the packet collector still works with live, but eqextractor has not been updated to understand the packets... the only reason it has not been updated is that nobody has done enough packet collecting to make it worth updating... I have said it many times: that as soon as somebody makes it worth my while to update it, I will update it. That likely means dozens of good packet collects.
as for building from collects, all of the tools needed are available. eqextractor understands all of the binary logs on peq's site. eqbuilder understands the eqextractor output and the older text based logs. etc... thats exactly how cavedude did it.
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 databases.
As for PEQ... I will start with a general philosophy item, which is that we have not just dumpped all the packet logs into the database as fast as we can for a very specific reason... that reason being that the tools used to build the world are constantly evolving... and very rarely does an automated tool work on a zone once it has had any sort manual tuning (the manual mods generally get lost). Further, more packet collects get collected for zones, and there are no tools to date which are capable of merging a new packet collect into an existing database. eqbuilder must be given everything all at once and then once that zone is built, its manual from that point on. PEQ goes in small increments to minimize the impact of these things.
As for PEQ not being responsive, the truth of it falls into two categories. One is that the team is small and busy, and we do not get to the forums as much as we should. But the overwhelming issue with people helping on PEQ is that people seem to think they will be given direct database access. The fact of the matter is that the PEQ database is built with very high quality standards, and until a person has proven themself capible of maintaining these standards, there is no hope of obtaining database access. The fact of the matter is that the only way to contribute to the project is by posting SQL updates to the database. I have put in a lot of time to make EQEmu and PEQ Editor log all its updates to files for exactly this reason... but at the end of the day, there hasnt been more than a handfull of SQL fixes to any PEQ release in many months.. (BTW Angelox, as far as I can tell, you never posted anything about the database on the PEQ forums, only about PEQ editor)
I am not really interested in hearing follow up comments about PEQ on this topic, so dont bother. PEQ will continue to move forward at its own pace, and hopefully there will be enough of a trickle of people willing to contribute within the bounds of the PEQ model to keep the project alive. Maybe times have changed enough that this model cannot survive, time will tell.
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