Zugg Software :: View topic - Ac Explorer 3.33a not calibrating as of April 2004

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

Auto-Calibration not working at all since the April 2004 AC1 patch (today), and the March manual calibrations no longer work either.

Of note is that the calibration has seemed off since January in one way or another ever since Turbine began using their new dev platform to compile the AC Client. In January the vertical axis (Z) stopped working entirely, although the X and Y axis still functioned.

Starting in March, the remote client began showing stairstepped routes on the map, instead of smooth lines. This indicates to me that the March manual calibration was off a bit as well, and of interest is that the March numbers matched the working Feb numbers (with the aforementioned issue with the Z axis.)

I hope this is helpful in pinpointing the issue, thanks again Zugg for my overall favorite AC1 Utility! ;)

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:32 pm

I'll try to take a look at it next week, but if Turbine has changed their development platform and done something to mess up the tracking, than that might be the end of tracking. That's the problem with tracking...it's always *very* dependant upon the actual AC client code and how memory is handled. If they've changed their internal memory structures, then there might not be anything I can do.

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

:(

That's THE feature that encouraged me to get the registered version. From talk on VNboards, it's the same for almost everyone else that registered.

Here is hoping you can find the new memory locations and enable acxserv.exe to see them.

/e crosses his fingers . . .

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

Did some digging around. It appears that the @LOC info is still reachable by memlock, but the format might have changed. Decal exposes these via API but the memlocks data file that Decal uses is encrypted, so I can't just pull up the addresses that way.

Just more info from a non-programmer, I might be totally confusing the issue here but thought it worth mentioning.

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 3:05 am

If someone find out the new memory location for the @LOC info, definitely post. It's a lot easier to modify ACXServ to find the new data once I know where it is, than it is for me to try searching for it from scratch.

Davidge, I realize that many people use AC Explorer for this reason, but I've been completely honest through the entire AC Explorer development that this features was completely up to the game developers. There are lots of easy ways for them to prevent this from working if they want, or to modify their EULA to prevent this kind of thing, and there is nothing I can do about that. If it turns out not to be possible to track, you can always encourage people to complain to Turbine and let them know that AC Explorer is part of your enjoyment of the game.

For the record, I should let people know that it was *Microsoft* who were pretty supportive of AC Explorer in the past. I had good relations with all of the top people on the Microsoft team. The Turbine team was always a bit more concerned about AC Explorer. So, we just have to wait and see what their plans and wishes are for this. It's *their* game so they get to decide.

But hopefully it just moved to a different area in memory or they changed the structures a bit and some simple tweaking will restore it.

But I'm going to need help from other people on this. I don't play AC anymore, and while I still have an account, I lost my house due to inactivity a couple of months ago and don't even have it installed on my development system any more. So, if anyone learns anything more about this on another board somewhere, please post here since I don't have the time to scan the various AC forums anymore.

Beginner Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 15

How could we go about finding it? Even if it's a trial and error approach, it's somewhere to start. I see over 100 people looked at this thread and I'm sure we could dig up a boatload of help to do it if we knew where to start.

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 6:29 pm

That's well beyond what I can teach in this forum. If you don't already have software for searching this kind of stuff in another application, then it would take more time to explain how to do it than to do it myself.

The guys to watch are the Decal folks and the other 3rd party tools to see if someone figures it out.

Beginner Joined: 02 Apr 2001 Posts: 21 Location: Germany

well... the memlocs for the location are allready updated each month by the decal devs.. they are available in the memlocs.xml in a coded form. Since ACX-Server is a free programm you might be able to contact the decal devs to get access to that file, that would solve that problem each month, no more calibration necessary.

Beginner Joined: 02 Apr 2001 Posts: 21 Location: Germany

Got this information from Hazridi (Decal Dev):

----------------------------------------

try

5DC150
4C/0

for location and offset

I dont have anything that does heading, as decal uses the full client location object to get heading -- arctan( 4c/14, 4c/18 )

------------------------------------

Maybe this helps?

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

Zugg, I have a question for ya ;)

If we can get a trusted Decal Plug-In dev to work with us, and I think I already have one lined up, (his name is D'Sanai in game, of Solclaim) could we get permission from you to write a plug-in that will do the same job as acxserver.exe?

We would need to know the format of the datastream sent to ACExplorer 3.33a over the local network.

Benefits:

- No more calibration, the plug-in would use Decal Memlocks updated by Decal Devs after each patch.

- Logging out would no longer show in ACExplorer as a death.

- You would not have to maintain the plug-in.

I totally understand if you hate this idea, but if you are willing then I can help outline the plug-in requirements, D'Sanai can write it, and Zaki (on this board) and I can help test it. All three of us have our own separate fully registered licenses to 3.33a at this time.

Novice Joined: 14 Aug 2002 Posts: 40 Location: USA

quote:
Originally posted by Davidge

All three of us have our own separate fully registered licenses to 3.33a at this time.

Make that four, if ya don't mind I would love to help ya out on the testing as well I, as yall, am a Registered, AND paid contributor, would love to help out on the testing.

Newbie Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Davidge approached me about this recently, and while I'm not entirely familiar with the protocol you use, I would certainly be interested in giving this a shot, if you are, Zugg. :)

It's funny; I registered AC Explorer because I found it a valuable tool. I don't think ACX Server *existed* back when I registered, LOL. Anyway, as yet, I haven't used ACX Server. I have written and released several plugins though, and I know Davidge would be happy to give me the lowdown rundown on the basics. Wink

Newbie Joined: 08 Apr 2004 Posts: 9 Location: Austria

ACXServer as a Decal Plugin is a great idea. PLEASE make it happen. I like the tracking function of ACExplorer so much, i really want it back :-)

Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 1:43 pm

I think this is a great idea. I'll also be willing to help with beta testing.

Newbie Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 3

If I can be of any assistance in testing, drop me a line ! Tracking was the one thing that I admired most in ACExplorer :)

Newbie Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 1 Location: USA

Decal Explorer sounds interesting but I would love to get ACExplorer working again - I just bought it today and behold - it's not working. :( I hope you can discover the calibration codes soon.

Thanks for a great app (I used it about two years ago before I stopped playing.) I'm back and I'd love to have tracking working - especially since I know where nothing is in Dereth anymore - lol.

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

I checked with the Decal devs to make sure our hypothetical plug-in does not violate any of the terms of use for Decal (D'Sanai and I had a specific concern about rule 12 . . .)

Hazridi and Gouru both replied with an all clear, this idea will not violate the Decal rules.

My first choice is of course that Zugg succeeds at updating the current server component. :)

But if not, and if he approves the idea, then we can proceed.

Newbie Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 3 Location: USA

I hope you guys get this worked out. Traking was an important reason for me to get the registered version. Thanks for a great program.
L'dy

Novice Joined: 14 Aug 2002 Posts: 40 Location: USA

YEah Decal would be a way to go HOWEVER, Please make sure that the Networkability of the AC Xplorer with the server plugin is still intact.
I use a secondcomputer AND video to REAL-TIME track while playing so ALT-TAB, is not necessary.

Thanks

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

That would be the primary objective byteful. I use it the same way. ;)

Novice Joined: 14 Aug 2002 Posts: 40 Location: USA

Right on now if we can just get it to track now that would be great.

Ahh well good things come to those who wait. :)

Newbie Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 1

The trackign feature is the reason i bought acexplorer.

I hope you ll find a solution.

Good luck,

K.

Newbie Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

The tracking feature was the reason i bought AC Explorer as well. I believe that the least Zugg can do for those of us who bought the program is to publish the network communication specs so that others can maintain the tracking feature, whether that be through a new server program, or (more likely, and much better) a decal plugin.

Novice Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 33 Location: Colorado

Personally I would vastly prefer to have the original server component updated over the proposed Decal solution. I only put that out as an option in case the server part cannot be fixed for some reason.

Why?

Cause the acxserver solution runs out of process from the ACClient, and Decal runs in process. For real time tracking running out of process is much less laggy and induces fewer overall problems.

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 10:09 pm

Wow, I go away for the weekend and this topic explodes! Smile

I think a Decal plugin would be *great*! I will try to post something about the protocol format used by ACX Server later this week. It's a very easy protocol and I thought I had already published it, but I can't find it anywhere, so it must have slipped through the cracks. Anyway, it should be really easy for anyone who knows how to code Decal to make this work.

I'll also still look at updating ACX Server if it is possible. But this doesn't have to be an exclusive deal. There is no reason that we can't have both ACX Server and a Decal plugin and just let people choose which they want to run. AC Explorer certainly won't care as long as there is a server running that can supply the location data.

But Davidge has an excellent point. The reason ACX Server has always provided more timely data is that it was using the in-client location, where as Decal was using the location sent via the network protocol from the server, which lags a bit.