Spawn NPCs Near a Player

[choweyiii]

I've been trying for some time now to spawn NPCs near players for some time now, sure spawning them directly on top of players is easy using this code:

plr:SpawnCreature(900042, plr:GetX(), plr:GetY(), plr:GetZ(), plr:GetO(), 2212, 0, 0, 0, 0, plr:GetPhase(), save)

But the problem is, that causes several NPCs to stack on top of each other, which makes targeting difficult, and I would love to see them spawn just a few yards away. I've tried some things with the math function and desperately just adding +'s to the GetCords but it appears I have no idea what I'm doing. Any help would be greatly appreciated and I'll reward rep for any helpful comment. Thank you.

[stoneharry]

North, East, South and West is represented as -X, -Y, +X, +Y.

Note, it may be +X, +Y, -X, -Y, cannot remember.

This is similar to sin, cos, -sin, -cos in calculus. The same rules apply: You can calculate angles and distances between different points to create what you want. For example:

function ZG.VAR.FireballExplode(pUnit)

	local x2 = pUnit:GetX()
	local y2 = pUnit:GetY()
	
	pUnit:CastSpell(76010) -- visual
	pUnit:RemoveAura(71706) -- main visual
	
	for _,plr in pairs(pUnit:GetInRangePlayers()) do
		local distance = plr:GetDistanceYards(pUnit)
		if plr:GetPhase() == 2 and distance < 20 then
		
			local minimum = distance*40
			local maximum = distance*50
			
			pUnit:Strike(plr, 2, 72134, minimum, maximum, 0.1)		
		
			local x1 = plr:GetX()
			local y1 = plr:GetY()

			local x = x2 - x1
			local y = y2 - y1
			
			local angle = math.pi + math.atan2(-y, -x)

			local x = x1 - ((math.random(25,30)-distance) * math.cos(angle))
			local y = y1 - ((math.random(25,30)-distance) * math.sin(angle))
			
			local z = pUnit:GetLandHeight(x, y)
			if z > 200 or z < 20 then
				z = plr:GetZ()
			end
			
			plr:MoveKnockback(x, y, z, 2, 9)
			
		end
	end
end

I use this code to get the point between the npc and the player, then calculate a location based on the distance following that line:



You could use a similar formula to get a location slightly further away each time. Or you can just add/take away to X and Y and use the following function to get land height:

unit:GetLandHeight(x,y) -- returns Z at location of X, Y if maps and vmaps are enabled.

[choweyiii]

Thanks a lot, stoneharry. I'll try to make sense of this in the coming days :P