Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 24 Dec 2003 Posts: 6 Location: USA

Zugg, Fantasitic work on this product! A friend of mine suggested it, and I have been checking it out. I am impressed, but I have a couple of suggestions/questions. By posting them here, anyone else with the same ideas/questions can see the answers.

1) Change the order in which coordinates are entered. The current y/x (I figure it was to match the way a game originally displayed them) system does not match the standard X/Y system used in Horizons.

2)Would it be possible to add a mode to the map side of the app, that would switch the cursour to a "hand" and allow the user to left click on the map and then drag the view the desired direction?

What I do is zoom in to a desired distance using the mouse wheel, but when I want to change my view, say to the left a bit I have to use the scroll bar on the bottom of the window. What I would like to do is left click on the map and drag it over. Exmples of this can be found in ACDsee and photoshop.

3)A system to allow users to group data points in the left window in choosen tree structure. Exmple; If the user chooses "group by like item", then all the Anvil data points would be collapsed into a grouping. Then when cllicked on the grouping would open up and list all the Anvils. Of course for this to be really usefull we would need multiple grouping levels.

Exmple:
When a user starts up the app, and chooses the "as tree stucture" tab, the left pane would display a default structure:
+Dalimond
+Machines
+smelter
smelter 1
smelter 2
+Trainers
Druid trainer
Scout Trainer

4) I know this is a minor quirk and most people will not care, but could you move new data point entry off to its own tab. I think there should be a logical split between editing a current point and creating a new one.

5) I think it would be cool if I could see who entered a datapoint and when it was entered.

6) (Last one for now) I think it would be great if a history of data files was kept locally. Maybe keep the last 5 or so, that way users could revert back to an DB if they wanted to. I would like to compare how things looked 4 days ago to how they look now.

As a said at the top, this is an awsome app. and if I am still playing Horizons in 2 weeks, I will be purchasing Zexplorer. Thanks Zugg.

-Talya Thorwynd

Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 9:01 am

Thanks for the comments. Here are some answers and explanations:

1) Yes, this is left over from Asheron's Call where the coordinates were entered as "Latitude/Longitude" which is Y/X as you noticed. I'll consider adding an option to flip this, but I'll have to think about it since it would make the input in a lot of places different depending upon the game that is selected. Keep in mind that zExplorer is used for more games than just Horizons.

2) To "drag" the map, click and hold the scroll-wheel button (MouseButton3) and then move the mouse. When you hold down the scrollwheel button you'll see the mouse cursor change to indicate that you can drag the map around. I think this is what you are looking for.

3) The "Favorites" tab is used for this. The items in the Favorite tab can be dragged into any sort of hierarchy that you want. But I can also see where it might be useful to change the sort order of the main list of locations. There isn't any way to make the main list hierarchical however.

4) Not sure I see the need for this. Clicking the New button is used to add a new location. The data fields for New and for editing an existing location are the same, so it seems like duplicating this would just take up more room and resources.

5) Unfortunately, in order to do this the zExplorer client would have to download a list of active users and at this time I keep the list of users private to avoid database hacking. But finding a way to do this is on my list for future improvements. Also, currently zExplorer uses a single "user" database for all of it's games (since many people play more than one MMORPG). So, the user list can get pretty large.

6) Unfortunately, there just isn't any way to do this. zExplorer is using a real SQL database and other than making a complete backup copy of the database, there is no good way to "revert" to a previous set of data.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and glad you are finding zExplorer useful. I'll be cleaning up some of the data added recently when I get back from my holiday vacation on Jan 5th.

Beginner Joined: 04 Dec 2003 Posts: 11 Location: USA

Hey everyone, I few suggestions I came up with!
1st. Have option for the last zone you use reload on startup.
2nd. Place zones as a pull down like servers.
3rd. Add these to the show list for SWG. Cloning Facility, Shuttleport, Starport, Vendor, Theater, Hotel, Housing.
4th. let the NPC Location show on each server. instead of just all.

Newbie Joined: 24 Dec 2003 Posts: 6 Location: USA

Thanks Zugg for taking the time to answer my questions and consider my suggestions. Expect to see some money from me after the first of the year. ;)

I discovered that my mouse drivers were did not set my wheel button to "middle mouse button" once I did that I got the map scroll working perfectly. This alone makes the application much easier for me to use, and I will have to work with the favorites and see how they function.

Have a great new year.
-Talya

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 9:36 am

Hey Galileo, could you start a seperate topic for the suggestions for SWG. I'll be doing some updates after the holidays and need to keep the suggestions for the SWG map seperate from the Horizons map which is what this tread initially talked about. Thanks!

I'm working on a way to add new icons via the normal Update Datafiles method.

It actually doesn't make sense to put the Zones in a simple pulldown menu since the zone list can be a complete hierarchy. The hierarchy in SWG is simple, so a pulldown might make sense, but with other maps it might be more complicated. I'll think about doing a "flat" list of zones for a pulldown and see what I can do.

Beginner Joined: 04 Dec 2003 Posts: 11 Location: USA

NP, will do!