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

Since AC-Spedia rarely seems to remove entries flagged as suspect, is there a way, like portals, of removing dungeons and other incorrect landmark items from ACX?

Main reason for asking is that a number of the Tusker dungeons have been incorrectly entered and they are a Looooooooong way from the actual location. A 2nd entry has been made and the first incorrect one has been flagged as suspect but still not removed from database. The main problem is that only the FIRST (and there incorrect) entry has the Dungeon Map View link available on it.

A good example of this is Tusker Tunnels.
Incorrect entry - 0.3S, 96.4E, flagged as suspect, has Dungeon Map view
Correct entry - 0.3N, 86.4E, no Dungeon Map view.

The same applies to quite a few other Tusker dungeons.

Even if the duplicate incorrect entries can't be manually removed, is there a way of having the Dungeon Map view available from the correct entries?

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 12:55 am

Edit the correct entry and fill in the "Block" value from the other entry so that the Dungeon map works. The Dungeon map just looks at the "Block" number for the dungeon to find the map. This is something that is only stored locally in your DUNGEON.DAT file and is not part of the AC-Spedia data.

Do prevent AC Explorer from using Suspect entries, go to the Options and turn off the Show Suspect option. You can delete them yourself also using the Delete button, and even updating the database should maintain your deleted items.

To remove them from the AC Spedia database itself you'll have to contact the AC Spedia people directly.

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

>> Edit the correct entry and fill in the "Block" value from the other entry so that the Dungeon map works. The Dungeon map just looks at the "Block" number for the dungeon to find the map. This is something that is only stored locally in your DUNGEON.DAT file and is not part of the AC-Spedia data. <<

Where to I find the DungeonID of a dungeon to manually enter the correct location in the DUNGEON.DAT? Since it is only listing each dungeon once and it is listing the incorrect (ie. suspect flagged) dungeon I'm assuming I'll have to look elsewhere to find this info?

>> Do prevent AC Explorer from using Suspect entries, go to the Options and turn off the Show Suspect option. You can delete them yourself also using the Delete button, and even updating the database should maintain your deleted items. <<

Done this and it is still showing suspect entries. Have also tried selecting the suspect entry both on the Map and the entry in the list and hitting the Del key but nothing happens.

>> To remove them from the AC Spedia database itself you'll have to contact the AC Spedia people directly. <<

Great. The email address on the website (mongoose@chisp.net) bounced saying service unavailable...

I've also noticed that flagging entries as suspect just seems to generate an IIS error on their website and it no longer seem sable to flag suspect entries in their database.

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 8:00 am

In case you might be interested/excited, I plan on writing some server scripts for zMapper in early March that will remove our current dependance on the AC-Spedia databases. I've decided that using an external database provider just causes too much grief, like the problems you have reported.

If the Show Suspect option isn't working, then somehow these locations are not really flagged as "Suspect" in the database. It's a very simply feature to filter out database records that have this bit set, so I can't imagine how it could be unreliable unless the data itself was messed up.

I believe the DungeonID is the same as the "Landblock" of the dungeon (do a /loc while in the dungeon) with the last 4 digits set to zero. The first 4 digits are the hex value of the DungeonID. So, for example, if /loc shows a value of:
12AB56FE
then the DungeonID needed to get the map from the ACmaps site would be: 12AB0000 in the Block field of the Edit screen.

You can probably double-check this with existing dungeons that have maps to be sure.

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

>> In case you might be interested/excited, I plan on writing some server scripts for zMapper in early March that will remove our current dependance on the AC-Spedia databases. I've decided that using an external database provider just causes too much grief, like the problems you have reported. <<

Great stuff! So you'll be pulling all the existing data down from AC Spedia, cleaning it up, removing suspect entries, and then hosting the DB frontend and backend yourself?

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

Zugg,

I've just tried what you suggested about the changing of the values in the DUNGEON.DAT but the settings are correct. I'm guessing the problem is that the duplicate dungeon entry is on the same landblock but at incorrect coords..

The example I'm working on is Tusker Holdings.

When inside the dungeon, doing a /loc produces the following:

Your location is landblock: 5b480314, X:202.1, Y: -95.2, Z: 0.0, H:316.0

So based on what you said, the entry in the DUNGEON.DAT should have "5B480000" at the start of the line, well, it *does* already have this value.

The entry is currently:
5B480000,4932,http://www.acmaps.com/maps/5B48.gif,Tusker Holding

Any ideas?

Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 6:35 pm

Yep, I see the problem now. The DUNGEON.DAT file is keyed on the Dungeon Block. In this case, 5B480000 is the key. So, AC Explorer can only handle a single dungeon entry for a given dungeon block. So, as you said, if you have duplicate dungeon entries on the map, AC Explorer can only activate the dungeon map for one of them. The second value in the DUNGEON.DAT line is the ID value of the dungeon. So, you might be able to edit this to point to the correct location ID.

zExplorer should handle this better since the URL and Block info is stored in the regular map database, rather than in a separate DUNGEON.DAT file.

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

quote:

In case you might be interested/excited, I plan on writing some server scripts for zMapper in early March that will remove our current dependance on the AC-Spedia databases. I've decided that using an external database provider just causes too much grief, like the problems you have reported.

If the Show Suspect option isn't working, then somehow these locations are not really flagged as "Suspect" in the database. It's a very simply feature to filter out database records that have this bit set, so I can't imagine how it could be unreliable unless the data itself was messed up.

I believe the DungeonID is the same as the "Landblock" of the dungeon (do a /loc while in the dungeon) with the last 4 digits set to zero. The first 4 digits are the hex value of the DungeonID. So, for example, if /loc shows a value of:
12AB56FE
then the DungeonID needed to get the map from the ACmaps site would be: 12AB0000 in the Block field of the Edit screen.

You can probably double-check this with existing dungeons that have maps to be sure.

I think the main problem is that the main developer of AC Spedia decided not to play AC2. I helped with ACSpedia 2 though and can make changes or fix bugs if need be. You can reach me at markdall@hotmail.com or pax@pax.no-ip.info. I play AC2 and I've been using zExplorer quite a bit lately, including updating locations in the database - it seems to work. I'll make a note to myself to check the 'suspect' stuff.

Pax
http://ac2.clarkzoo.org