Two beginner questions (Preferred core, and modifying instances)

[swils]

I'll keep it brief.

I'm interested in:
(1) Which core would be best to begin with? I don't plan on hosting for more than myself and a few friends, nor do I plan to make a huge mall, or vast custom items, etc. I can find guides to setting up the server, so just your thoughts on which core I should use would be appreciated.

(2) The basic idea of what I want to do is rework classic instances and tune them to be the equivalent of Lv80 content. If possible, I don't want to have to recreate every mob using wow-v, rather, is there an easy way for me to simply find the, say, the "Gnomeregan" section of a database, and adjust the stats of all related mobs in there, so that they retain their spawn points/roam paths, but will in the end have the stats (and custom loot tables) equivalent to Lv80 elites?

**Edit:
The only guide to retuning instances that I have found so far instructs me to delete all the current mobs, then replace with my own. While I could do this in a delete/replace fashion (create custom, lv80 elite versions of all mobs in the instance ahead of time, and then whenever I delete a mob, immediately place a spawn for the custom80 version of it in the same place), that's just not my optimal way to do it, if I can avoid it. I also found a guide that details how to set up patrol paths for NPC's, if I have to delete/replace, so that part's covered.

Thanks in advance

[Jotox]

Well, there are two good choices for a core in my opinion.

1) there's Hearthstone/Aspire. Good emulator, ascent based, widely used. There are many guides here on mmowned on how to customize hearthstone, and it's extremely easy to make it do just about anything you want.
Link: Obtaining and compiling the source - AspireDev Forums

2) There's trinitycore. It's a mangos based emulator.
In my opinion, trinity core would suit your needs better, from what you say.
It's not nearly as easy to customize, and there aren't so many guides on mmowned for trinity core because mangos isn't as widely used.

However, mangos is much more stable, and has many many many less bugs.
Here's a link: Trinity Core MMo Server Framework - Powered by vBulletin



As for your second question, that's very easy to do using SQL queries. You first need to get an emulator and a database, though.

[swils]

Thanks very much for the speedy reply and advice. I'll look into both of those cores. And for the instance editing, that's good to hear--I wasn't looking forward to replacing hundreds of mobs, heh.

[AfterMidnight]

It's gonna take a bit of work, you can change values and such quite easily in your DB to suit lvl80 content - however, do mind that they'll still be firing 48-50dmg fireballs and such.

[swils]

Right, it'll be a bit of extra work, but it's also possible to locate the NPC spells they use, and buff up that damage, right?

[The-Eradicator]

Right, it'll be a bit of extra work, but it's also possible to locate the NPC spells they use, and buff up that damage, right?

No. You can't change spell damage easily, you're probably better off just switching them out for different spells.

[swils]

Ah, okay. So, for example, find out which NPC Rank of "Fireball" a Lv80 mage npc uses, and then swap that spell ID with the one that my buffed up Lv20 mage npc uses?

[The-Eradicator]

Ah, okay. So, for example, find out which NPC Rank of "Fireball" a Lv80 mage npc uses, and then swap that spell ID with the one that my buffed up Lv20 mage npc uses?

If you wanted to make it weaker, yeah.

[AfterMidnight]

Ah, okay. So, for example, find out which NPC Rank of "Fireball" a Lv80 mage npc uses, and then swap that spell ID with the one that my buffed up Lv20 mage npc uses?

You got the thought right but wrote it down wrong lol.

Find out the spellID from "Fireball" that a Lvl80 NPC uses and change the spell of your Lvl20 NPC with it.

[scarfaze]

Well, I would go for mangos, its great and has the great Quice tool. Its possible to script with LUA, but c++ scripting is not hard and more interesting. As you have a good guide on c++ mob scripting here on the forums, or you can also go buy a book. I use mangos and I am satisfied, considering that you are doing nearly the same as I am, I would go for mangos. I am also just curious, where are you from?

[swils]

Whoops, I meant for that to read as "Find the lv80 spell ID, and then paste that over the Lv20 spell ID [that is currently] on the mob i'm buffing".

Alright, so I'll do a bit of reading up on the cores suggested here. While I've got a thread going, I might as well ask another question: In terms of mob behavior/intelligence, I'd guess that I'm going to have to re-script individual boss fights (like the spawning bombs, and corresponding triggers on the final boss in gnomeregan), but how much work will it take to get an already existing mob to follow its retail behavior? I mean, will I also have to write a script that tells the mob to "cast fireball" at a set interval, or will a generic caster mob that already exists on retail (and has only been buffed up to lv80) just know to cast fireball on its own?

Also, I'm from maryland, usa, but currently at Virginia Tech for school