Lue Core: target_index is always 0 about lua HOT 10 CLOSED

This works for me. Are you on a private server?

The game sends you target information so that your client can render other characters looking at their targets (turning their heads). Do peoples turn their heads on your private server?

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Are you on a private server?

No, I am on live.

The code I am testing is part of a gearswap script, if that makes a difference.

Here is a quick lua to test:

function get_sets()
end

function self_command(command)
	local po = windower.ffxi.get_player()
	local pomob = windower.ffxi.get_mob_by_id(po.id)
	print("player target: " .. pomob.target_index)

	local pt = windower.ffxi.get_party()
	for i=0,pt.party1_count-1 do
		local member = pt["p"..i]
		print("p"..i.." name: " .. member.name)
		if (member.mob) then
			print("p"..i.." target: " .. member.mob.target_index)
		end
	end
end

gs c test
player target: 0
p0 name: <name>
p0 target: 0

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If I run this not in a party, which I assume was the case for you, I get:

player target: 57
p0 name: <name>
p0 target: 57

However, you are correct that is wrong. That monster is on the other side of the zone from me.

I can replicate this outside of gearswap, so it's probably a problem with WindowerPlugin.

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I dug into it further and here's what's going on:

• Windower uses the client's mob array in memory to populate the .mob table. This is primarily populated by 0x00D (PC) and 0x00E (NPC) chunks.
• The game doesn't send you 0x00D chunks about yourself, so it rarely ever updates that structure's target information for you. The client tells the server what you are looking at, so the server doesn't need to echo that back to the client. I only really see 0x00Ds for myself after interacting with NPCs
• p0 is your character, and your character doesn't get updated consistently, so the target_index for your character is inaccurate.

That's pretty much it. The solution would be to switch how that field is populated in the Mob call for the specific case where the monster being asked about is you.

As a workaround, you could use get_mob_by_target('t').index or, confusingly, get_player().target_index for yourself. That hits a different path, haha

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Hmm, interesting.

Related, and also partly while i filed this ticket, was I was noticing my trusts, while engaged, also reported a zero index, but im guessing those are not "PC's". Though, i would think the server would send what they are "looking at" to leverage.

Is this a different issue?

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The server is only sending target indices, as far as I can tell, so PC heads turn to look towards their targets. I would have assumed that trusts would also turn their heads, but I can't swear I've seen it. It's entirely possible that they don't.

I have basically been assuming that trusts are stateless actors (well, same state as npcs), so they probably don't have a concept of "current target."

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I don't know how it is for trusts, but at least it would make sense for that to be the case. For monsters specifically that value is never populated, because they don't turn their heads, instead their entire body rotates, and that is transmitted in a single byte field representing the rotation (which, incidentally, means that their rotation is limited to 255 discrete values, despite using a 4 byte float in memory).

Aside from that, Byrth's analysis is correct. While it would be convenient to fix this for the current player, we already discussed this once before and decided against it, instead we added the .target_index property to the windower.ffxi.get_party result. That was near the beginning of our Lua API, which was 10 years ago at this point, so I cannot remember the precise reasoning for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was for performance reason, because we'd have to execute the target distinguishing code on every get_mob_by_x call. We also had more of a "keep it as it is in memory" mentality at that point, so maybe we just didn't want to mess with it and leave it to SE.

Anyway, not saying I'm not open to changing it, but the workaround for this already exists, and I'm not sure if the change would be worth it. But feel free to discuss it, if you think it's a good idea I can add it.

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If performance will be generally impacted, then no, it probably should remain as-is. Perhaps update the wiki with a note, and call it a day.

That said, if this field is already being updated using incoming chunks, then it would make sense that using the outgoing chunk, for the player specifically, wouldn't be a huge impact, since the client still informs the server what it is looking at, even though it is not echoed.

However, it is easy enough to just compare ids with the player id and route to get_mob_by_target instead.

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trusts and npcs dont "target" things... they just.. act. So I wouldn't expect to find the target field ever filled in for npcs

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Closing, since this is a non issue

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