A Idea for better searching of POI's
 

Question. Is there a way to take all these poi's, say from The Forest Ruins. And compile them into a drop down or a series of drop down boxes for easier searching? Say I know I need rock adlers, instead of searching all those pois with my mouse I hit the drop down and go directly to "a rock adler" and have either a waypoiint made or even a circle around there location on the map? If this can be done you have my suggestion. If this can't be done sorry for wasting space lol. And if this has been done could you kindly point me in that direction as to where I may find it?

Thanks a ton Val

Hear! Hear! I have been helping to do HQs and sometimes it gets crazy running from spot to spot. It would so be nice to be able to select what you are looking for or a particular quest for this map. Possibly add another drop down. Otherwise I love EQ2Map can use it daily.

another idea (diff author)
 

i was thinking maybe instead of a heap of dots across our maps maybe you developers could make a kinda shaded patch area (seeing as how mobs arnt always at 1 PoI) you could shade the area of a map the mob has been knowen to rome in and poss even have a drop down menu thingie letting you choose like lvl range animals where the map would only show the mobs in that zone at that lvl (kinda like a cheat tracking for non scouts lol)

anyways they just some thoughts sleep on it yeah ?=-)

The problems with making a "Patch type area" are numorus:
How do you define the area?
How do you do so programatically?
Who does the area definition?
How do you handle overlapping areas?

With POI dots, all you need is a single /loc. You enter it in and the type and bang, you're done. The code to generate the display for a single dot is already written and works well. Any area covering would actually be a custom graphic for each and every one. That would be a huge amount of work! That presumes that it would even be possible to make an accurate patch . . .

So . . umm . . thanks for the idea, but I don't think it'd be practical.

what might be a better solution would be this.

have radio buttons or something to the side.

Then group the dots by POIs, quest start locs (NPCs and clickables), mob wander areas, etc.

Then by clicking on the associated radio button you can turn off all the dots not associated for example with quest start locations.

Is it possable to make a direct line between to poi's to connect them? if so would it be possable to place a few poi's around a set location and link them to make a set of parrallel lines maybe? i dunno im not a comp wiz lemmie know what ya think ya

oh and to cover the lapping make it like a section in the drop down menu birds snakes badgers animals like can be in one catagory creatures like gnolls orcs lizard men could be in another
... just a after thought

Lol, I'm guessing decadre hadn't gotten the latest update. What you describe is exactly how the new POI filtering works.

It is possible to define rectangles, arcs and elipses via XML but as Saint said... this leaves us with the issue of who defines the areas and how to provide an interface to allow that.

Would probably require some sort of drawing tool added to the web site that converted the shapes to XML EQ understands. Very complex stuff to develope and would seriously bloat both the server database and the generated XML files.

Its theoreticly possible, but HIGHLY unlikely to happen.