another REALLY nice feature would be a search function, not sure how hard that would be to add but man would it be nice in the item editor :D

Yeah I agree, more precise searching anyway, the search now definitely works. Some nice options for me would be:
2HS
1HS
Piercing
1HB
2HB
Leather
Chain
Plate

Oh you probably mean a text search, yeah that would be cool too :).

Ok, just added a generic search by %name% function. It in the Grid Item Edit, then click on expand a a whole bunch of stuff will show. These are cool little functions I wrote that does batch changes and other stuff. Look for the text box with %netted% - then change it to what you want, hit GO, then the items will appear. Any changes in this grid editor are live.

Add list to Main button propogates this grid list to the main window for adding to you character or other simple editing - etc..

regarding the 1HS/2HS type searches, I'll look into those once I figure it out, I'll add it to the program.


GeorgeS

I noticed a general problem with the tools where the screen is truncated, so that part of it is off the page, and there's no scroll bars to slide over. The close button, for example, is inaccessible. Is there some way i can paste a screenshot?

I'll also see that layers are out of sync, for example the calendar is displayed but the circle around the current date is shifted a row below.

I'm using a few settings for my system to compensate for poor vision so i don't know if that makes a difference.

I gotta say i love your tools. I can see how they could be improved but it's beyond me. For example, having the quest editor use a drop down list of available npcs, or a "create quest giver" option, with the preview you use for the texture/race combo".

Basically it would be cool to make things interconnect, to reduce the amount of potential stuff-ups by typing in an item id or npc id manually for the tools? I can see what i mean in my head but maybe a mock-up would make more sense. I used visual basic 4 back in the dawn of time, but i never did any database interaction. Perhaps what i'm thinking of would be too much work. I saw there was a link to your source code, is that current?

Maybe what i should do is try to see if visual basic 6 is available somewhere (i think my copy of vb4 used floppy disks and i don't even have the drive anymore!). I can only see Visual Studio stuff on the microsoft web page, I assume that's not compatible? I will ask my friends and see if i can borrow a cd with vb6.

I am certainly not a programmer but i can see the screens i want in my mind. Essentially i think the tools could use buttons and dropdown lists to avoid typing, because a huge amount of every quest is repeated with variations: give me item x and i give you y, say "blah" and i say "blah reply". I used to use a html tool (hotdog) which worked in the way i imagine this could work.

Does this sound interesting if somewhat hypothetical?

Eski, you might want to check into Bulle's quest tool that he has been working on. I think he is trying to make some kinda cookie cutter quest maker. Where you input a few fields and it pops out the quest. Should work in most simple and standard quests, but would be pretty useless in the more complicated ones. But, since the majority of live quests are cookie cutter, this would certainly reduce the work load.

GeorgeS' quest editor doesn't need a dropdown for NPCs, because it has a dropdown of zones, which list every NPC in that zone. So, all you have to do is select the NPC you want from that list and start editing your quest. IMO, it is very useful.

Most of his other tools do have interaction with multiple systems. His latest release of the NPC and Loot Editor has so many features and links to his other programs that it is just amazing! I can't believe some of the new changes, they are really great!

I was mainly coming here to post and say that they new sort feature works great for the list of players when loading equipment. I have a little over 5500 chars on my server and it is pretty easy to sort them now that they are alphabetical lol. I can find one in a few seconds now compared to normally more than 10 mins just to find 1 character before heh.

I tried using the custom npc making tool to make a merchant, but as far as i can tell, it creates the merchant but it's not easily added to the game. You have to load up the game and use the gm commands to add the spawn?

Is there any way to add the merchant without running eqemu and then the client, as that seems slow and clumsy? At least being able to spawn the new npc and then summon it into the correct location when you are happy might be nicer?

I can see the "Zone name" box in the merchant editor, but this isn't a drop down or combo, it will load a list of zones if clicked but clicking on one doesn't change the zone name. You have to choose "paste" rather than "select", and a drop down would communicate that better.

There's a merchant id created by the tool, but it doesn't create a new one as far as i can see?

I can go one, but i just want to emphasise that criticising these tools doesn't mean i don't like them, just that i can see grounds for improvement. I'd do it myself if i had better programming abilities and the source code.

I found a copy of vb6 from my partner's computing days and tried using it to open the projects from the source on the http://66.159.225.58/eqemu/eq.html site but it crashes with assorted errors. I don't know if the source code is old, the application i'm using is faulty or incompatible, or what.

The zone name is not a drop down for reasons such as you have hundreds of zones and the current way is better IMHO.

I assume you have never spawned NPC's - there's a tutorial on my site on how to do this. Just because you can create a merchant in the tool, it does not spawn in game. You must restart the zone or if your're editing items, restart the server. The NPC is just a reference in a spawngroup and can be referenced by many spawngroups.

Regarding the tools, they were designed with my 'eye' in mine and since they are now derivatives of many years of work and much input from people, they will not be redesigned at this point. There are classes of tools that interact with each other, so a change here will break a tool over there.

You also need to run at "least" a 1024x768 as a minimum. The screen size issue has been discussed before.

Loading these into VB6 is not easy. You have to register the classes, the dll's,OCX's have ADO installed, MyODBC, SP6 for VB6.

GeorgeS

I've spawned npcs and created a merchant for alchemy products using ndnet's code, your merchant tool and a bit of kludging about with excel. It's just a pain to have to hop in and out of the game to change something. still, if there's no easier way at this time, then that's the way it is. I run at 1280*1024 but i'm happy to try other resolutions.

http://users.tpg.com.au/bcaton/offscreen.jpg

This is at 1280 *1024

http://users.tpg.com.au/bcaton/offscreen1440x900.jpg

Well, I just downloaded your latest , and can tell you they are even better than what I had before, you really paid attention to small things that people need when they are working on areas of the database.
I think many new people expect to start a server and have it all running, editing npcs items, etc. with in a few hours. They go so fast, they don't even stop to read and understand the tutorials and instructions posted.
They must think your tools as some kind of "miracle construction kit" to where they can slap things together with little knowledge of what this is all about.
BtW, that spawn editor you made really rocks - I think one of the hardest things for me to deal with and understand was the relationships of all the spawn related tables. This spawn editor makes all this clear and simple.

Not Loading Spell Editor
 

George,

In 8.20.00 and 8.20.01 I am getting an error when trying to load the spell list editor. I can use the Show NPC Spell Set but when loading the Editor I keep getting the error 76 path not found. 7.33.01 works, which is the last one I had before D/Ling 8.20.xx

In the newest releases, the file resources/spells.txt now is ^ delimited

for example,
make sure you copied the file from the zip.

GeorgeS

On one computer, I unzipped it in a completely new folder and on another, I overworte aqn existing and they both get the same error:
Runtime Error "76"
path not found.

The small error window says npc_loot_edit in the upper bar.
The Spells Text file is there.

I re-wrote it so it uses the resources/spells.txt now. Before it was looking in the everquest folder the the spell file there. I just checked and it works with the local file fine.

If you make new spells then this file needs to be recreated.

GeorgeS

Just so I am clear, you go into npc_loot_edit.exe, click on the drop down for Spell_Lists and click on Spell List Editor and you do not get an error? If not, then am I supposed to have a Spell Editor in the path that I didn't need before? As I said, it works in version 7.xx but in 8.xx I can see the Show NPC SPells List, I just can't get the SPELL EDITOR to run. That is when I get the error 76.

Sorry for the confusion. Download the newest version (a 1/2 hour ago) I just u/l that fixes this.

GeorgeS

Thank George, that did it.

Hey George a few questions:

In the grid editor, either im not using it correctly or something but I can not get it to pull up anything... and when i try to use the search function it gives me an error and then crashes.

Also was wondering about the newest icons for items far down the list. I was wondering if there was anyway to actually use those or are they just not in the emu yet?

You say when you hit searchit crashes?
That can be either your db schema is different from PEQ or you
need to download my recent ODBC drivers.

Grid editor.exe (standalone app) was not modified in any way so as to break fundamental searches. It's weird. You should list your fields for grids and the entries tables so I can check against mine

There are more icons than in the game according to Cavedude, but I think you can use them as you want. Only issue, is players will not see them unless they have the dragitemxx.tga files.

GeorgeS

i updated my drivers with the ones from your site, also im running off of a peq database, and when im in the table editor in the eq items program and i hit excute/load i get a "cannot initialize data bindings" error and nothing is loaded.

as for the item icons... i cant get any item icon past item_1701 to load onto the item, are all the icons past 1701 un usable or am i doing something wrong ect

I hadn't really tried the grid editor until recently, so I don't know if maybe I am doing something wrong, but it seems when I do a query that I am unable to scroll from left to right to edit the fields that aren't already on the screen when the search finishes. Seems like they are locked and I wonder if this is related in some way to how columns were locked from moving the in NPC Loot Editor. Or, maybe I am just doing something wrong. I have the latest 13.9.1 version of the item editor.

Not sure about the item grid editor not showing all the fields. I just added a refresh function after a search to todays version, but that's probably not the problem.

What I would do is install the updated VB6 runtimes from MS

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en


GeorgeS

I don't think my post was very clear about what the problem is. I just tried it again and found that I can scroll from left to right using arrow keys after selecting an item. The problem I see is that there is a scroll bar on the bottom and on the right, but neither have actual scrollers on them. So, I can't drag it from left to right. I can only use arrow keys.

Nothing major, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Still wondering about going past that last item, item_1701 its a broom. Was wondering if you can access any of the icons after 1701 theres a whole bunch, anyone have any info on this?

Sorry. just read this and looked at the program part which displays icons and found the fix.

Everquest Item Editor and Character Inventory Editor
- 13.9.3 - Added icon support for all current live icons

GeorgeS

omg awesome, thank you Georges! dling the new tool now

I hadn't tried adding a focus/worn/click effect since this change was made apparently. Trying it now, it seems like this might not be the best way to sort the list. Since the list is now sorted by ID number instead of spell number, it means I have to open the spells file in a notepad and search for the spells I need to find the ID number of it, and then scroll down to select it from the list in the item editor. I think it was better before when it was sorted alphabetically. Or, is there some other way I can search this list without having to look them up from an external source? I used to just scroll down to what I needed and select it when it was alphabetical.

And, if possible, I think it would be nice to have a simple search box on the main screen for searching for name or item ID. When searching for multiple items to edit them 1 by 1, it takes quite a while to click "Advanced", highlight the 0 and click paste the item name in, then click "SET FILTER" then "OK DONE", then "Run Queru", then select the item. It would be nice if you could just paste an item ID in there and it would automatically load it up and view it. Or, if you could search by name and it would load up the first match on the list automatically. I think this would make the tool more useful when editing multiple items and not using the grid editor.

Also, this is something that is purely cosmetic, but IMO it would be nice to swap the location of the Delete Item and Edit Item buttons. If I had my preference, I think it would be nice if they went; "Edit Item" then below that "Grid Item Edit" and at the bottom would be "Delete Item". Maybe I will get used to the way it is now, but I keep almost clicking "Delete Item".

Ok, thanks for the report.

I'm working on your suggestions and the new item editor will have the following added for fast item searches -

You will be able to find items by partial name %bronze%
and search for items by item#. Allowed searches by number can be delimited by a comma such as -
1001,1004,1060,1865

Found items can either be appended to or replace current main item list
There will be a button to clear the big list.

This should be done later tonight.

GeorgeS
..also changed the layout of the edit/delete buttons as suggested.
:D

As promised -
Everquest Item Editor and Character Inventory Editor


- 13.9.4 - Added ability to find items by either partial name or a list of comma delimited id's - Click on advanced button to access the panel

GeorgeS

woot! i love you george! lol thanks again

Thanks again GeorgeS. The buttons being moved seem much better IMO.

The search I was asking for was meant to be on the main screen though, instead of in Advanced. That is one thing I have always wanted since I first used your tool. Perhaps if you made the item search list slight shorter, you could put the item name and ID searches in above or below the Run Query button. The idea is to be able to search for an item name or ID with minimal clicking to increase efficiency. By having them in the advance box, it is basically the same as it was before.

And if it is possible, it would still be nice if the search could auto select the first item in the list once the search was done. That way, if you are searching by exact name or ID, it will pop right up there and be ready for editing. Just 1 less click really, but still an enhancement.

Personally, I think your NPC Editing Tool is now amazing and I can't imagine how it could get much better. The item editing tool is really nice too, but I can still think of ways to improve it some. I made a post on a pretty major overhaul for it in your section of the forums here. I know you like to get pretty much every request done, but I can certainly understand if you don't want to setup the individual Item Editing window to look like the suggestion I posted. I was just trying to think of a way to optimize that part of the tool so that the entire item could be edited quickly and easily. Also, if there is a way to have mouse-overs, I made a bunch of notes for many of the settings so people can have an idea of how to set them and what they are for without having to read through wikis to find them. If anything, maybe the list I made can come to use somehow. I think an important part of item editing is getting the fields organized so that the fields relating to each other are close together.

Oh, and I am going to edit the spell file the tool uses so that it is sorted by spell name instead of spell ID. Sorting by spell ID makes it hard to find spells without some kind of search feature for them. If you want the spell file when I am done, I can post a link to it.

LOL, one more thing; The eqitems.exe seems to hang in the processes after the application is closed out. This isn't major, but I know you fixed it in the past for some of your tools.

it is missing a quick copy button it used to have =)
still trying to convince George to put it back in =)

I appreciate the responses. Some features are only a click a away and I want to keep the main screen uncluttered as possible. Certain features will be added as needed and by PM requests, other's which are a requested convenience feature will not likely be added when funcitonality exists a menu away. I may add those in at some later time.

I will fix the issue of killing all the tasks when I find the memory leak, and the spells are all delimited by "^", and that was done for all the tools and required extensive work. I forgot the reason I changed it, but it must have been important then...lol

GeorgeS

honestly George, the new way of copying SIGNLE npc is a pain.

I have to:

click the file menu on the tab
select the proper sub menu
type in beging range
type in closign range
click Use this range
clicky copy

VS
old way of:

click copy
type in id

how about this, when COPY on main pannel is clicked a WINDOW will open and ask:

1) multyple npc copies- type in how many (with range in mind)
2) single npc copy - type in range

thought again a Single Copy button on main panel will hardly clutter the interface =)

I won't mention this again so I don't seem ungrateful for everything you allready have done for us, but I hope you change your mind eventualy =)

Chaos, unless I am mistaken, once you set the range, it retains that range and all NPCs copied from that point will then be placed in the next available slot in that range. That seems to make it easier than having to chose an ID every time.

Unless you are only copying 1 NPC at a time every now and then, the new way should be much more efficient. And if you are only doing one every now and then, a few extra clicks won't hurt. It is when adding multiples all in 1 sitting that the extra clicks start to build up. That is why setting the range beforehand and then that being auto-assigned is the most efficient. I haven't tried this out yet, but I believe that is how it works. If so, then that is already about as good as it can get IMO.

Actually that method does sound better than whats there now. Thanks for showing your workflow - I'll prioritise it now.

GeorgeS

LOL, if you use excel, you can make changes like this in a matter of seconds. Last night, I renamed your spells.txt file (didn't delete in case I had to roll back to it) and then took the spells_us.txt that my server runs which has about 20k lines, and converted it to replace the spells.txt in your resource directory. It took about 5 minutes. After all of the spell file work I did in the past, I learned to use textpad instead of notepad and also to use Excel when needed.

In order to convert the spells_us.txt file to the spells.txt file for your tools and to sort it alphabetically, all I had to do was open the spells_us.txt with Excel and import it as ^ delimited so that it separated the ID, Name and other columns. Next, just delete everything in columns C through HH or whatever it goes up to. Then, do a sort on column B (the name column) to sort them alphabetically. Then, just save the file as TAB delimited txt. Last, open the file up with textpad and do a replace on all TABs and change them to ^ again. Save the file and Viola!

Note that I use textpad (search google for it, it's awesome) for doing huge replaces like this because notepad takes FOREVER on the spell file lol.

Personally, I would move the Class/Race pull downs as well as the Weapon, Armor, Magic, ALL/ALL radio buttons to the Advanced window and replace that section on the main window with the new Name and ID search fields. With the item tables being as large as they are, those settings aren't really enough to find what you are looking for and could easily be moved to advanced to create a refined item list. But IMO, it is important to be able to search for a certain ID or Name.

I did notice that hitting the go button on the advanced window when searching for item names or IDs doesn't close the window. At first, I thought this was a bad thing, but then I found that you can keep searching for item names and instead of replacing the entire list, it just adds the newly searched item to the existing list. That feature was handy. If you ever did consider moving the item and name searches to the main screen, it would be nice to keep that feature so it adds all searches to the list. If that was the case, you might want to consider adding a clear button to clear the search list out in case it gets too full.

Sorry if I am beating this to the ground. I don't want to sound like I am nagging you to get this changed. I just wanted to let you know my take on it. I use your tools alot (almost every day) and so, things like this are pretty noticeable to me and I always aim for efficiency :) The most important factors for tools IMO are ease of use and efficiency when making a large number of changes.

note this: the RANGE stays the same which BAD.
know why? cuase once you copied something into that RANGE, the begining range is still the same BUT that ID slot is allreday take, and if you try to copy again- you will get "Id allready exists" error and SQL will crash =)

so logicly if range was set for 101 to 200 and then 26 npcs were copied, the range MUST self increase to 127-200 to be fool prove or self reset to default

NOW, my problem is that I make LOTS of copies of single npcs.
For emxaple, I need a copy if npc 16, 29, 97, 231, 81, 33, 77 etc etc

they ALL singles, and they ALL need to go into SPECIFIC #ID. (I may need copy of 16 in 17, copy of 231 in 91, copy of 77 in 44 etc etc)

now you realise the pain of trying to set Range for EACH single copy every time =)


PS. Oh yeah I totaly support Trev on making Spell alpha-sorted or (even better) a sort option inside the spell chosing windows by # or alpha.

IDEALY, it would be nice if I could just drop my own spell file into editor folder and programm would automaticly read from there what I have =)

You can do that easily if you use the method with Excel that I mentioned above. That is exactly what I did and it took no more than 5 minutes to do.

As for the ranges you are using, that is not the way that most people add new NPCs. I am not really sure why you would want to do it that way. I just use a range that is far above anything currently in PEQ, so in case I ever wanted to add someone else's database to mine, it would make at least that portion of doing it easy without worrying about multiple of the same ID trying to overwrite each other. Like for my database, I started at 2700000, and go up from there. I am up to about 2700700 or so now. It makes it easy for me to find any of my custom NPCs when I need to look for them. Is there a particular reason why you would want to fill in NPC IDs around where the current ones from PEQ are? Sounds to me like you would be better off by a "use next available ID" like what the item editor does when creating item ID numbers.

So that I understand, do you think most people would prefer to use the new Name and ID search fields? It's a big change as you can tell - but I can do this in the next revision no problem. I'll have a go at the coding and see if I can get this to work. Should'nt be very hard - but I'll start a big revision now.

Regarding the npc editing id's , I will think the matter over some over the next few days.

GeorgeS