Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 6:45 pm

I thought it was about time to post some status news on the next version of zExplorer (and probably zMapper).

Right now I'm working on the scripts used to set up your own Map server for a game. My intent is to move the data for AC2 from the AC-Spedia2 site over to my own site so that I can then add some more features for zExplorer.

The scripts are being written in PHP and for the MySQL database server. This is a cross-platform, free solution that will allow people to set up map servers on any platform they want. I'll be making the scripts available to the public to improve/modify/use when I'm done.

Last week we finished with the MySQL installation and transferred the rest of the zuggsoft.com site from Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL. Now I'm learning PHP and writing the database scripts. So far PHP looks pretty cool. I'll be gone over the long July 4th weekend, but hope to have the database server ready a week or so after that.

Once the database server is up and running, I'll then be adding maps for some other games. I have most of the material for Dark Age of Camelot ready, and will also be looking at Star Wars Galaxies, Ragnarok, Earth & Beyond, and NeoCron. But first I'll move the Asheron's Call 2 data over as a test.

Supporting some of these other games require some additions to the zExplorer program itself, so look for this new version of the client in August. It will also require some improvements to zMapper, so you'll also see a new version of that in August.

Then I plan to continue working on improving both of these programs through the Fall, with the goal of adding a lot of support to zMapper for MUD Area development.

That's the current status and plans. Thanks for your continued support of these projects!

Wanderer Joined: 07 Nov 2001 Posts: 53 Location: Australia

As a long-time registered user of AC Explorer and AC1 player there are two main things I want to see:

1. All existing AC Explorer features ported to zMapper. Goes without saying really and I know you've previously said that this is also you intent. Most important feature I'm waiting on is real-time tracking.

2. Get a more reliable 'content' source for AC1 than AC Spedia. Their database is a mess. Period. They do no maintenance on it, e.g. removing incorrect or outdated entries and their website is buggy when trying to do Adds or Searches (random SQL failures and errant errors). You just have to look at the Dungeons listed for Tusker Island in AC Explorer and there are pretty well 2 entries for every dungeon, sometimes 3, where people have put them in with incorrect coods or got North and South or East and West mixed up or whatever. This makes it a real pain in ACX and also screws up linking to ACMaps since you end up with duplicate entires in the same landblock so it can't be fixed without the entries being removed from the database. The option to not show suspect entires in ACX has never worked for me either.

Given the basic failure of AC2 (just look at the number of worlds being reduced and renewed focus on AC1 by Turbine and MS, and yes, I played AC2 for about 2 months and got totally bored and came back to AC1 like many, MANY others) please don't lose sight of us AC1 players and over-emphasise the time you devote to AC2 support!

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 4:01 am

Yep, I'm planning on (1) for at least AC1 in zExplorer. Doing tracking in other games, such as AC2, is dependant on the specific game client and how much hacking I can do to find the location of your character in the memory of the game client. I'm not promising this feature for anything except AC1 at the moment. But the plan is to make the existing ACXSERV program for AC1 compatible with zExplorer.

On (2), I don't know if I'll mess with the AC1 data source at this time. To many other people use the AC Spedia site. However, I *will* have detailed instructions on how you can run your own map database server. The server scripts that I'm writing are in PHP and MySQL so will work on any platform. If you have access to a web site with PHP and MySQL it will be easy to upload a map database (like AC1) and then modify the data and let other users point to it as a new map database source. I plan to do this for AC2 myself, but will let others take care of the AC1 database if they want.

To be honest, I'm not playing either AC1 or AC2 at this point (although I still have accounts on both). My main test bed for new support and new features will be Star Wars Galaxies for now. But I don't plan to ignore AC1 users...you'll still get the features that you had in AC Explorer. And you'll still get all the new features like the customizeable database servers and stuff. I'll just be relying on users/players of AC1 to do most of the testing for me. I'm really trying to get away from any specific game support and create a toolset that works with *any* game. I just won't have the time to get really specific and detailed for every game out there.

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 10:04 pm

Here's the latest update:

I apologize for how long this new code is taking. Between family visits, flat tires, and other distractions, this is taking longer than I expected. Not to mention that there seems to be some sort of time dilation effect around here causing days and weeks to pass more quickly than normal Wink

.

In any case, excuses aside, the basic server scripts are finished. I'm working on a bunch of little details now like making sure access rights are solid (can only edit/delete your own locations/notes, etc), and putting the user rating system in place.

The new server scripts will *FINALLY* allow you to properly post Notes about locations, which was the whole purpose of zExplorer in the first place. The new version of zExplorer should even allow this with the existing AC-Spedia2 database since it turned out to be a bug in how Delphi was sending arguments via HTTP:POST that was causing Note submission to fail. But using the new zuggsoft database for AC2 should be even better since it supports the new User Rating system which should reduce duplicate locations, bad notes, etc.

I'll post more on the User Rating system when I've got it working and tweaked. Basically it's a feedback system ala eBay where you can rate notes and locations posted by other users. The more useful locations and notes you post, the higher your rating. The more useless notes, duplicate locations, profanity, or abuse and the lower your rating. If your rating falls too low, you lose the ability to add any locations or notes for a period of time. If your rating gets really high, you gain additional privileges such as the ability to edit other people's locations, delete other locations, submit new maps, etc. There is still a manual check involved in adjusting user ratings, so abusers of the system can be detected easily and dealt with harshly. This should go a long way towards improving the quality of data used in zExplorer. If this system is successful, I might port over the AC1 database as well. But first we'll see how this works with AC2 and SWG.

My current guess is that I'll finish the server scripts late this week. Then I've got a few tweaks to the new zExplorer and will probably release it next week. This zExplorer version will only have the database fixes and note posting fixes (and user rating stuff). After that is released, I'll then add the tracking and terrain path finding for AC1 to zExplorer, which will hopefully only take a couple of weeks.

Newbie Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 5 Location: USA

Actually you should look into another source besides ACSpedia. If you were so inclined, you could probably even host AC Spedia yourself: It doesn't get maintained much because it's owner hasn't played AC1 in something like two+ years, and never played AC2 at all. He's hosting it's huge bandwidth consumption out of his own pocket, and has mentioned a couple of times to me the he's looking to get someone else to host it.

Speaking of which: Whatever you do, I hope you'll modify both the free version as well as the latest version to make ACExplorer download only updates to the data, and not the entire database each time. (This wasn't Zugg's fault at all, it's something the ACSpedia guy didn't need to do initially since ACSpedia started out being only for his use, and now regrets.)

In fact if you were to do that, it would wind up taking far less bandwidth. If I thought you'd use it I'd volunteer to write you up a web service to run on the ACSpedia site and serve up only updates.

Pax

Newbie Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 5 Location: USA

Update: I went through and cleaned out the 35 or so locations that were marked suspect, on the AC Spedia site.

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2003 6:11 pm

Actually, AC Explorer already only downloads the updates, assuming the server scripts are able to handle it. The date of the last update is sent to the server scripts, so it's up to the scripts to filter the database and only download stuff that has changed since then. This *was* working back when I was really actively using it. If you go into the setup options in AC Explorer you'll see where you enter the URL for getting updates and you'll see how the date is being sent. When you select Update Data, you are given the option for doing a Full or Recent update. So, it's up to the users of AC Explorer to use the Recent and not the Full setting.

However, *zExplorer* does have a bug that doesn't set the LastUpdate date properly. This will be fixed in the next version of zExplorer so that it only downloads the updates. And the way zExplorer works, the initial setup for a particular game involves a download of the entire map database file in MDB format. The actual updates via HTTP are *always* done with a Recent update, so bandwidth usage from zExplorer users should be lower than AC Explorer users.

I have no plans for updates to AC Explorer at all. All of the updates are occuring in zExplorer which will eventually replace AC Explorer. I only maintain a single set of source code, so I don't even have the source code of the free AC Explorer anymore.

If I were to "take over" the ACSpedia database, it would only be in a limited sense. I will only be hosting map databases using the new server scripts that I'm writing for zExplorer. AC Explorer will not be able to connect to these servers. So, I might have an AC1 database on my site, but you'll need to use zExplorer to get to it. This way, the bandwidth usage is coming from a tool that I can control and update. Poor ACSpedia is getting used from all sorts of uncontrollable sources other than AC Explorer.

Once I'm hosting the data for zExplorer, and once zExplorer has the tracking and path finding features of AC Explorer, we might consider shutting down ACSpedia and have people start using zExplorer instead of AC Explorer. Of course, this will upset all of the people using the free version of AC Explorer, but the decision would be up to those people in charge of AC Spedia. Bandwidth can get expensive (I definitely know about that!), and I'm not sure everyone realizes how much time, effort, and money the ACSpedia folks have put into making their database a useful service for AC1 users.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2003 11:49 pm

Server scripts are done (at least the first version). I'm doing some final testing on the new version of zExplorer that uses these scripts tonight. Tomorrow I expect to copy the new scripts to the zuggsoft site (now that my network connection is FINALLY fixed) and populate the database for AC2. Then I'll release both the server scripts as well as the new version of zExplorer that uses the new AC2 database on zuggsoft.com instead of the ACSpedia2 database.

Look for the new files sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Novice Joined: 09 Feb 2001 Posts: 42

Is zExplorer linked to a online database? Because when i hit the update button I don't get new database entrys.

Also the update software button says I'm still using 4.01 version it also didn't find any new update when I was running v4.01.

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2003 8:55 pm

I haven't updated the version on the web site yet since I was waiting to see if there were any major last-minute problems. Typically I announce new versions of software in this forum, then a few days later I update the version used by "Update Software" for people to automatically download. I'll be updating this version to 4.10 on Monday. Until then, just download and install the new version manually.

And yes, zExplorer is linked to an online database. The location of the database depends upon what game you have selected. Using the new 4.10 version there are two databases for AC2, the original AC Spedia and the new zuggsoft.com database. The AC2.MDB database that is downloaded when you first connect to the zuggsoft.com database already contains the updated data, so right now Update Data isn't going to download any new entries because nobody has added anything in the last couple of days.

Novice Joined: 09 Feb 2001 Posts: 42

I'm using AC1 database

I used the Update datafiles button, didn't seem like it d/l anything.

I don't think any of the data that was entered this year is even in the database.

I dont know if ac1 has wrong database link or what

Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 8:01 pm

Ahh, yes, the previous version of zExplorer had a bug with it's "LastUpdate" date. It was always getting set to the current date so that it wasn't uploading properly. This is fixed in the 4.10 version of zExplorer, so give that a try. Delete the AC1.INI file and that should reset the LastUpdate date so that it downloads new info.

If that still doesn't work, then there might be a problem with the AC-Spedia database that zExplorer is linked to. If you look in the ZEXPLORER.TXT file you will see the URL that is used to fetch the updated data (the cgiGetLoc string). It's up to the remote server to interpret the date field in this URL and fetch new items.