Improved Spawn Search¶

Introduction to getFilteredSpawns and getAllSpawns¶

The functions getFilteredSpawns and getAllSpawnsare available as part of the Macroquest Lua bindings. They provide a sensible manner in which to retrieve and filter spawn objects for your scripts and then return the results in a native Lua table, making it painless for you to iterate through, sort or even further filter in your Lua scripts.

getFilteredSpawns¶

getFilteredSpawns is a Lua function that takes an optional predicate argument, which is a Lua function that can be used to filter the list of spawn objects. If the predicate argument is provided, the function iterates over all spawn objects and applies the predicate function to each one. If the predicate function returns true for a given spawn object, that object is added to a Lua table that is ultimately returned by the function.

How to use getFilteredSpawns¶

Here's an example of how to use getFilteredSpawns:

local mq = require('mq')

-- Define a predicate function that checks if the spawn is an NPC
local function isNPC(spawn)
    return spawn.Type() == 'NPC'
end

-- Call getFilteredSpawns with the predicate function
local npcs = mq.getFilteredSpawns(isNPC)

In this example, we define an isNPC function that checks whether a given spawn object is of the type NPC (the type method return value equals the string "NPC"). This predicate is passed as the single argument to getFilteredSpawns function to retrieve a table of all spawn objects that meet this filtering criteria.

Inline predicate function¶

It is also possible to write the predicate and call to getFilteredSpawns together by in-lining the predicate function as part of the call. This is sometimes more convienant when the preciate check is simple and easily understood. Here is the above example condensed into a single line.

local mq = require('mq')

-- Call getFilteredSpawns with an inline predicate function
local npcs = mq.getFilteredSpawns(function(spawn) return spawn.Type() == 'NPC' end)

getAllSpawns¶

getAllSpawns is another Lua function that retrieves all spawn objects and returns them as a Lua table. It does not take a predicate, and by default returns all spawns in the zone in a Lua table.

How to use getAllSpawns¶

Here's an example of how to use getAllSpawns:

local mq = require('mq')

-- Call getAllSpawns to retrieve a table of all `spawn` objects in the zone
local allSpawns = mq.getAllSpawns()

In this example, we call getAllSpawns to retrieve a table of all spawn objects in the zone.