Day & Night, what can we do ?

Even before all, why you should do this? To give attractiveness to your areas, an active city with NPCs who move helps immersion, more than stucked NPCs all day.

Let's start with one NPC, we'll make him appears and disappears following our events.

We need to open game_event_creature. Structure of game_event_creature

My NPC GUID is 2019864.

So, in the second column, I write 2019864.

When my server is restarted, my NPC won't be visible during my "Day" event, because I choose to show him only at night (with event 25).

Going back to my patrol's idea.

For this tutorial, I'll use only one NPC (I'm too lazy to create a full patrol )

What is he going to do ? At the time of night event, He will appear and begin to follow a waypoint path (I hope you know how to make a waypoint path) with SmartAI.

Here is Herigran Cayton.

Herigran works all day, but when night comes, he becomes... Batm... No, he just goes home and sleep.

So it's time to help him to starts his path when it's 7:30pm. Open SAI Editor.

When you'll befinished setting up the software and found your creature's ID, you'll do this :

Explanations :

First part : EVENT_GAME_EVENT_START
"When event starts"

Second part : ACTION_WP_START
"Start waypoint path"

Third part : TARGET_SELF

"On yourself."

When all of this settings are selected, the "parameters" parts update themselves (it's a king of magic ♫).

To better clarify the situation, you need to know Herigran's ID is 60077 and his waypoint path ID is 60077 too and this path is situated in waypoints_data. When you create a waypoint path with TrinityCore (same for Mangos) every point is added in waypoints, so, it means you MUST move your waypoints from waypoints to waypoints_data (be careful, the structure is different).

Well, we know Herigran starts his path at night, in technical language it gives :

"When event 25 starts, Creature 60077 starts her waypoints path 60077 on herself."

And you'll see him starts his path at 7:30pm BUT ! Problem. He won't move when night will end and day will start.

We will continue to use only our night event. if a EVENT_GAME_EVENT_START condition exists, a EVENT_GAME_EVENT_END condition exists too !

Herigran will do the reverted path we did for him before, actually we can't just make him follow the same path, you'll have to do an inverted one, let's call it waypoint 60078 (60077 arena => home, 60078 home => arena)

you can choose the same points you set before, just invert them, waypoint 1 becomes waypoint 30, waypoint 2 becomes waypoint 29...

Technical language :

"When event 25 ends, Creature 60077 starts her waypoints path 60078 on herself."

And tomorrow I'll see Herigran working in his office !

I know I used less images for this part, feel free to ask if you need one or two, I'll update my post !

I give you my SmartAI script (from Herigran) it could be useful or not ^^

-- Herigran Cayton SAI
SET @ENTRY := 60077;
UPDATE `creature_template` SET `AIName`="SmartAI" WHERE `entry`=@ENTRY;
DELETE FROM `smart_scripts` WHERE `entryorguid`=@ENTRY AND `source_type`=0;
INSERT INTO `smart_scripts` (`entryorguid`,`source_type`,`id`,`link`,`event_type`,`event_phase_mask`,`event_chance`,`event_flags`,`event_param1`,`event_param2`,`event_param3`,`event_param4`,`action_type`,`action_param1`,`action_param2`,`action_param3`,`action_param4`,`action_param5`,`action_param6`,`target_type`,`target_param1`,`target_param2`,`target_param3`,`target_x`,`target_y`,`target_z`,`target_o`,`comment`) VALUES
(@ENTRY,0,0,0,68,0,100,0,25,0,0,0,53,0,60077,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,"Herigran Cayton - On Game Event 25 Started - Start Waypoint"),
(@ENTRY,0,1,0,69,0,100,0,25,0,0,0,53,0,60078,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,"Herigran Cayton - On Game Event 25 Ended - Start Waypoint");

Here is one example you can do with SmartAI and events, you want more ideas ?
I'm working on Elwynn today, I'll make more wolves and thieves and at night, you'll meet more thieves, but at day, more wolves, only with everything I explained here ! The only limitation is your imagination

Have fun guys !