Item Editor Suggestion
Ok, so I have an idea for a large revamp on the single item edit portion of GeorgeS' Item Editor. I hope you don't have a problem with me making this suggestion. I think your tools are all amazing. I was trying to think of a way to improve the editing of single items, and this is what I came up with to replace the window that opens with you click the "Edit Item" button:
http://stormhavenserver.com/download...tem_Editor.jpg I know it would mean a complete rewrite of that part of the tool. And I am sure that would take a while. The way it works now is good, but I think it would be a bit better if it was setup where you could view all of the information on an item at once. The screen is very packed (I made this in photoshop quickly), but it gets all of the information in there. I think it would look much better if the fields were all aligned on the right side of each column. I also think that slightly changing the font color for each section would help with breaking it up a bit to be easier to read and find what you are looking for. I did a complete organization of the item fields so that they are all grouped into sections relating together (as apposed to having them placed randomly). Here is the organized list of every field in the Items table with notes: Code:
Name - (Field Name) #Mousover Notes %%Pull Down Select Option //If Name is the same as Field Name, then there are no Parenthesis Let me know if you have any questions or other suggestions on this. Or, if this is something that you don't want to do for the tool. I understand that this would be a fairly major undertaking, and wouldn't blame you. Like I said, your tool is already great as it is. |
This would be pretty cool. I think you could get rid of some of the less used ones though to get rid of the clutter.
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well if plan to have everything on one page, don't forget haste and deities. (you could have TABS on the top and swith betwen section which would hold related things)
also, if George goes along with this I would STRONGLY recomend that he does not scrap the current editor view, but rather have an "alternative view" button, so people can swith to which ever form is easier for them to work with |
Haste is already on there and I already made a note about deities not being on the main screen.
I do think it would be nice if there was a way to separate some of the sections without making it require too many clicks. The idea is to minimize having to scroll around, open other windows, and the least clicks possible to make changing items as quick as possible. Most of the fields that are rarely (or never) used could get moved to another page. But, it would be nice to have as many as possible all in 1 screen. |
Wow - I must have missed this post. That's a pretty neat way of showing all the necessary fields!
I can do that in an upcomming version, but I will keep the current single edit one alive for now. You'de be amazed how many bugs I can introduce with fast changes. I'll see what I can do. GeorgeS |
aya, if you do this- do not scrap the current view - simply make a DIFFIRENT layout button to open alternative window so we chose between the layouts
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I briefly mentioned it in the first post, but I wanted to note again that it might be easier to read if the text was colored slightly different for each section (all light so they are easy to read still). Most of the rows contain more than 1 "section" in them, so I figured I would break them down the way I imagine they should be here. Probably the best way to do this would be to alternate between 2 colors back and forth. Maybe white and a light grey or something east to read on your background.
Here is what it might look like: Code:
Row 1: Also, instead of making another window with all of the misc ones that won't fit on the main page, you could just leave your horizontal scroll bar in there like you have on the normal window in the current editor. The one that has all of the fields listed in it. Thanks for checking this out and huge thanks for deciding to give it a try! I know you already have a ton of work on your plate and you already do so much for this community. I imagine that getting this working will be a fair amount of work, and I feel bad even asking it of you, but I really do think it will help out the tool's usefulness considerably. Some of the server ops I know still use old tools for item editing even though they use yours for everything else. Hopefully this will make a few people who are reluctant to switch over more willing to give it another shot. I am excited about the changes you have done lately and about this one getting done. I know this will make the it much easier for me to make the custom items I am planning to start working on soon. |
I briefly mentioned it in the first post, but I wanted to note again that it might be easier to read if the text was colored slightly different for each section (all light so they are easy to read still). Most of the rows contain more than 1 "section" in them, so I figured I would break them down the way I imagine they should be here. Probably the best way to do this would be to alternate between 2 colors back and forth. Maybe MediumTurquoise and a light grey or something east to read on your background.
Here is what it might look like: Code:
Row 1: Also, instead of making another window with all of the misc ones that won't fit on the main page, you could just leave your horizontal scroll bar in there like you have on the normal window in the current editor. The one that has all of the fields listed in it. Thanks for checking this out and huge thanks for deciding to give it a try! I know you already have a ton of work on your plate and you already do so much for this community. I imagine that getting this working will be a fair amount of work, and I feel bad even asking it of you, but I really do think it will help out the tool's usefulness considerably. Some of the server ops I know still use old tools for item editing even though they use yours for everything else. Hopefully this will make a few people who are reluctant to switch over more willing to give it another shot. I am excited about the changes you have done lately and about this one getting done. I know this will make the it much easier for me to make the custom items I am planning to start working on soon. |
Alot of space can be saved by using a CheckedListBox
all the classes can be put in one, races in another, deities in another, and actually alot of the YES/NO options can be contained in another. just my $0.02 |
The CheckedListBox can also be expanded on enter, and shrunk on leave so that it has more viewable area when it's being used - making it less of a pain to view a large list.
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I'm working on a class which does the expand contract stuff - but thanks for the code in the pm.
So far I've managed to place all the fields on a 1024x768 form, and am now working on making it actually work. GeorgeS |
Just an update - the new edit item form is 1/2 done. It reads all item data, and displays the info like trevius' form above. The only thing left is to be able to write the data back to the database.
GeorgeS |
I managed to complete about 1/2 of the program edit. So far it will read the items, but save is not begun. So far about 16 hours in and 1/2 way done..
The new edit button is "new edit". There are likely many issues still with this - and when you consider the complexity of this, I will be spending some time on fixing things. http://66.159.225.58/eqemu/edit_preview.jpg The latest version has this included. GeorgeS |
Wow, I knew this would take a while to do, and sorry about the extra work lol. But, HOLY COW THAT LOOKS AWESOME! I will start testing this immediately!
Thanks a million, GeorgeS! |
Impressive
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Ok ran into a problem and need opinions
When one wants to choose a new spell (say for a click item), the program currently tries to load ~12000 spells which takes 40 seconds on my fast pc. Now this may be a problem on slower pc's. I cannot load the spells into memory and leave it there because it takes mucho memory. So my best option is for the user to search (partial name ok) for all matching spells and id's - that way it will only load those in memory and reduce processing time. Does this sound plausable? GeorgeS |
Hmm, on the line editor window, it only takes my PC about 3 seconds to load all 12K spells. I have the latest version of the editor, but the new edit doesn't have the spell search in it yet for me to test that. I don't suspect it should take any longer though if it was done the same way.
Maybe a window that doesn't automatically populate all 12K spells would work. Like, if you popped up a window with the option to search by partial name and it would list them. But, also have a button that would just list them all if you wanted to wait for them all to load? |
Here are some notes on the new editor in it's current state and what I think could be adjusted or moved for further enhancement. Keep in mind that I understand that you are only halfway done with it (at least on the version that I have) and I know that you still have many things to do. So, I figure you probably already have some of this in mind to do while working on it, but maybe some of the notes will help:
1. The Deities part could probably be moved to the Race/Class area, since I think that is probably where it fits best as far as organizing it goes. 2. Slots could either go at the top between Icon and Color, or if you made the fonts smaller on the race/class section to shrink that part up a bit, you might be able to make enough room to do a similar check box section (with select all) for slots that includes all 20 slots in it. I didn't realize when I made the photoshop image that I left slots out lol. 3. The select all buttons for race/class currently do an inverse select instead of actually selecting all. This should work ok, but I thought you might want to know in case that wasn't intended. 4. The IDFile could probably be moved to the first section under Color and Icon. 5. If possible, it might be nice to have a Copy Item button like you have on the Line Editor window. 6. You could make the input fields for Recommended Level (and the other req/rec fields) as well as the Accuracy/Avoidance/etc fields. This would mainly be so that the sections don't overlap the row to the right of them. None of those would need very long fields for input anyway. 7. Icon could use an input field unless you plan to make a popup to select an icon from your viewer or something. That is all I have for now. But as long as you are interested, I will be glad to give more feedback :D I really like how you set the pull downs so that you can either select one of the pull down options or actually type anything you wish in that field. Very nice! There are a ton of fields, and keeping them organized to make editing as clear as possible is one of the goals I had in mind for this. For the most part, you have everything right on, and I don't want to sound like I am trying to control how it is done because ultimately the decisions are all up to you. But, if you wanted more feedback, now you got some :) I think this is going to be amazing when it is complete. I am surprised with how complete you already have it! Can't thank you enough for what you do for us, GeorgeS! |
Very pretty, I'll start testing :).
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Question--where am I supposed to drop the files that come in the .zip?
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Eh, all right. I ask because I unzipped 'em to my server folder, tried to open, and got an error regarding a MySQL connection error, the db.ini which I changed prior, and an inquiry about installing the ODBC drivers. I ran the batch app in the resources folder, but still getting the error.
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Install this and reboot:
http://66.159.225.58/eqemu/ODBC_DRIVERS.ZIP The file is off George's site, it's ODBC drivers. |
That did it--thanks a bunch!
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Thanks for the suggestions - graphic changes will wait. I spent hours on those. Regarding the spell loading, the 12K load in a split second, but putting them in a grid takes a loong time. That's the problem. I have not found a solution for it. I will have to do it by name search I'm afraid.
GeorgeS |
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GeorgeS,
I have the all 20k spells loading and displaying in a listview in +/-12s on a P4 3GHz machine. Seems to use about 15mb of memory Probably not the most efficient way to do things, but it's fairly quick (depending on your point of view). It can be easily modified to allow searching by partial name too. It could be done at load time so that there's no further waiting later on - or even threaded load so it's kinda invisible, and then you just show / hide the listview as need be. Code:
If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then |
Excellent - a breakthru - Now the entire spellset loads in like 5 sec.!!!
Did a iterative run thru every statement and found which one took the longest to run. The additem equivalent of the grid was taking about 50ms per loop or so. Now it's down in the high uSec range! Go figure - a simple statement nearly broke this. Ok, so the program is again moving fwd... progress is good. nosfentora - thnxs for the code GeorgeS Update as of Jul 1th Spell lists are completed. Sorting by id/name ok and works The program now allows the adding of custom spells effects to click items A copy current item button added, and the code works for it!! Next is the code to save the entire dataset- may take a few days.. this is the last thing to do |
No problem - hope it helps!
Cheers! |
Update as of Jul 3th
Managed to finish the save items, and also have the copy item working. Also done is color editing within the new edit context. Done also is the clicky items spell selection and verified they work I'm going over the code and checking it in the db for errors. Plenty found and fixed, but imagine a few days left to fix the rest. People always want to make clicky items, and with this tool, it takes some of the guesswork out by prefilling some fields so they work. I'm pretty impressed that it was not so bad. Probably 2 weeks of total work. GeorgeS |
July 7th update.
Completed the entire project. Now just verifying the save item works correctly. In now is icon selection (integration of my icon view tool) and item color editing. GeorgeS |
Can someone point me to where I can find the newest version of this item editor? Excited to try it out!
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Get current version from my site. I had a flakey wireless switch and it was dropping connections and my site was not appearing on your browser. It appears to work ok now, but I ready to replace it.
GeorgeS |
ohboyohboyohboy.
how did i miss this?!!? been using (and loving!) your old version of this editor( 13.5.9 ) and wow this new one sounds even more amazing! thank you so much maestro. you are the man! |
dear trevius,
where can i find this_trevius's large revamp on the single item edit portion of GeorgeS' Item Editor? really like it edit page look, it's part of GeorgeS' Item Editor tools or it's just an Single program can be use as an exe? thanks~ |
That's been integrated for quite some time now - and you downloaded that already. However, in your other post, it appears you have not only the wrong database, but also the graphic driver shows the screen layout incorrectly. I would examine the driver issue seriously, or replace with a newer video card.
Download a newer version of the database on the main page - or else your incompatibility issues will never be solved. Thanks GeorgeS |
Thanks GeorgeS recommand,
where the link on main pages "Download a newer version of the database on the main page" ?Wiki or Useful Lists link? and what films should i dowload for fix? |
GeorgeS,
If you get time, can you add Power Source as a slot for the new item editor window in the dropdown for selecting wear slots? If you have any questions on it, let me know. Thanks as always for all you do! |
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