add POI within game...
 

Simply put, submitting a POI is a pain. You have to write down the location (and get it right), note the information, then you have to either wait til done playing to submit the POI or stop what you're doing, find the link to submit a POI, and then enter all the information.

Would it be possible to create a button on the map window to add a POI within the game? This dialog would take the character's location automatically.

Perhaps this dialog could then send a message (cross server if necessary) to a character whose sole purpose is to log such messages.

OR send to a text file on the user's computer which the user could email in (by a button on the updater perhaps.)

Or have a button to open the POI submission form web page and pre-fill location.

as far as writing and getting it right. as well as saving as a txt file

when im adventuring and i find something, i type this...

/log
POI: named a thingy with a gizmo, think its for this quest
/loc
/log

opens or creates a txt file under everquestII/logs/servername called eq2log_charname.txt
saves your /say about what it is,
saves your current loc which is accurate and totally copy/pastable later
closes the log file.

You can include the map name in that /say as well, if you're cruising around and bound to forget where that poi was meant for.

The method that Stanley mentioned is the closest thing to automatic that's possible. There's no way (that we have access to) to do any of those other possibilities you mentioned.

no such thing as impossible
 

Ertoocs, you obviously don't get it. If you're against customization why are you participating on a site which hosts custom UI's? If you don't like the idea of being able to consult and make notes on maps within the game, then don't use EQ2MAP. If you don't like someone suggesting a possible feature, get real.

It's very possible to do this. I believe it would enhance the project.
1. Is it possible to create a dialog with a pull down choice?
2. Is it possible to create a dialog with a text entry box?
3. Is it possible to launch such a dialog with a button on another box?
4. Is it possible to have such dialogs enter text into a custom channel?
5. Is it possible to have a dialog use an interface command (/ command) on close?

I see no reason any of these cannot be done. If they can, then the other part of the problem is two parts: configuration, parsing, and submitting the information.

For configuration, step by step instructions on how to subscribe to a custom channel, and where to put the matching channel name in the xml file. Instruct user how to ensure that logging is on by default.

For parsing, create a custom format which can easily be identified by the parser. First line XXXXX-# where # represents the index of the type_of_poi choice pull down box. Second Line is the text description entered by the player. Third line is /loc informatin done by the 'enter' button when the user is finished.

For submitting, a small applet that parses the log file, extracts the POI's the user has entered, supplies checkbox to indicate which ones to edit or submit, and allows the user to submit them through the eq2map website or other mechanism.

Xalorous

Xalorous,
Your best option would be to use eq2 in windowed mode. This way you dont have to write stuff down, just alt tab to the browser window if you are in POI mood:) Im thinking about making a parser that will parse out /locs and lines that begin with POI.

maybe have a button that does OnPress=(/pointOfinterest *insert location here somehow* )


then the log would say
The command "/pointOfinterest 123 45 678" does not exist.

then you could bribe the guy that writes the CombatStatsMonitor to make his program parse the log in real time and submit the POI

closest thing :nana:

That "somehow" is a huge problem. We simply cannot do it with the knowledge we have available.

acutally the simplest way would be to add a button the the mapwindow that says poi

have it click off a specific line of text to a channel like

eq2.serverwide.poi stuff

examples would be like

snif : zonename : loc: 1,2,3 POI
then the person jsut has to say what the poi is in a regular channel tell


do this with log files on
and have the map updater sit idle in the taskbar monitoring the logfiles.

have it pars for that particular alert line
log the info to its own logfile that puts line 1 and line 2 together form the same person .

and allow the person to submit the pois afterward based on what they parsed out while it was sitting idle

does this make sense ? its late and im VERY overtired

Once


more:


We cannot do that.

A button can be programed to /say (or /tellchannel or /ooc or whatever) a specific thing.

We can't add your location to it. We can't add your current zone to it. We cannot even add the contents of a text box into it.

You cannot send your /loc into a chat channel without typing it out.

We cannot make a UI mod that will make the process of getting all the POI into to the website any easier than it is already through turning /log on and typing into the chat window.

Until we gain/find the ability to combine text strings, all we can do is make a log parser. And AFTER someone writes a log parser, there STILL won't be any point in a button in the map window.

OK, here is an idea. Create 2 macros:

macro1:
/: log ; say EQ2MAP_START

now type something like this:
/say POITYPE: MOB
/say POIZONE: Thundering Steppes
/say POINAME: Ott Stompgutt
/say POIDESC: Named Giant, triggered by various quests
/loc

then press the second macro:
/: loc ; say EQ2MAP_END ; log

now just write a parser that searches the log file for EQ2MAP_START and processes until EQ2MAP_END

The parser can be run after a gaming session, ask for any missing info, check zone names for correctness and submit the info to EQ2MAP automatically. It should also clear the log file after running, or just remove the lines for EQ2MAP as it processes them.

Adding "/who myname" to macro1 would add the reporting toons name AND the correct zone name to the log...

And add /loc to macro1 as well
Also, why not use a dedicated poi channel so those around you don't have to listen to you spout this stuff?

The parser is the problem.

i made a custom textfile parser. its in the utilities section.

What about using the HTML window? Could some code do this:

Make a custom EQ2MAP_HTML window that defaults to a url that will automatically submit a POI.

For example, most browsers will place http:// on the front of whatever you type - our window would place http://maps.eq2interface.com/submitpoibyloc= or whatever.

A button could be added to the EQ2MAP window that does the following:

1) Open the custom EQ2MAP_HTML window
2) Set the address bar of the window to equal your current /loc
3) Activate whatever the "Go" button is to submit

This would, in effect, submit the following url: http://maps.eq2interface.com/submitpoibyloc=45,54,456 (pretend that the /loc is 45,54,456 obviously)

Now, the website would return a very simple page (one that would be able to display in the ingame browser window) that allows the user to then fill in the blanks such as POI name, etc.

Granted this is a bit of work for someone, but if one of you eq2interface gurus can give me an idea of how possible this is, I'll be happy to work on it.

I am all about making things easier for the everyday player - if this is something feasible, I'll do my best :)

Edit: argh, I can't make the website not add the url tag around those examples :(

Again, no. First, we can't combine text strings, so it would have to go to a specific URL and then have the user type everything in. Second, the HTML window won't show form buttons, so there's no way to submit the information through that method.

I don't think I explained it well enough - I wasn't talking about concatenating strings...

hmm, I'll check this out myself and see if I can figure a way to do it...

The problem is that currently the only way to pass any info outside the EQ2 client is via HTML window URL, and currently there's no way to tack your /loc onto a predefined URL. That would require concatination (text string + text string), which isn't available.

In theory, if we could shove text together, we could provide an in-game POI window, activated by a button on the Map, with all the required fields. You're loc would be auto-inserted. You'd fill in the rest of the POI info and hit a submit button. The HTML window would be sent a URL that looks something like this...

With each of those "someblahblah" bits replaced by your form entries (that's the part we can't do).

Code would need to be written on the webserver to accept this URL as a submission, error and dupe check. Probably need an abuse blocker script to prevent some bot from hammering the web server by spamming the submission URL. In short, ALOT of new code would be needed on the web server to handle this.

But again, the whole thing is moot since we can't construct the required URL.

Edit: actuallly there may be an extreamly uhgly way to construct this type of URL, but I haven't varified it works.

While this would be a great usability feature, I feel the need to point out that there is already a quality control problem with existing POIs and that making it possible/easier for every single player to submit POIs will not help the project in the long run.

We need more people editing and deleting redundant existing POIs. We seem to already have enough contributors in my opinion.

the in game html window doesnt do <forms>.

I agree with the above poster that we dont need to make it easier as we already get poi's for things we dont need on the maps and this would make it 4000x worse.

Wow this is an old thread.