Updated Tool - EqItems Item Editor

[GeorgeS]

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

[ChaosSlayer]

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 =)

[trevius]

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.

[ChaosSlayer]

Originally Posted by trevius

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.

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 =)

[trevius]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayer

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.

[GeorgeS]

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.

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

[ChaosSlayer]

Originally Posted by GeorgeS

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.


GeorgeS

to be honest I almost NEVER use current search menu on the main panel

99% of the time I click all/all and then go into NAME LIKE "bla"

imho, the only thing what should be left on main panel are search by name or partial ID, all the rest moved inside Advanced window

this is not something i would die over, but since you asked - i support Trev on this one

[ChaosSlayer]

Originally Posted by trevius

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.

That becuase MOST people are not making 100% CUSTOM server =)
My Crushbone is so much diffirent from a typical Crushbone you got used to, than if you see it and your jaw don't drop- I will give you a cookie

and important thing that I maintain the order where npc ID ALWAYS falls into range of Zone ID number. So everything in Qeynos Catacombs starts with 45000+

this makes tracking down npcs ULTRA easy
another thing- when I make npcs i keep them in nice organized patterns.
If there are sceletons in zone ranging from lev 1 to lev 8, then this will be put in ids like this:

45001 - lev 1 skely
45002 - lev 2 skely
....
45008 - lev 8 skely

Now goblisn will start from 45011 to 45020 with 2 IDs left empty on PURPOSE, cuase thats where NAMED sceletons gona go when I add them at later date.
Some tiem I on purpose leave holes in ids secuences to put into quest/named mobs as proper by type, so all goblins come in single large chunk and not scatered all over the DB =)

[GeorgeS]

Added an update 14.0.0 which has some of the suggestions added. Spell sorting will be added next.

Everquest Item Editor and Character Inventory Editor
- 14.0.0 - Changed to search by item/id on main screen. Search by class/slot now on advanced page - These were done via requests


GeorgeS

[GeorgeS]

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

GeorgeS

[trevius]

Originally Posted by GeorgeS

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

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.

[trevius]

Originally Posted by GeorgeS

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.
GeorgeS

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.