Hello,

I have developed a patch which associates a name with each of the merchant_ids in the database. This has two effects:
1. It allows a world builder to look through a list with names instead of a list of IDs for selecting which shop to give to a merchant.
2. It allows the last name of merchant NPCs to be set to things more like EQ live, so you can see quickly what a given merchant has. The showname field of the merchantsets table with an Id of the merchant_id for the NPC will be substituted for the NPCs last name if it is a merchant, and such a record exists in the merchantsets table.

I have gone thought every merchant type in the current project EQ database and given them a name. Im not an EQ expert, so im sure some of them are a little off, but it gets the point across.

This was partially inspired by iEQ, and I tried to keep the database table compatible with it so it might be used to edit this new name system. I had to add a new column to the table for a shorter name, which also serves as a separation between a name the developers give the shop, and the client sees in the game. Because this second name isn’t supported in iEQ, you can use these queries to copy the iEQ visible name into the displayed name field (truncating if needed):
[code]
create temporary table msets select Id,Name from merchantsets;
delete from merchantsets;
insert into merchantsets (Id,Name,showname) select Id,Name,Name FROM msets;
drop table msets;
[/code]

The patch and SQL file can be obtained from:
http://eqemu.psend.com/
apply patch with “patch –p0 <merchantssets.diff” from your source root dir.
Remember to load the sql file. If you have previously loaded the iEQ sql file, you should backup your merchantsets table (if you care) and drop it before loading mine.

Note: When applying the patch on a unix system make sure that your .cpp files have UNIX line endings, not windows (mine has windows when I unzip fresh source).
Mass fix line endings:
perl -pi -e 's/\r\n?/\n/g' */*.cpp */*.h