With April coming up quickly, can we please get a time line as to when planes will be released? A lot of ppl on this server are getting bored to death/not logging on anymore due to the lack of content
Work has not stopped. Things need to be in place and accurate before we launch new content. That being said, a definitive timeline can not be given. But it will be soonish. We have a small team but we are very dedicated to accuracy and balance. When released it will be as correct as possible. Also, there are quite a few still having plenty to do and enjoying what is available. All while knowing that this is tough work and will be released with quality, not untested quantity.
The reason why the changelog has shown almost nothing from me for the last three weeks is because I've been devoting most of my time to hateplane. Fear and Sky were already mostly done, although they still need some brief loot table cleanup and NPC scripts looked at. Hate is difficult in particular because AK had version 2 and Live has version 3. I had to do a great deal of research and carefully examine every log and screenshot I have of the zone because the version we are recreating only existed for two years on Live. On top of that, upper floor NPCs had loot drops that were so rare that it's not even possible to recreate the tables 100% accurately (as in which items dropped from which NPCs, not merely the drop rates), so I'm reading every single Allakhazam comment on every item and NPC and googling every old hate web page I can find for any scrap of information. Incidentally it's a very good thing I got a log from a user last month, otherwise the zone would be far less complete. I'm still missing a few things like some upper floor NPC emotes and the Evangelist of Hate script text. Since people are so reluctant to submit the logs I know they have, we'll just have to accept the server's incomplete state. My goal was to get Hate and Fear launch ready by the end of March, and I'm still confident I can make that deadline. Pathgrids are complete. Loot tables are 95% complete; although I need to think long and hard on the armor drop rates. NPC stats are mostly complete now and will be fully complete (for as much as I have logs of) in a day or two. Spawngroups are not in a state I would consider them to be finished but they are good enough for players. (mostly just need some more randomization) There are a few code isssues that need to be addressed however: LOS needs to be disabled for NPCs and innate NPC procs need special logic so that they always hit the NPC's target. These I cannot give a more confident ETA on.
Thanks for the update Torven, it is always really interesting to hear what you are up to. There have been a lot of good bugfixes recently, and the new website is great. I can't wait until the planes are out. When you see the amount of work going into everything you understand why content takes awhile. Best way to play is to just relax. PEQTGC is similar as well, people pop in and out depending on motivation and content change. Banging your head against the ceiling will always be frustrating.
Pro tip: Answer key to classic programmer answers. 1. Project Manager: So how's it going? Programmer: slow. 2. PM: When will you be done? P: soon.
Wow sounds like you're doing some great work there Torven. If you believe there are people playing on TAKP that have logs you need, i wish there were a better way to get the word out and how they could easily help get you what you need from their old Al'Kabor files Maybe server MOTD?
Really interesting to hear how things are going. I hope you are having as much fun working on planes as I will have playing in them )
I am glad to see progress is being made. It seems you all are progressing the server content faster than I am progressing my characters. I am not yet 50th level. Once some of my characters are 50th. Then I may start farming gear and tradeskilling. There is already so much to do and once again its seems I cannot keep up.
This is great to hear, its good to get an update from yall. We really appreciate all the hard work you guys are putting in. -Betty
Torven why do you think people have logs but aren't giving them? If you think it is b/c of chat logs embeded, I know you have a parsing tool to get rid of that, but would it be worth making a web front end to strip the logs of chat and tells...making it easier for people to submit?
Because they tell me they have them or have otherwise mentioned that they searched their own logs for something. Often they tell me that they will send them, then don't. (many thanks to those that actually delivered) Making some sort of HTML 5 app to do the job is something I would like to do, but that involves learning things I don't already know, which is very time consuming. The script I wrote to remove chat text is in Lua. It's obnoxious for non-developers to install the Lua interpreter and edit the script file to point to a couple of directories, run it from the command line, then uninstall it; but it only takes 10-15 minutes. The problem is I have to decide between working on the planes to give players here something to do, data collecting on Live before EQ1 shuts down and the potential data is lost forever, or doing other things. If they shut down EQ1 one day, likely the Test server will go down immediately without warning. Sony laying off half their staff spooked me, and there are still major raid bosses I need to parse and make videos of.
I for one say, take your time, because I want to hit 50 and know what it's like to hit the lvl cap before the next expansion comes out XD
Send me the lua code to parse out chat text. If I have an hour or 2 I'll turn it into JavaScript. Maybe speedz will host it?
You guys realize that most people will not submit private chat stuff to a public website, even if it claims to remove your chat logs. With our programmer brain trust, can't we write a program to split the strings in the chat file that runs locally?
Honestly, it could probably be done with powershell or as a batch file. Just delete any entire line that has tell, tells, say, says, shout, shouts, auction, auctions. Those would cover guild, group, raid, ooc, shout, say, tell, just about anything I can think of. NPC text might be stripped out as well, since most will use says or tells. But that's the only downside I see right off the bat.
A token for char name would be good, that way you can delete chat from specific characters and not get rid of NPC says, etc...
Torven has a script that does it locally, I completely understand the trust issue for a web submission form. Personally if I was that concerned about contents being public myself. I wouldn't even use a web based code stripper.
It's possible to write an HTML 5 or flash app that doesn't actually upload the file anywhere, but merely reads the file from your disk and outputs a sanitized file to the same disk. Creating an executable is, of course, entirely possible, but less convenient. I wrote my lua script specifically to keep /says spoken by multi-word named characters, so NPC emotes would be preserved. Also it removes chat channel text (i.e. /1, /2 etc) which keyword search and replace might have a problem with. I understand the privacy concerns, but sometimes I do look for comments made-- like comments about how resistant an NPC is. Although sanitized logs are a hell of a lot better than none.
Why not create the log cleanser with Windows command line so most people can run it locally without having to install anything extra. Hell if they are mac users then a bash script would be even easier. I am at work right now but a Windows command line would be rather simple, here is a little sample. Code: [ Only registered users can see the bbcode. Click Here To Register... ] its just like your lua script Torven, it reads an input file line by line and if the line contains one of the phrases you dont want to keep then it will not write it to the output file... findstr can also use regex but that was just a quick mock up
do you have a sample log with chat and then the expected output? I can use this for testing and just beyond compare and they should match.
running a test now. looks like I had logging on back in the al kabor days for some reason for about 88 meg worth.
findstr doesn't seem to support the + operator that is used in the lua script. + ---> 1 or more repetitions (greedy) Torven was using this to detect chatter from NPCs and to include it in the log. Currently my implementation is stripping out NPC chatter. Any ideas on how to match "orc centurion says" and not match "Nikaya says "? In Lua it detected the "one or more spaces" which would include the "orc centurion says" and parse out "Nikaya says " http://www.gammon.com.au/scripts/doc.php?lua=string.find
