What Tools Do You Want?

[Clave Dark 5]

Kind of wish you'd offered us a chance to rank our top three choices, ha ha.

 

I'd love to see the AE builder, but until they can track down the bug that spawns all the dialogue when you first step onto the map, I just can't write for that nor upload my old mission files.  I voted for the web-based build planner.  I'm not even sure I'd use it that much (I'm such a n00b at builder-ing) but I know everyone else always asks for it.

[EmmySky]

@The Philotic Knight  just in case nobody has told you lately, thank you!  Its very kind of you to extend yourself this way to help out those of us who, may, on occasion, be whiney and complaining.  The HC team and you folks who build mods for fun are all on my nice list 😁

[macskull]

A version of City Info Tracker that polls the servers in realtime and gives you character data (enhancements, recipes, inf, badges, etc.) so I don't have to log in to a dozen characters trying to find that one purple I swear I've got somewhere. Since this already exists somewhere, it shouldn't be hard to make happen here though I imagine it'd be a little bit resource-intensive.

[Lost Ninja]

10 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Can you please explain what that is?

It was a small program that could read the demo files made by the game and then parse them to create a map (generally black background with your position and that of the blinkie) so you could see a visual representation of where the blinkie was. I think later versions used the in game map textures too.

[_NOPE_]

11 hours ago, Lost Ninja said:

It was a small program that could read the demo files made by the game and then parse them to create a map (generally black background with your position and that of the blinkie) so you could see a visual representation of where the blinkie was. I think later versions used the in game map textures too.

Sounds  like it'd be a fun challenge! Do demo files work on the current HC client? Have you tested it?

[CharBug]

My dream app would be an offline toon viewer so I could pull up my alts and drop them into a group picture.  Makes wonderful wallpaper for the laptop.  Photoshopping all the individual alts from screenshots is a major pain.

[Lost Ninja]

51 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Sounds  like it'd be a fun challenge! Do demo files work on the current HC client? Have you tested it?

They worked back around Christmas not tried since then, and I used it then to try and find the blinky on the huge outdoor industrial zone with Rikti (I forget the actual mission, basically click some blinkies, no need to kill anything and couldn't find the last one).

[_NOPE_]

16 hours ago, CharBug said:

My dream app would be an offline toon viewer so I could pull up my alts and drop them into a group picture.  Makes wonderful wallpaper for the laptop.  Photoshopping all the individual alts from screenshots is a major pain.

Could you expound on this please? What capabilities would you want such a "viewer" to have? It kind of sounds like you're talking about a 3D modelling program...

[CharBug]

Truly, I have no idea of the mechanics involved with making a toon viewer.  I would multibox onto the same server with the same account if I could and just group them together in front of City Hall or somewhere and take a screencap.  Photoshop in some captions and voila, great background for my laptop.  My alts (70 or so) are in several SGs and it'd be great to be able to display them.  I write bios for all of them when I create them so I know who I'm playing.  That makes the game for me. 

 

I'm sure logging on multiple times to the same account is probably impossible.  Next best seems to be able to give access to my toons to multiple accounts, or transfer or copy them to other accounts.  Then multibox on those accounts and do the form ups.  Not sure if my local wifi could handle a dozen instances running for the biggest SG.

 

Last idea is what I've done in the past.  Take screen caps and then photoshop (PS) them together.  Very slow and less than satisfying.  I'm not a PS expert.  Looking for other ideas.

 

As always thanks for the reply.

[AboveTheChemist]

21 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Do demo files work on the current HC client?

They do, I made and viewed one last night.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 2/3/2020 at 5:42 PM, Bopper said:

I read too fast and skipped over Visual. I personally have a hard time hearing the wom-wom sound, so my mind went directly to an Audio issue.

That's why I changed my glowies to sound like a pack of hyenas. It's very noticeable.

 

😄

[_NOPE_]

Just now, Oubliette_Red said:

That's why I changed my glowies to sound like a pack of hyenas. It's very noticeable.

 

😄

 

Just now, Oubliette_Red said:

That's why I changed my glowies to sound like a pack of hyenas. It's very noticeable.

 

😄

Yah don't say?

 

 

[_NOPE_]

FYI, just to give you a preview... I'm already starting to do prep work for the Planner, which is what I expect to be the "winner". Lookie at what I've been scraping from the .def files:

[Redlynne]

9 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

FYI, just to give you a preview... I'm already starting to do prep work for the Planner, which is what I expect to be the "winner". Lookie at what I've been scraping from the .def files:

You know ... if you play your code right, you'll not only have a web based build planner, but also a replacement for City of Data, all rolled into one online web accessible site ... because the data you need for the one is directly applicable/useful for the other ...

[_NOPE_]

@Redlynne Well I kinda sorta already do with my powers checker:

 

http://www.cityofplayers.com/pks-tools/

 

I just haven't put the work and effort yet into looking into the code to figure out what all those attributes actually MEAN. I kinda thought someone else would have taken that collection of data, being intrigued, went through the code from the leaks, figured it out and presented it to everyone by now. 

[Redlynne]

1 minute ago, The Philotic Knight said:

I just haven't put the work and effort yet into looking into the code to figure out what all those attributes actually MEAN. I kinda thought someone else would have taken that collection of data, being intrigued, went through the code from the leaks, figured it out and presented it to everyone by now.

To be fair ... that is a MOUNTAIN of work to do ... which is useful to all of us (granted) but also something you can't exactly do while playing the game ... and a LOT of people have been more interested in playing the game than in building tools to make that gameplay Better™ ... mainly because we didn't know if NC$oft was going to bigfoot everyone and ruin all the fun, so get your game time in now in case it all goes away Soon™.

 

So on that front, you're definitely doing a lot better than any competition you might have, PK! 👍

[_NOPE_]

Yeah, that's the weird thing @Redlynne. I was talking about this kind of stuff, making these tools, over in Ourodev chat literally MONTHS ago, and asking for assistance in "craking the code" so to speak, and there were several (presumably) guys saying very partonizingly, "oh yeah? parsing def files? making web planners? dude, we did that a LONG time ago", and then sending me a screenshot of a tiny bit of data (just like I posted here). So, I gave up at that time, because I figured, why waste my time when there were people already farther along that path than I am.

 

I wish I'd recorded those dude's names, because here it is, months later and... where's the result of all this work that they supposedly have done? Where's the product? I suspect that they were puffing up their chests as some sort of display of alpha male dominance or something, because... where's the beef?

Edited February 8, 2020 by The Philotic Knight

[Redlynne]

Agreed.  Totally a "hold my beer" moment for them to have done to you.

[_NOPE_]

Here's my official announcement thread.