New Years resolutions anyone?

[eq4me]

The big problem is that some of the tables that need to be loaded into shared memory are memory hogs. Right now you just cant space IDs out for further addons without wasting huge ammounts of Memory.

More discussion is here:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...0&page=1&pp=15
and here:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21466

Angelox: Since PEQ picked up tremendous speed in the last few weeks did you consider joining up with em? I am pretty sure the rigid policies of the last Maintainer are somewhat loosened and the guys from PEQ might be happy to implement many of your additions and corrections. They may stop at purely handspawned zones though. Provided that PEQ Database releases will be more frequent i am sure this would prevent alot of double work as both you and the PEQ Team are prone to fix the same bugs, just look the bug submissions and resolves on the PEQ board ...

Well, back to lurking for now.

[Angelox]

Originally Posted by eq4me

The big problem is that some of the tables that need to be loaded into shared memory are memory hogs. Right now you just cant space IDs out for further addons without wasting huge ammounts of Memory.

More discussion is here:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...0&page=1&pp=15
and here:
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21466

Angelox: Since PEQ picked up tremendous speed in the last few weeks did you consider joining up with em? I am pretty sure the rigid policies of the last Maintainer are somewhat loosened and the guys from PEQ might be happy to implement many of your additions and corrections. They may stop at purely handspawned zones though. Provided that PEQ Database releases will be more frequent i am sure this would prevent alot of double work as both you and the PEQ Team are prone to fix the same bugs, just look the bug submissions and resolves on the PEQ board ...

Well, back to lurking for now.

Let me re-phrase what I mean, and sum it all up; there is no public database; PEQ database belongs to PEQ server, and the drive is towards the success of the PEQ server, just as is with all the servers at EqEmu. You place a server up, it becomes competitiion, You see, we are not working for each other, we are competing with each other. No hard feelings, it's just the way things works out.
We need to make a database to where the priority is to the database, and not any specific server. Something that is totally accessable by anyone who qualifies, and totatally viewable/downloadble by anyone, anytime, and *no strings attached*.
But this is something I tried for when I first started, and i started posting anything I did with hopes as to start something, it worked somewhat - but there's more to it than that I guess. I suggested we combine what we all have now ( the three database), and they can be combined and optimized, use it to start a new database with a new year. If something is not right, it can be fixed or corrected, but at least we started with everyones work. and it is "public domain".

[cavedude]

PEQ is not about the server at all. I don't care how popular it is or who likes it or not. I don't deal with players well, and luckily WildcardX is kind enough to do so for me.

The only goal of PEQ is database development, the server is just a testbed for any changes we make. IMHO, running a centralized server for players to login into and catch bugs is the best way to develop a database.

Anybody who wishes to help us out are more than welcome to do so. We can find a job for anybody regardless of knowledge/skill level.

[Zengez]

I agree with Cavedude, which is why i wanted to start something just like it, but the drawback I knew of to PEQ (haven't really been keeping up a lot lately) was that there were a very very select few in charge of doing any database work, which was good in that you don't have newbins messing everything up, but if those people drop the project/have RL stuff/ get stuck on a project/whatever then the project stalls, and we all look on with frustrated hopes of getting another expansion poped and some of us thinking "Man, I could be helping get stuff done if I were able..." which is exactly why I wanted a truly open server to spawn/test/update/etc... the problem being again the newbins going "Hey! lets make all the giant bats in north Qeynos into mini Cazic Thules!" which then messes up all the hard work we're trying to accomplish.

Solutions? I don't know... perhaps a mass recruition of database editors into a world using the newest databases available to start work... perhaps the best and the brightest move on to PEQ, kind of an 'application' to join PEQ team, thus allowing a larger pool of talented and able people to work on the real database, avoiding the newbins and more importantly getting people in to work on the real database structure that people can use...

As to Angelox's worries about competition, I definitely see where he's coming from, but I don't know if you're going to have a lot of choice if you want to do anything more than just have people post updates and snippets of code every time they finish a half dozen spawns for 'somebody out there' to include into a database that they might then share... /shrug just my thoughts.

And now to eat, hopefully some of that made sense.

EDIT::

Oh yea, as the actual main part I meant to write, The idea of coming up with a cohesive and mandated ID structuring system would be a great idea and a good way to give order to the chaos so that some of us that don't feel like diving into the database for hours at a stretch could do some work occasionally without getting lost in the myriad of mapping ids and tables...

Also, some kind of structure between the loottable id, npc id, and the spawngroup id would be immensely helpful too, but thats for another tangent.

[John Adams]

@Arewen, the only problem I see with globalizing the zoneid * 1000 are in cases of NPCs, spawns or objects that can appear in more than one zone (bats, rats, orcs, etc). Named or specialized NPCs, sure... but what zone really owns that rat? Or, do we just make 1 rat NPCid per zone that might possibly contain a rat? Heh... rambling starting, I'll quit.

Good ideas tho. I like low numbers, high efficiency. I am rather adept at SQL, so give a PM if you need me to look into anything with you.

[Zengez]

I dunno, people laugh at the different NPCID for the same rat/bat/orc for different zones, but it seems to be that might be a good idea on a few levels;

For one, the above mentioned regularity and predictability of every zone,

For another; it allows quick and easy manipulation/customization straight on the database for a zone. Say I want to make North Karana 5 lvls higher, I can achieve this without having to figure out which mobs I'm randomly updating lvls in some other random zones like east karana or whatnot. This is obviously a bizaar example but I think the point is made.

Another point, the mobs could be easily refferenced by any number of tools and programs for future effort, imagine being able to pull up and edit lists of mobs by zone, or (if my hinted at ideas were put into place!!) loot type, or spawn type etc etc without ruining half your other zones.

That's my 2 cents.

[John Adams]

Originally Posted by eq4me

They may stop at purely handspawned zones though.

For the love of God and all that's Holy... this is probably the 5th time I've asked this with no acknowledgement coming back from anyone who might know... eq4me's statement eludes to the fact there might be a way to NOT have to hand-spawn zones. If this is true, please oh PLEASE let the rest of us know. We could do so much more [accurate] work if we still had this capability.

I understand the builders/extractors/etc are not kept up with whatever encryption Live has week after week. But if there is some other way, I'm begging... please let us know.

As an aside, I have SEQ running (and am totally amazed by it, btw) and grabbing collects from any zone I can just to see what it looks like. Most of it is garbled, of course. I cannot read this myself, without knowledge. I'd love to take my new collects and stuff them into a database, even if it were by hand INSERTS of the raw data. I just need to be able to read the packets. PF2Text doesn't seem to be anywhere anymore (at least I cannot find it). Is there any info, at all? SEQ lacks a users guide or walkthrough, so it's nearly impossible to figure out except by trial and error - which is what I've been doing the last week.

Yes, I am stomping my feet. And begging. Please, if there's still a way to benefit from collects, tell us. I'll start now on any zone I have access to.

(btw, this was not @eq4me, his comment just reminded me how ignored this question has gone)

[eq4me]

Yes, I wanted to hint to this post:

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...769#post126769

The big question is if someone other than FNW is able to update eqextractor.

[Angelox]

Originally Posted by eq4me

Yes, I wanted to hint to this post:

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/sho...769#post126769

The big question is if someone other than FNW is able to update eqextractor.

I will state that it would be crazy IMO to not use collected data to initially spawn a zone. If you ask me, this is the primary reason that PEQs database still exists when so many other (hand spawned) ones do not... people making shit up from memory just dosent work, especially on a large scale, so many intricacies that make the world emmersive are lost. PEQ exists on the foundation of strict controls on modifications, such that somebody who thinks they remember something a certain way does not screw up the database without doing their homework first. This was a very significant problem for the older database

You know, I could say a lot here, but I really don't want to start anything
But I will say, that when I first started here, it also was said that merging databases was "very hard", almost impossible", and a "waste of time".
I will also like to say that the database I have been working on for all of you, has "hand spawned " and "merged" zones (you would never know unless I told you).
I am very gratefull to a lot of the Devs and programmers in this forum (for all their help), so I will continue to "bite my tongue" , and delete the rest of what I wanted to say.

[Zengez]

Just thought I'd mention it, Tried out the packet collector, and found that I could get it to log my zoning just fine, but any actual information in the zone was not logged at all. Tried all the devices and whatnot with no luck.

EDIT::

Apparently the packets don't actually appear in the file until it's done building which is when I zone out... which makes sense now that I think about it, so scratch this, let the collections begin;

PS: Is there a list somewhere of zones needing collecting?

[John Adams]

Originally Posted by Zengez

PS: Is there a list somewhere of zones needing collecting?

Yes, everything from PoP release to DoDH and beyond, if you're bored.

I'm doing the same with SEQ, and getting some cool info in just the text dumps (still not the golden data I am after, but still fun to play with). Let's see if we cannot bring the packet God out of hiding.

[cavedude]

PEQ actually has most zones our client supports spawned. What we are missing are mainly nightmareb, and most LDoN zones. The rest will be released once we have tweaked things a bit more.

[Zengez]

Originally Posted by cavedude

PEQ actually has most zones our client supports spawned. What we are missing are mainly nightmareb, and most LDoN zones. The rest will be released once we have tweaked things a bit more.

So essentially unless we can get LDoN groups and/or nightmare b theres little to no point in doing packet collecting since we can't get the useful data from it cause we have no tool and you guys apparently have all you need and we're just waiting on the mysterious tweaking of doomage.... So what can we do to help again?

[cavedude]

Anything PEQ gets will be released, that's the whole point of the project. The problem is at this point, we don't have any tools that work with live packets either :P

[Angelox]

Originally Posted by Angelox

You see, we have a big problem here; No standard database to build on. We got EQ, which was Cavedudes contribution as a database for everyone to use - then we got PEQ, which is sort of a database that everyone has a "limited" access. then we got mine, which I started because no one would post public updates to their work. basically I'm a "one man band" - you know, harmonica in the mouth, bass drum in-between my legs, etc. , when it comes to database building -
What is the point here? are we going to continue with our personal "agendas" tell we get tired and quit, basically leave EqEmu with out a good. solid PUBLIC database for another year, or are we going to make some changes?
Why don't we get together, merge everything we have and start from there? I haven't went over to anybody's project, simply because I have done way too much work, not just packet spawning, but long, pain-in-the ass work, that should not have to be done over again by me or anyone else.
If someone offered to merge it (AX_PEQ) into a public database, together with all the other db that would accept updates and post regular db updates, then I would go for that.
The EqEmu source has a system that works pretty well, even with the few Devs atm. I can't understand why the MySql database doesn't?
I know we have people in this forum right now that are interested in this.

Which brings us back to what I originally posted
There is no public database , PEQ included. From what I see, this will always remain the same. If PEQ wanted to have their database public, there would be something newer than RC1 out right now.
For the longest time, i was posting every little thing I did, all by myself, all alone - so, if anything else, I proved it can be done. I worked my self sick with this, and became obsessed with this "common" database for everyone. I know that the database is the heart of EqEmu.
All I managed to do, is frustrate myself and provide a lot of good data and ideas for other people's "private" servers. This is all ok, but very few people have come foward and attempted to do work as a "public servant".
Everybody: Please!! Give back some of what you take.