KajitiSouls Wrote:I find this to be infeasible perry. Is there hard evidence that WoW players actually found the most optimal quest route programmatically? (I have no idea, which is why I'm asking) This is probably also roughly of NP-complete (Traveling Salesman problem, for example) or just NP complexity and is probably better dealt with by human effort, as there are level requirements to consider (an infamous quest is the Missing Dropship quest, which can only be done if you didn't save the NPC from the desert island first, and it comes several levels after the rescue quest), the locations of mobs and the quest NPCs, and so forth.
Maybe talk to those guys that try to program accurate weather simluators or something.
EDIT: Is it okay to assume that, for the case of an alternate character, that quest items that are obscenely hard to come by (Phantom Seeds) or convenience items (warp capsules) have already been prepared ahead of time via searching FM?
Also, I remember being able to do Shumi3 JQ in less than 5 minutes in my prime. I suppose it's really up to the player's skills though.
EDIT2: Ic wat u did der perry-san *points to sig*
Haha, glad to see you're paying attention. It's always fun to set impossible goals.
Anyway, the WoW example is a human effort not a programmatic one. I wanted to throw this out to see if either you or Paul thought it even feasible. That's why I attempted to stipulate strict time definitions and the assumption that items can be pre-purchased as hunting them would add another layer of complexity.
Maybe a different way to look at it is to split the quests into types first.
e.g. do all kill x of type y as the 'cost' of the quest is easy to calculate.
Then generate an ordered list of calculated cost for each quest group by type and starting NPC location. Since there is a significant cost associated with ship travel, any quest that crosses to another 'realm' and back is going to be at the bottom of the list anyway.
Btw, I've never extracted any of the .wz file, can you or Paul provide an example of what an extracted quest would look like.