ".waypoint Add"

You will have a small yellow text saying that "waypoint 1 was added." or along the lines of that. Still selecting him, type ".waypoint show" You will have a message saying it will be showing the waypoints for it. A small ghostly, tiny, semi transperant ghost of the selected creature will appear right where you stand, if you have followed the guide thus far.

Now, move up a few clicks. Select the main NPC, the one that is solid, big and players can see. Type ".waypoint add"
As the first time, a yellow text should inform success, and your NPC should start moveing instantly to you. A small ghost will appear at your feet. His level will be 2.

Level of the ghost is important. It will simply mean what number Waypoint it is. Its like it's ID. its one of the 2 ways to know which waypoint is wich, the other is your own memory. Waypoints will look, EXACTLY like one another, The only thing diffrent is their position. The level will allow you to differanciate between them.

Now, if your NPC is not aready patroling from one to the other, you did something wrong. Wait a few moments, in case it's lag, and if he still dose not move, delete him, and restart.

Click on your NPC again, this time move to your right, as far as you want, And type ".waypoint add" A third ghost will be added, and a third waypoint will be set. You NPC will patrol from waypoint 1, to 2, and then to 3, before returning past 2.

If your waypoint 1 is not at your NPC's feet, he will never return to the area he was spawned. Once your good at waypoints, you can use this to your advantage, by adding waypoint one elsewhere, and everytime your NPC spawns, he will automaticatly walk to his patrol, and never return to the spawn locations, UNLESS you add another waypoint at that location.
For now, allways add waypoint one at the spot of origin, when you feel ready, Tinker with it to your hearts content =D

Congratulations, you have set a patrol up! Feel free to add as many waypoints as you wish, so long as you select the NPC you want to waypoint. Do NOT select another NPC and type ".waypoint add" It will bug a bit, and add the waypoint for the old NPC.

Now, each patrol will stay at his waypoint for 10 seconds, or so before moveing on. Its time to change this a bit. Lets say we want him 1/2 a second there. Time to use the ".waypoint waittime" command

Select one of the ghosts, Make sure his level is either 2 or 3. Waypoint one will have a longer waittime for this guide. For both of them you will type ".waypoint waittime 500"
this will make him wait 1/2 of a second. The server will announce the possible threat of lag if its not set to 5 seconds or more, and i will tell you now: Dont panic. THis is very small, and you should only consider it when you have 10 or more waypoints near each other. Then you have to set them higher then 5 seconds. For this example, we only have one, so its OK.

You should now notice that the npc seems to only pause for a tiny bit at that waypoint and move on to the next. Select the other waypoint, and type the same thing. Now you will have the waypoints you selected be 1/2 of a second long.

Lets say we want waypoint 1 to be 15 seconds long (ZOMG its like, forever! o.O) Select the ghost that is level 1, and type ".waypoint waittime 15000" You will have a simple message saying success. and no threat of lag.

Select the main NPC, and type ".waypoint save" then type ".waypoint hide"
You may now select another NPC and work on him. Do not tinker with waypoints on more then 1 NPC at a time. Make sure you deal with one, and finnish correctly in this manner. If you want to be sure, relog quickly.

Thats all there is to this part, you have all the basics for waypoints that most GMs know. A little gift from me to you, is about the ms.

MS= Milliseconds. (mili means 1000)
500 = Half a second
1000 = 1 second
10000 = 10 seconds
100000 = 100 seconds (1 minute and 40 seconds.)



-------------------------------- PART 2 ---------------------------------------

This part is the more advanced, Everyone i know, did not know this. Even seethe thought it was just acent bugging. Im sure there are some people out there that know about this, but so far, i have not met them yet xD

Lets start with waypoint emotes. If you tried this yet, it will say it work, but nothing happened. Thats because you formated the command wrong.

Let go back to the first example. Re-activate the ".waypoint show" command. Select ghost #2. And lets say we want him to dance at that waypoint. However, his waittime is too short, (if you followed the above guide), so mod it to 3 seconds. (3000 ms) I dont have to make much detail there, since you should be a pro at this aready [IMG]http://www.************/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif[/IMG]

Now, for the real part. Select that ghost, and type ".waypoint emote 1 10"
Why the one? I really have no clue. Im guessing its about the oneshot part. Either way you need a didget there, for the emote to work. It has to be a 1 didget number, not a 2 didget number like '10' 2,3,4, ect whould work, but anything over 10 wont. The second number is the Emote number. That can be as long as you want. And for the "Oneshot is enabled" the emote is either one shot or not, i dont think you can mod this.

The next time your NPC walks on that emote, he will do emote 10. However, if he does not, wait another round. There is something special about emotes.

Emotes will only occure on the normal run. when the NPC backtracks, he will not do the emotes. So, 1,2,3 will play the emotes, but 3,2,1 will not. That means that waypoint 1 will NEVER play an emote. only 2, 3, and anything after.

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Another thing to waypoints is the ".waypoint addfly" command, To use this make sure you have a unit that can fly, else you might screw something up [IMG]http://www.************/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif[/IMG]

Spawn your NPC, then imidiatly type in ".waypoint add" like you whould naturally. ".cheat fly" your way upwards, and (While selecting the NPC), type ".waypoint addfly"
Continue with this around, and add the flying waypoint as you whould normaly. Flying waypoints behave exactly as normal waypoints other that they fly. There might be some glitches here and there, esspecially if you are trying with the ".formationlink" commands active on that NPC.

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Setting waypoint in a formation requires some good sence of distence. ".formationlinks" can do this for you very easily, however, if your inside a building formation links might not be the best choise for a sleek look to the dungon =P This part will teach you how to set up two waypoints in a formation and the math formula needed to make it more accturate. Please keep in mind, if its not damn accurate to the last Millisecond, after a few hours, maybe a few days, when you come back the formation will be compleatly scrambled.

First, spawn two npc exactly side by side.

Next, select the first, and type ".waypoint add" Relog, or type ".waypoint hide" and move to where the other NPC is, give him waypoint 1 as well.

After that, Move to the far end. to where you want your NPCs to patrol. If they are going to end here, Add waypoint 2 for both of them the same way you added waypoint 1. Dont worry about weather they are in sunc or not yet. Make sure you take your time to make it perfect.

Finnaly, reset the server, or wait for it To D/C. when you come back, your NPC should be in perfect Sync walking side by side.

If they are going to fork left, or right, it gets much harder then that. This time you will have to make one go farther then the other. And both ending waypoints will have diffrent time. For example, say we have sally and bob walking side by side, and they will take a right.

Sally is on the far left of bob, so she will go farther. bob will stop short and sally will keep going forward for 1 second. then instantly turn right. bob will have stoped and waited 2 seconds, 1 second so sally could get in front of him, and another second that it took for sally to walk next to him. They should continue right side by side again.

This will probably be one of the hardest things to do in WoW as a GM. good luck! you know what you need to do, but ill tell you now, even i have not been able to do this without a calculator. =P

More to be added soon.