Suggestion: GUI Changes for Map Display/Poi Parse

PSiKoTIC · #1 07-02-2005, 02:51 PM

Evening folks; Thanks for taking the time to read this; Tacoman.. much appreciated for all yer hard work coding this awesome util. My one suggestion is completely client side; wouldn't require any database over hauls.. admin stuff .. or any kinda watching; My suggestion is if there would be a way to possibly filter out poi's (for example only display quest poi's on map) where you could select which to display. Second suggestion here is some text search where you could make a text search for some comment text in a poi within a given map from the Map GUI. Where as if you were looking for a certian named mob for example you could type in a partial of the name and limit down how many POI's display based on the search results. Lets face it .. Antonica .. Nek.. TS .. pretty much looks like Xmas trees with all the poi's and as users add in more poi's and data it's not gonna look any prettier than it is now; so much information that it's almost essentially useless as you can't readily find anything specific. 3rd request (yes yes I know alot of stuff I'm covering here

An ability to place personal POI's .. for example if you have a loc coord for a item you need for a quest. Where you could type in the coords and actually have the POI as a 'stick' lets say black dot where it would be unique to the client. At the moment I have problems with eq2map entering in coords .. aside from the yellow trails being utterly useless half the time.. if you press 'M' and close the map window.. about 50% of the time the waypoint disappears along with it. Lemmie know what you think.. again thanks for your time and all your hard work .. only reason I don't do it myself is I couldn't code a UPC code. never mind software..

Peace

-Digem- -Toxx-

Magus · #2 07-02-2005, 05:10 PM

Can't do it.

taco-man · #3 07-03-2005, 01:25 AM

the only possibility is the filtering, we are working on it, but cant promise anything other then IF it is released, it wouldn't be able to save settings, and may have to be changed every zone (not sure about how it will handle zoning).

PSiKoTIC · #4 07-12-2005, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magus

Can't do it.

Not sure.. I came from WoW myself and they have a simiar popular utility called 'cosmos' .. works in the same way.. can have personal poi's .. hell even propigates personal POI's on channels using encoded plaintext.

taco-man · #5 07-12-2005, 05:52 PM

WoW and EQ2 are two different games, I.E (They are not the same) and thus are completely different.
Example: "well my AMD fit in the socket slot of my motherboard so i figured my intel one would, they are both processors" <-- wrong. hopefully that helps you understand.
basic point just because something is possible in eq2 doesnt mean it will work in wow, and the reverse holds true, just because its possible in wow doesnt mean its possible in eq2.

Laffs · #6 07-12-2005, 06:42 PM

I agree with the Xmas tree statement likes lol... but if you take the time to read the quest info that the NPC gives you then it does give you a damn good idea where to look on the Xmas tree so to speak... So when you consider that there is not that many POI's to mouse over in the area you need.

But thats just IMO I would rather spend the time reading and trying to figure it out myself then mouseing over the Xmas tree map lol... Besides whats the hurry lol

I could ramble on and on and get way off topic but I will stop short here lol

Taco and all the guys that have worked and still work on the eq2 map project have made the game much more user friendy, The SoE idea of having to map a zone yourself is well outdated along with text adventures (sorry Scott Addams, still love your adventure games likes

) In a game as big and complex as this you damn well need a map to start with at the very least lol... So nice one guys...

Oks going to shut up now and go to sleep

droo · #7 07-13-2005, 06:18 AM

Not quite what the OP was asking for - but an idea inspired from his post.
How about adding the facility to add local/client side POI's?

Why? (and doesn't this go against the submissions idea?)
No - and here's why.

If you elect not to show POI's - you really want to discover stuff for your self - but It would be very nice to be able to add a marker so that you can find the POI again later.

Maybe you like overly long text explaining why a POI has interest to you - the longer text could act as in game notes.

Maybe as a Trade skiller you want to mark areas you consider good for harvesting - maybe assigning the POI's to a pattern on the map.

How to implement?
1/ Make local POI's a different colour or shape.
2/ Add a small utility (similiar to the webpage) to enter local POIs
3/ Allow people to send you their local POI files for inclusion in the online file (if they then want to share)

Eloa · #8 07-13-2005, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by droo

Not quite what the OP was asking for - but an idea inspired from his post.
How about adding the facility to add local/client side POI's?

How to implement?
1/ Make local POI's a different colour or shape.
2/ Add a small utility (similiar to the webpage) to enter local POIs
3/ Allow people to send you their local POI files for inclusion in the online file
(if they then want to share)

Simply? Nope. We can't do it. You can examine our many pages of interface and try to decipher it and put them in yourself, but each time theres an update, it would be overwritten with the files on the server which get downloaded.

Corren Silverfir · #9 07-13-2005, 08:21 AM

Well it could be done but would be like a double check.

you could have the Map updater look in a custom made folder say Mypoi thats could be created as a sub of the persons UI. It could check to see if it contains any data then check to see if it was different from any of the originals. If it is copy from that folder back to the default. and this could check anytime they patch.

But more work and since Taco left no one familiar enough with his code to modify it.

I'm using VB 2005 Beta2 and alot of his coding techniques no longer convert or apply in it so I can't really modify it myself.

**Landiin** · #10 07-13-2005, 09:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by droo

Not quite what the OP was asking for - but an idea inspired from his post.
How about adding the facility to add local/client side POI's?

Why? (and doesn't this go against the submissions idea?)
No - and here's why.

If you elect not to show POI's - you really want to discover stuff for your self - but It would be very nice to be able to add a marker so that you can find the POI again later.

Maybe you like overly long text explaining why a POI has interest to you - the longer text could act as in game notes.

Maybe as a Trade skiller you want to mark areas you consider good for harvesting - maybe assigning the POI's to a pattern on the map.

How to implement?
1/ Make local POI's a different colour or shape.
2/ Add a small utility (similiar to the webpage) to enter local POIs
3/ Allow people to send you their local POI files for inclusion in the online file (if they then want to share)

Being you can't save any info or UI settings for that matter from the UI, ever POI you added would be gone when you camped. Thats prob the main reason its not in this mod. Unless you do it out of game its a mute point unless SOE lets the UI start saveing info..

droo · #11 07-13-2005, 10:23 AM

Obviously my post wasn't very clear :/

What I wanted was a way to add POIs outside of the game, and have these written to a local file.
The map launcher then could use this file instead of the download one (a selectable option) or you could chose to merge the local file with the download one (another option) before you start the game.

The reason was so people could use POIs on their maps in a personal way instead of or supplementing the online list.

Eloa · #12 07-13-2005, 10:09 PM

After pondering the subject all day, I have come to a reasonable way that this could actually work.

Let me be clear when I say that I WILL NOT be working on this.
Taco-man, you're welcome to take this and run, or anyone else for that matter.

This is my gameplan of how to do it.

Have a program other than eq2map where you can input information on a POI that you want to add to your 'personal' POI list.
Have a database to which you add each of these points and it would simply be saved in database or even text format on the user's computer. The only thing is with text only you would have to figure out a system to read and right all the information, without the user being able to corrupt it with a badly placed character or word.
Run the updater prior to playing the game to download all the new files.
After getting all the files, do not autorun the game, instead, run a 'patcher' to patch the files that the updater downloaded.
Convert the user's POI's into xml format in preparation of insertion into the interface .xml files.
Insert the user poi's with a NEW POI Style dot (New color). From here on out 'patcher' refers to this program to update the updater interface files.
The patcher would have to have a record of the first POI in each zone and insert the personal POI's prior to this line. This is due to all new POI's get tacked onto the bottom of the list of POI's in the file.
This patcher would have to update EVERY zone every time you start the game, since the updater checks the md5 (File signature, basically) of your PC interface files, and compares them to the webserver MD5's. Since you add personal POI's into your PC files, the MD5's would conflict.

That should pretty much be all there is to it. Just writing that up and seeing in writing how easy it would be to do makes me WANT to jump right on it, but alas I could never test it, nor do I have the time. Having this 3rd party insertion system and patcher would open up a whole new world of what people can do with POI's. One idea would be a list of all the POI's in the updater files, which the user would be able to select and view details on each POI (even the website ones). They could also choose to show or not show certain POI's ingame and they could be deleted from the .xml files at the time of patching.

I hope this will jump start a member or two of the community that sucks at mapping and wants to get in on the greatest original 3rd party project to ever hit an MMO, the great, the wonderful, the almighty -- EQ2MAP

Eloa

taco-man · #13 07-14-2005, 03:51 AM

sounds like a good idea eloa, but perhaps though there is some other way to do it where people arent re-downloading a bunch of files every time they run the updater. most likely it would be better to basically do it how the plugin system works (ie have an iclude that includes a page that doesn do anything) and then whoever designs the program would modify that file. if anyone is interested in working on a program of this sort i will be glad to give help with formulas and structure as best as i can (however i myself will not be writing it). if someone does make a program that adds them in a seperate file and they have it all working i will however add support for it doing the method i described above (unless someone has a better idea) since that way would use the least bandwidth and be the most convenient (since you wouldnt redownload all the zone files every time you run the updater). anyone have opinions on if this would be the best way to do it? or have a better way? and someone would actually have to code the program

although i can help out with some basic functions you will need (like converting location to x,y coordinates to place on the map)

Deathbane27 · #14 07-14-2005, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taco-man

sounds like a good idea eloa, but perhaps... it would be better to basically do it how the plugin system works (ie have an iclude that includes a page that doesn do anything) and then whoever designs the program would modify that file. ...anyone have opinions on if this would be the best way to do it? or have a better way?

Basically: Two <include>'d pages for POIs in the file: one for downloading from the website, and one for user-custom POIs; correct? This sounds like the best solution to me.

SaintPeter · #15 07-15-2005, 01:34 AM

Seems to me that it would be realitivly trivial to write some code in .NET to parse the downloaded data, store some local points and generate a custom included set. The only problem, of course, is that they would not update until you camped out. There is really no way to do dynamic updates of user created data. It's either in the file when the game loads or it's not.

Not, mind you, that I'd like to write it. I figure I'm using the map so I don't HAVE to set the points. OP, I'd say that unless you find a developer who "gets" what you'd like to do, you're SOL.