http://screencast.com/t/6QDBo5ct

edit: I'd love some Immortal thoughts...

For those that don't want to watch the video, this is a new application I started working on a few days ago that helps manage and search through the giant list of items in CF. I got kind of tired of using my own way of storing information and realized the world of CF tools needed a facelift (the wiki/Dio is just too dated) - thus was born the CarrionDashboard.

-For the more technical people, it's an Adobe AIR desktop application (Flex 4.5.1 and RobotLegs framework) using a local SQLite database file (with plans to move it to a php server and host it there) - if you've got the Flash Player, you should be able to use it fine (think right now it's around 700kb with the AIR installer included, but once it's hosted on a website it won't matter since you won't need to download anything).
-For the Immortals, there's no area explore or area shrines in the list and currently I'm only handling weapons and armors (plan on including instruments, maybe food and drink). So no preps, area explore secrets, etc. The plan is to start with just a big list of store bought items (hey they need loving to!) and release it to see how people like it and then add to it.

Now, what do I need to finish this up? I need a few more testers to try and break the thing (thanks to Bryan for the captain's hat identify that broke it all!) - so if you're interested to try it out, let me know. You'll obviously need a character who can identify preferably and the stranger the items the better since at this point I need to find and cover the edge cases. For now the old identities in the wiki/Dio won't work because the format of identify/lore changed over the years (for good) and half of those items are outdated anyways. The biggest need is that I need to come across all "tags"....for example just a few for thieves:

"A thief, no one else, could use it."
"It is meant for a thief."
"A warrior or perhaps a thief could use it."

You get the idea (several coders over several years means there's no real standard it seems for a lot of these making it a pain to parse). Right now it's about 600 lines of code to cover all the cases I have already....

I also need feedback! If you've ever wanted something in a tool like this, speak up and I'll likely give it a go. Suggestions are welcome (especially how you'd like to edit an item since I've so many options on how) - a logo idea would be nice too (I plan on asking Mekantos to make it).

Grand plans? Well, I want it to be a global item tool - maybe beyond that it will let you store some character info like your character lists and pbf links (things most people keep track off in documents/logs somewhere). Oh and did I mention it also works on your Android/iPhone?

Let me know....

-Torak

Krilcov posted twenty items if I remember correctly. He did not cheat or any of the stuff you did/do. Not even close.

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Krilkov threatened to track my family down and "pillage my womb" while I was carrying my child, among many other things. Also, please stop posting random or inane things, complaints about active characters, adding new threads on the same subject that has been locked, and a variety of other things. In general, you should post less period.

I complained about character assassination however.

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

x

I BET HE PLAYS A GREAT ORC


Also, why are you telling someone to post less?
I say, post just as much as you are now, wikataw. If anything, you prompt discussion. These forums aren't as active as they should be.

http://screencast.com/t/rkiyeqOQF

It should be pretty straight forward - you can add as many criteria as you want and run the search. Does it make sense or do I need to make it more user friendly?

One thing I plan on adding is a "sort on" field for the results.

Suggestions, feedback or more flaming from Laxman?

-Torak

I'm not really opposed to this but at the end of the day if the immstaff isn't the one maintaining and controlling it, we can't really condone it since we can't guarantee the info on it. It'll be something similar to Dio's.

Namely, offering to host it and some perfunctory monitoring. After all, you have direct access to the source material, so making sure things are accurate shouldn't be that overly hard.

why don't they just do a dump of items from area and host that here?

I think this is a project best left in the hands of the playerbase for the playerbase.

a) "We can't guarantee the info on it" doesn't mean we're concerned about accuracy. Mostly it means, we can't guarantee there won't be stuff that isn't cheating in the file. Which is an equally fair point.

b) It's pretty much a guarantee that this thing is going to involve local storage only, and only be pre-loaded with (supposedly) a limited number of well-known items. So - ultimately, when it comes to distribution of a final product, the guys "in control" of this software aren't really performing database maintenance - they'll just be distributing it. And - who cares who distributes it, if it's vetted as acceptable material to own by the public by the staff?

Splntrd

...I was reading down below about having this thing being more like a personal database for each person with the program, but it would come stocked with some basic gear choices (such as things you can buy in a shop.)

Here's a thought: How about arranging for this database to be embedded into this official page (you are the tech guy - I have no idea how that all works), and tied to a user's account, so that the data is stored sever-side and the staff could thus maintain control?

This would provide a valuable tool, front-and-center on the official page, which would help new players get into the swing of things. I don't know if this next bit is too much, but would it then be feasible for players to add even area explore items to their personal databases, since no one else should be able to access them? It's just a more convenient form of what people have resorted to for years; making a .txt file with all their worthwhile ID's in it.

The staff is kind of slow to react as a whole to big policy questions like this. The key is to be very patient and wait for some less-public feedback. I'd even drop a line in their e-mail box for sound measure.

Splntrd

I'd suggest trying to make it part of the official wiki if that is possible and giving the IMM's a level of admin control.

Kept within the bounds of what is permissible information, this would be a good resource for newer players and older ones alike. So long as the explore items and stuff that's not supposed to be there is not kept there, it has a lot of potential to be good for CF.

I like the idea of being able to store char info too. Sort of like a database of players and people they've played, completely voluntary of course, with links to their pbfs and maybe their death thread if possible if they exist. I would say this would encourage more pbf purchases, not deter them, since I think I would be more inclined to get my pbfs if it were becoming part of my CF char resume (which sucks but still). Lots of times you always see on battlefield threads the question who did you play before and it's sometimes nice to attribute a player with more than just their most recent char. Then I could just update my CF login profile with a link so you could click my name, and there you go, a list of my past chars with pbf links where applicable.

At the end of each post, under the signature, is a "Previous Characters" button.

You click on it, and it takes you to a list of characters that the posted has played. The posted can add chars to his own list via the user menu.

That cracked me up.

I'm all for a personal item database. I'd be kind of sad about it not allowing for wands/talismans/scrolls, especially if the restrictions on sharing logs to parse or files to parse/import is set pretty high.

Very good work.

>I'm all for a personal item database. I'd be kind of sad
>about it not allowing for wands/talismans/scrolls, especially
>if the restrictions on sharing logs to parse or files to
>parse/import is set pretty high.

Without wands etc I wouldn't use it anyway because I always need to refer to my list for those, much more than items. And if I'm still referring to my own list anyway this app would have to be pretty badass for it to be worth keeping two ways of looking things up around.

Given the fear of questy/preps getting out, having that in the app would probably just freak some people out. I think most people don't use the normal item stuff because it is so dated and crappy.

What I could do is have a tab dedicated to your own personal stuff that is only stored locally. Maybe three free text fields of what/where/what's it do that you can do whatever ya want with. Some people could keep track of preps, others could keep track of cigars, or whatever but it'd be your own.

But again, it's an area people might freak out over so I'm hesitant to do it just yet. Maybe down the line...I do see the use though of public/private lists.

All tabs created would be strictly local.

I lol at the first item you chose....


For organization purposes, why not make it more of a list where you have to expand a little + symbol if you want to see attributes?

What's the most valuable information when looking at that level of everything? I thought attributes/restrictions/qualities would be the most important...

Maybe I'll make it so you can show/hide different columns (even drag columns around).

Make it more like the qhcf item search


http://qhcf.net/newitems/

It would be different in that your dash shows:

<+> ITEM | LOCATION | WHERE WORN | MATERIAL

Hit the plus sign and you get:


<-> ITEM | LOCATION | WHERE WORN | MATERIAL
----itemAttribute1
----itemAttribute2
----itemAttribute3

and so on. Maybe it can show 5 attributes at a time and scroll.


edit: When I say make it like the item search, I mean make it so that you create different queries based off of selections -- as the search can do.

as much as this becomes a resource to the public it also becomes a resource to its creator and I see it as a queit way to ammass questy stuff.

If it was hosted by a more trustworthy player though I would be all for it.

Really, how would I amass questy stuff? It can only take non-prep non-explore items and I'm talking about entry only being added after someone has publicly posted it. You think people are going to mass send me ids for preps and explore items for no reason? Seriously?

You crack me up.

be happy you can till play.

given your previous history I am firmly against you being the administrator of anything... especially anything that involves creating repositories of game information.

Troll elsewhere. I'd appreciate it if people would leave crap like this out of the thread.

Let me rephrase the situation like this.


Would you let a convicted sexual predator set up and run a day care center? Even if they had been clean for say six or seven years?

You are scortched earth dude, understand, embrace, if you have these ideas just hand them off to someone with some sort of credability to be the public face of the venture.

I'm credible, right?

nt

As a serial Villager (mostly) and someone who's only been around (again) for the past few years I haven't had much in-game interaction with Torak that I'm aware of.

Also, I'm aware of the TLB situation only inasmuch as it is brought up on the forums a few times a year. I agree that it was an egregious breach of gamesmanship and can not be forgotten.

However, what I see is a guy who has tried time and time again to make up for his past behaviors in ways that add positively to the game. As such, I have no problem with this project.

Likening a convicted sex predator watching over children to overseeing the administration of a database of text-based fantasy game equipment is such a stretch that it (in my opinion) hurts your argument. (What? Are we gonna let HITLER watch the SYNAGOGUE?) C'mon.

Granted, I'd like to see most of this information kept locally by players, but if someone has to keep an eye on the database, I'd just as soon have it be Torak if it's not going to be an IMM or a player like Isildur (none of whom have said they want the responsibility.)

Just my two cents.

>However, what I see is a guy who has tried time and time again
>to make up for his past behaviors in ways that add positively
>to the game. As such, I have no problem with this project.

What you DON'T see is that there's a lot of good reasons to believe these aren't past behaviors, but continuing. The logs that got passed around after his orc went to hell last year are pretty good evidence of that.

>Granted, I'd like to see most of this information kept locally
>by players, but if someone has to keep an eye on the database,
>I'd just as soon have it be Torak if it's not going to be an
>IMM or a player like Isildur (none of whom have said they want
>the responsibility.)

Local storage is by the far going to be the only option the staff will support, which was how they responded the last attempt at something similar (CFI). The problem is, how would they catch and punish anyone for using it if for some reason the creator rebels? It's not something that's going to be easily detectable.

Splntrd

I would like to see the number of times TLB has been pulled to the ROTD and how many times he has been denied over lets just say the last 5 years.


The problem isn't that he doesn't want to give back. I have never questioned that, I do believe he genuinly wants to contribute to the game as a whole. But he wants to do that, and he exhibits behavior that he doesn't agree with the same versuion of the rules of the general player base. As such it is simply a matter of time before he somehow uses this tool for his own personal gain.

God forbid he get tired of us calling him the TLB and he pulls another stunt like the first time, only now with all this stuff too.


I like the idea, I just don't want this guy anywhere near holding control over the program without letting another more trusted person or group host it and be able to monitor it to make sure he doesn't have access to a back door.


not only do you have the combined knowledge of everyone who contributes. You also know to a general degree who has what knowledge. What times they are contributing what.

Maybe I am being cynical but as a serial A-P player I could use that information to gain an advantage in PK without question.

Torak and I do not talk anymore, but I can tell you for sure he has no interest in posting anything.

As well, what the hell would posting item ids and origins do? You gonna go down to hell and get them alone?

Quit bitching over nothing.

If you dont talk to him anymore, how can you know that for sure?

I'm a little less worried, to be honest.

As long as it remains local and doesn't come preloaded with lulzy amounts of IDs, I don't see the harm.

Splntrd

Average sentence for fraud - 2 years
Average sentence for burglary - 2.5 years
Average sentence for involuntary manslaughter - 36 months
Average time spent for a rape conviction - 5.4 years

Average sentence for raging and revealing area explore info in CF - 25-to-life.


Give it a rest.

Average time spent for a rape conviction - 5.4 years

Sure, but you're not going to be landing any jobs as a kindergarten teacher when you get out.

Sure, but we're not talking about a rapist. We're talking about a guy who got mad at CF over a decade ago and has always regretted it, and manned up when many other people who ####ed up never would have. He's incredibly good at programming and is trying to help the game by offering a free service. What's the big deal?

He has had at least one char denied in the last year and I bet he still makes regular trips to the RoTD for warnings.

So I repeat that the tool sounds like a great positive for the CF community but it simply cannot be controlled by him or one of his cheater buddies.

I'm his RL friend, and have been for many years. Am I, therefore, a "cheater buddy?"

And I have no idea what's been going on in the game for a long time, as I haven't played for quite a while. Been considering it though.

I'd consider him more qualified to help new players than many of the imms.

Which is what this system is designed to do.

Its designed to invalidate all this hard work done by explorers in finding useful and cool items, and make it available to the general playerbase, so that those lazy new players who haven't spent thousands of hours exploring the game can get cool stuff too.

I completely understand why you don't like this idea, though, and why you don't want torak to run it - after all, both immortals and veteran players alike have made it very clear that they'd like to preserve their OOC advantages that they worked hard to gain.

It is clear that the idea of helping new players find gear, quests, and preps in a way that doesn't require them to invest dozens of characters and thousands of hours exploring is contrary to the very spirit of carrion fields.

All sarcasm and vitriol aside, it completely boggles me that the single most important newbie resource on CF is an outdated wiki of OOC information compiled by an illegal permagroup. Torak offers a legitimate, friendly way to aggregate information, one that has the potential to be far superior than any tool we have now. And you're nitpicking him because of his past history? Jesus.

Edit: I don't know him OOC, I have a vague idea what his past offenses were, and I don't even remember the last character of his I played with (before my current, my last character was maybe three or four years ago). But damn, this is silly.

A ridiculous image just popped in my head: Lewis and Clark not wanting to share their maps of the unexplored territories because it would ruin the fun for all the other explorers.

MUDs shouldn't be treated like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. There's no ending to ruin.

iz difzenz

Torak already knows most of what anybody would send him - he's been cheating and exploring for so long it would barely matter. He's already got the identifies - he's just developing an app to store and recall them quickly and easily, and hey, why not share?

I think it's a pretty good tool for individuals to use, and I even like the idea of pre-loading it with a bunch of basic items from the regear lists on DIKU - but I can't imagine the Imms supporting the server function of it, and I don't like it much either.

Splntrd

It is ideas like this that I think are good for CF as a whole. This is something that could help lower the learning curve for new players. It is also ideas like this (and the fact that people sacrifice their time to making them happen) that make me want to give more to help make CF thrive.

That being said, there are concerns/worries/problems I have with this as well. Also, I don't speak for the whole immortal staff, only for myself. I would love to see something like this included/linked to the official wiki, which I feel is under-used, at the moment.

My main concern is that there is supposed to be an element of mystery to the areas/artifacts in CF. This element of mystery is one of the things that makes people roleplay to find out about where things are and what mob certain things come from, etc. I definitely don't want to see CF turn into some game where people look up what they want, log on to go check if it is in, and not really interact with others. I know most people wouldn't do that, but there certainly are those that would try. Basically, what I am saying is that the line between a database like this and cheating has become increasingly hazy over the years. The last thing I want to see in CF is more cheating. It's not fun and I don't see how anyone benefits in the long run by cheating. Some of my other concerns off of the top of my head:

1) The sharing of information that shouldn't be shared.
2) The policing of the above.
3) Who has access to add things and who checks to see what has been added for accuracy?
4) I'd stick to identify, not lore.
5) Also, the idea of uploading roles/descriptions/etc sounds appealing at first, please keep in mind that PBF's are one of the few revenue streams keeping CF online. If you were to make it so that PBF's are no longer needed, that would only hurt CF in the long run. That said, I would not include such a feature.
6) Searchable logs would be fun. If you were to go with something like this, I'd like to see people able to put certain specifics of those involved in the log before uploading a log (ie, names/race/class/spec/dedication/form/etc). This would make searching for logs much easier and more efficient later on.

Nae-nae

And that you can never load a database of other items.


That way, no one can share item lists. A character always has to build their own from the ground up.

I'd probably have it start with some base things. Like items bought in major towns (which is the plan for the release) - so it has SOME use out of the bat, especially for newbies.

Items bought in major towns may or may not go against that.

There are some items in major towns that require a tiny bit of exploration to find in order to buy (hamsah)


Your best bet is to email a draft of the base items you want to an imm and get it approved.

I'd guess all weps/armor/general store items from major towns would be fine, whereas preps/potions/etc might not be.

Who knows

a

Splntrd

I think this can only help newbies, I know dioxide's items search and I want to say Glimo's before that was a huge help to me. Otherwise the game just seems too overwhelming. And even knowing the stats on something and where it comes from still means they have to explore said area to find it. I bet the majority of players either have a list of items already or use the outdated Dioxide one or the Diku one which is cumbersome. As for people logging in just to look for items that has been since the dawn of CF, just ask Graatch about that unicorn pendant.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

1) You can't enter anything beyond weapon/armor right now and can't choose any area explores. Someone could try and sneak in an ID into the newbie school, but that's why not everyone will get add to the master db aka policing...

2) My idea is to have just another website where it's hosted and a forum where suggestions/additions can be discussed - probably pick a canned service like hostgator. If ya want an id added, you can post it where others can mark it as illegal (approved accounts required so no anonymous posting, etc - probably give some Dio VIPs and maybe some Imms VIP access to police). If any post is marked as illegal by anyone, it's hidden immediately until reviewed by one of the mentioned above. Those that post bad items or mark items illegal wrongly, get punished. If the id is kosher, one of the few people can add the item into the master db.

What I'll likely do is when the dashboard starts up, you'll be able to pick local or master db. If you load local, it'll pull the file on your machine. If you load master, it'll download the db file from the site with the latest.

3) Well, someone has to have rights. As I said, it'd be probably a mixture of people I trust like Mek and some other ex-Imms, some Dio VIPs and maybe some Immortals. It'd really revolve around whose interested in doing such a thing and shouldn't require a lot of people. The plan as I said is to start with like store bought items from major cities and see how it goes.

4) Well, ya you can do it with lore but you have to spam it to see what's valid and what's not. Pain in the ass but just saying it's possible.

5) No no, the idea wasn't to replace PBF - it was to keep a list of who you've played over the years. I can tell ya I hardly remember characters from 5 years ago without looking to a notepad doc and logs. This would just keep a list of who I played stored locally for only my benefit and keep PBF/graveyard links for quick access. Nothing more. Maybe something fancy like make a forum paste that you can copy from the dashboard and put as your signature in the forums for when ya give a goodbye thread and what to show who you've played over the years.

6) Ya, after I finish everything revolving around items I was thinking of someway to tackle logs. Right now I just log everything and use Notepad++ to search through them all for stuff. It'd be nice to have that all locally aggregated for more use. Or did you mean to publicly share logs?

-Torak

The big issue here is the imms would no longer feel like they are the ####. Every char rolled would be on an equal playing field as imm chars who get this information already. There would be no more super powerful imm chars who got the "Necklace of Locate Elf Player" because everyone knew where it was and had access to these items that couldn't be found that are in the game because someone didn't explore properly and didn't see in the gallery of galadon a picture of an old tree with a rock under that had a small glint beneathe it to show a necklace and then this old tree is located in the mists to thar-acacia hidden under a tree/rock you couldn't see through the mists. People want to pvp, if you like exploring you play a pve mud.

So this is what you were talking about. Yeah, I'll get crackin' on it once I bring my machine back from the dead.

I think merging some kind of Newbie Gear List feature, ala the one Isildur posted a long time ago (at least I think it was him), into this would be cool. Probably a pain, but just a thought.

Do you have any trouble with special characters in the database, like ' or "? ' could mess up the query if it's in the name of the item unless you've parsed that out.

Also, will you have a way to mass-import existing player lists of item IDs if we use this on our personal computers?

I have about 550 lines of vbscript code that parsed the original Diku list and outputted it to a .xlsx file, but your app is really nice.

Some ideas I came up with for something I've been working on in VB 2010 are making it multi-filterable (i.e. damroll > 5 and str > 2). Will there be a way to do this in your app?

>Do you have any trouble with special characters in the
>database, like ' or "? ' could mess up the query if it's in
>the name of the item unless you've parsed that out.

Ya, that's totally fine. I have injected variables into the SQL statements, so it protects from adding padded vest;DROP ALL ITEMS.

Apparently you don't know of Bobby Tables - http://xkcd.com/327/

>Also, will you have a way to mass-import existing player lists
>of item IDs if we use this on our personal computers?

Mass importing...the problem is either I figure a way to parse people's logs (ya, not happening) or I allow you to enter in multiple items at once (problematic given I want locations for each, etc unless I make it multi-stages per item). If you use it locally, it's a SQLite db file so you can do whatever ya want to it as long as ya put in the right format it wants.

>I have about 550 lines of vbscript code that parsed the
>original Diku list and outputted it to a .xlsx file, but your
>app is really nice.

Thanks - as I said, the Diku/Wiki/etc is all pretty dated and missing some vital information like the new AC format etc. I need the new format so it has to be relatively new. I could make it so I could import all that but why? I plan on doing this in baby steps so we'll get there - I don't want day 1 everything from the wiki/dio's.

>Some ideas I came up with for something I've been working on
>in VB 2010 are making it multi-filterable (i.e. damroll > 5
>and str > 2). Will there be a way to do this in your app?

Conditional and multi-filters will be possible, ya.

Next thing you know, we'll have a quest database that can be mass imported.... yeesh!

You realize there already is a database of items anyone can update on Diku wiki right? Don't see why this would be any different.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

And could include all of the items that the Diku wiki does not allow.

SQL is possible via CMUD, right? For clarification, are you making it or thinking of making it possible to update the list from directly within CF? (shouldn't be that hard to set up the alias/trigger). That said, assuming the list has the ability to be updated by the players, would there be an approval process in place by the admin (which is likely you) before it gets added to the DB?

Lot of people don't use CMUD, as nice as it is, and what I actually store in SQL is a blob since it's directly taking VOs from Flex and storing them in the db, so it's byteEncoded as the class when it comes out - making my life easy. If I wanted the SQL db to be used by other programs, I probably would have made the schema generic but didn't think it was needed.

So....ya, maybe later.

Thinking about it, integrating it with CMUD is as easy as posting a couple of lines of code to the script board. CMUD can interact with programs and it wouldn't be that hard to capture the info and move it to the itemDB uploader.