To side track a little bit.
Back to very first post, and the pic.
Quote:
If you've ever used widescan to try to camp an NM before, or anything for that matter, you know that the widescan actually shows the NM before it appears. Significantly before. Almost, say, 1-3 seconds before. I'm going to take a wild guess, and assume that widescan works by plotting a variety of points on a grid. The map is nothing more than a background image plastered behind the grid. Thus, why widescan works in areas that you don't have a map to.
Secondly, as you may or may not know, depending on your lvl and job (you'd be surprised how few ppl know that BST has widescan), the radius of the widescan itself can change. Therefore, when you hit the widescan button, it most likely compiles a list of mobs and coordinates using a method that takes a radius as its parameter, and plots those coordinates on the grid. In that JP bot, you actually had to supply a radius to get a result; therefore, rather than just reading a list of mob coordinates, it must be placing an actual call to that method, and plotting the feedback on its own grid; in essence, doing a widescan with a custom radius in a separate window.
Now, diverging a bit... that which intrigues me most is the ID number. that mob's id, as said on the image, allows one to instantaneously provoke it. /ja Provoke MobID. When someone uses a command like that, it sidesteps the need to target the thing before using the ability on it. I believe, in all sincerity, that this is the TRUE secret behind "claimed spawns." It makes total sense, too: you can't provoke things unless you target them, and the few second delay in between when the memory receives the data about the mob about to spawn and when the mob object actually becomes targettable. I'd actually guess there's a boolean for every object in the game that determines the Targetable attribute. When you kill a mob, for instance, targettable goes false. Sometimes, there's a glitch, and you still target a dead mob. Those are instances in which the targettable aspect was never turned off. Now, notice that even though you can target the thing, you cant use any abilities on it. This explains the mechanics of using abilities in FFXI. When you target a mob, the game sees a certain ID. That ID is shown for the Lost Soul in the screenshot. This is a major oversimplification, but to understand it better, picture this... When you say, for instance, /ja Provoke <t>, the game will send out a message to the server saying "i've used the provoke ability on the target of this ID". if the server ok's it, the ability goes through, and all is well. However, if the specified ID isn't there, the server rejects it, and nothing happens. Thus, why though you target the dead mob, you cannot use abilities on it. The server rejected the ID call.
So... what does all this mean? If you were to know the ID of the mob before it was obtainable from the Target system, and send a request to use a job ability on that ID... you'd have used that ability on the mob, and claimed the mob, before it ever became targettable. And thus, the TRUE explanation behind Claimed Spawns.
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