User-posted Items?

[Scraga]

Will users have the ability to add items to the db?

A system can be set up like Wikipedia where a person can add a item but a notice on the page saying it has been unconfirmed and it takes like 2 or 3 confirmations to put it as confirmed, or maybe a certain group of users can be allowed to add items perhaps?

[nunduniel]

No, user supplied items are in my eyes very flawed.

First of all, user do not know what format I exactly expect from them which leads to mistyping.
Second, I can't keep user-supplied items updated. The rate and accuracy of manual updates is just not reliable enough to create a database of the format I plan to keep running.

But I do not understimate the power of community-driven content.
That's the reason I gave you tools in form of comments and screenshots.
Show items in a new light, give them a context and tell the community where they drop best and what you like about them.
These are all things I can not automatically grab from the client.
And to be honest: Which user would like to type over 10k items and keep them updated after every patch. That's tedious work and I'm happy that I was able to avoid such a task.

If you want to contribute to the database, you can do so by:
a) Age of Conan Client is lazy-loading, that means that it only loads 3D-Models to my machine if it needs then, i.e. only when I see them on other players. If you see the 3D-Models missing of some items (mainly T1/T2) and you got that piece on you...contact me so I can visit you, so we can all share that 3D-Model.
b) I'm using data from a friend of mine, which has made a bot which tracks items posted in guild chats.
Actually I do not know which of my items are currently ingame and which are not and plain testitems.
With the help of the list he supplies my I relate my items to these drops so I not what's ingame and what not.
The bot's name is bebot and is quite common on larger guilds, that's why I got already 10k items. Install that bot which has other nice features and your data will be synced to a central database which will be handed to me.
Currently quite alot of items are still missing. Mainly PVP Items above PVP level 3 and the harder to get T1/T2 items, but also tons of green and white items (mainly crafting materials) as they never get linked in the guild chat.

Thanks for your commitment.

[Scraga]

Well if you direct me to the direction of bebot I'll see what I can do about installing one on Testlive.

Unfortunately, items in AoC aren't listed like Anarchy online where its stats clearly stated if you needed a GM level or not. Most test items will have crazy stupid names that doesn't relate to the game like "Uber Staff of Nothingness"

[nunduniel]

Here's the link to it: Bebot-Site for AoC

[Valhallx]

(10-23-2008 03:16 AM)nunduniel Wrote:  Here's the link to it: Bebot-Site for AoC

Isnt it possible, in the future, to make some sort of program you yourself might be running, to log the data while you play the game. To then submit to this site?

Its how sites like thottbot and wowhead did it to get ahold of all the data.

Great concept really, im very happy someone finally figured this out.

You should get up a donation button, and maybe some google adds? , and domain name and host. Well with time i guess, your in beta

Again, great job!

[nunduniel]

(10-24-2008 04:58 AM)Valhallx Wrote:  Isnt it possible, in the future, to make some sort of program you yourself might be running, to log the data while you play the game. To then submit to this site?

Its how sites like thottbot and wowhead did it to get ahold of all the data.

Great concept really, im very happy someone finally figured this out.

You should get up a donation button, and maybe some google adds? , and domain name and host. Well with time i guess, your in beta

Again, great job!

Hi Valhallx,

Thottbot and WoWHead had an alot easier job. They was an Plugin-Interface written in LUA in WoW, which offered Callbackfunctions for actions examine player and looking at backpack on a per-item basis.
So: They just grabbed the supplied informations from the interface.

In AoC there is no interface. I had to figure out their database format, know which sematic each field has, disassemble like crazy and guess wildly.
Then you have to gather the stuff and prepare it for insertion into the database, all this steps fall away in WoW-DB-Sites.

Same goes for tracking of items. You can only parse combat log and chat channels reliably to get your infos out.
Unluckily, the normal items you loot do not appear in a own chat channel, so all has to be linked somehow.
Another way is catching the loot packets. I was able to do that, but had to change my code every patch. And it's impossible to distribute such a software to people.
Some bad guys may disassemble it and build some very ugly cheats, so I guess we will have to live with this situation for a while...

What I can do is generate the names of all missing items and missing models, so it's easier to know what to look for.
A such list may contain test-items, but mostly they are quite easy to detect by silly names....