I've outlined the new loot system here: http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35770 and will commit it today.

The new tool is done and works very nice. Some larger zones take about 5 minutes to load. A help video tut is being done and that should make it easier to use.

I'm excited about this because it pulls data from Ala, and works very well.Nice to have new updated loot for those missing zones.

I will upload this either tonight or mon nite

GeorgeS

I finished the extracting tool and also created a youtube video of about 30 min in length.
I'll link the vid within the program also show it here.
I will upload the new version mon nite.

George

Uploaded the tools today. They only work with PEQ-2214+, so don't ask for the backward compat.

Also, youtube tuts are up and are about 30 min each. Pls note I have a heavy accent (ZA), so be gentle on me.

My NPC&LOOT EDITOR for databases rev2214+ is at:

NPC TUT


All loot extractor by ZONE tutorial

ALLA zone loot tool

*edited links to new vids with higher quality and sound.*

Also, if you want more tuts, just let me know what you need.
I am planning a spawngoup and spawning npc tut
and a merchant editor tool..


GeorgeS

GeorgeS, REALLY hard to hear these videos, otherwise this is looking pretty neat.

EDIT: I popped headphones in and I can hear a bit better but it is pretty quiet.

No problem, I will reupload the originals tonight as the conversion with vdub lost some volume. Easy fix, just try again tomorrow. It's a 400MB upload:)

*edited links to new vids with higher quality and sound.*
New tools have links as well to these tools. Just updated these as well


GeorgeS

I love your accent man :)

Reminds me of Flight of the Conchords, who claim to be from New Zealand. Though, there is a hint of something different that I can't quite put my finger on.

Back to the main subject; Looks like the tool updates are pretty sweet. Watching the video now and will definitely have to play around with the tool later.

missing OCX controls
 

George,

While trying to run the zam_zone_parser, it asked for two OCX files that you did not have in the resource directory

MSHFLXGD.OCX and MSINET.OCX. I was able to get them, just letting you know.

Thanks, these are now in the latest zip.

I like the loot tool, it makes populating loot for zones that don't have any much easier. I did come across one issue when trying to get the loot for the Steppes though. Everything worked until it was getting the loot from allah on line 83 then I get the following:

Runtime error 5
Invalid procedure call or argument.

The application then closes.

I reloaded everything to the point where I get the loot from allah then went down and looked at line 83. It is populated with the following NPC

From Allah: Hemmet, Master Shureshot
NPCTypes: Hemmet,_Master_Shureshot - NPCID 399084

The only difference with this vs others that I see is the comma. Could it be causing a problem?

Good diagnostic work. Yes commas are bad. I will put a check for that and look at that zone too.

GeorgeS

I gotta give you some major kudos for these new tools GerogeS. I just used the zone parser tool to populate loot in Stone Hive, Goru`Kar Mesa, and Blackfeather Roost tonight. This was after I hand populated Blightfire Moors a couple of weeks ago. Being able to populate loot in a zone in a matter of minutes makes the process almost fun.

The only downside to the populated loot that i could see was the drop rates on some items seemed inflated... like defiant gear. I got 3 pieces off 1 mob. Though, I half way expected that to happen. I may go back in and add my own defiant gear tables and remove the existing defiant loot drop entries.

Also, while I find these tools (the zone parser and the NPC editor) to be very handy, I did also notice that while the tools appear to fit on your screen comfortably, they don't do so well on lower resolution screens. I work and play from a laptop that has a max resolution of 1330x768, and the NPC editor in particular does not play nice at this res. With the window sized to fit my screen it won't show the last 10 or so items at the bottom of the big scroll list. I can select the last visible and use keyboard arrows to scroll down and see the last few, but having visible horizontal and vertical scroll bars here would be immensely helpful.

Thanks again for your hard efforts to bring us awesome-tastic tools!

I think they got re-excluded from your archive George?

Grabbed the VB6 run-times, just saying though.