Quest tracker!

[sketcherskt]

I Would love to be able to track people when I play this game

what I am looking for is a better way to find npc's and quest locations and monsters and such...

also a simple window to keep quest that are in progress would be helpful


example: Kill 20 maggots

then report back to npc bla bla.

[o11c]

This has been suggested many times.

The two general approaches are:

• Do it entirely as part of a script. Can be done without any server changes, but would only work when talking to an NPC, although some limited things could be done in a "use item" script.
• Implement Evol packets - ManaPlus only. Requires documentation, and a significant amount of server code. But on the timescale necessary to implement all the supporting scripts, this would be a better approach.

It may also be possible to do a hybrid approach - quickly implement script commands new names that actually duplicate plain old messages, and later implement the full ManaPlus/Evol protocol version.

[BoomerTheKran]

I keep overly detailed text files for the time being, of every quest every character I have has ever done. Notepad++ is an excellent text editor with capability of many files open in tabs at once and I leave him on the right side of my screen while tmw is on left. I have over 4MB of just those .txt files and only 7 characters. I'm starting to work it into a spreadsheet. Seems I'm slow to remember how to do those things, so don't expect much quickly. I will share if I ever get something presentable.

As an aside, is it possible to get a "dump" of the entire wiki? Would scripts to import it into a database be easy enough? If so, would there be an easy way to update the sheet/database? I could then fill in the extra info with all the NPC coordinates, r-shift shortcuts, etc over time. Any help or direction appreciated.

[o11c]

As an aside, is it possible to get a "dump" of the entire wiki? Would scripts to import it into a database be easy enough? If so, would there be an easy way to update the sheet/database? I could then fill in the extra info with all the NPC coordinates, r-shift shortcuts, etc over time. Any help or direction appreciated.

We use MediaWiki, and they have *lots* of tools. I'm not sure if we have a policy on bots that write ...

example tool: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Special:Export

(only we administrators have access to the Special:Import, though. If you want to experiment with offline editing on a user subpage I could do that ...)

[Crush]

I'm not sure if we have a policy on bots that write ...

Currently it's "ban on sight", but that's because all bots we encountered on the wiki so far were spam bots.

When anyone wants to run a bot which writes, I would suggest to create a wiki account for the bot and show the bots sourcecode to the admins on IRC. When the bot is authorized, the admin which does so should post on the userpage of the bot. I would prefer when you would test bots thoroughly on your own mediawiki installation.

[Nard]

I keep overly detailed text files for the time being, of every quest every character I have has ever done. Notepad++ is an excellent text editor with capability of many files open in tabs at once and I leave him on the right side of my screen while tmw is on left. I have over 4MB of just those .txt files and only 7 characters. I'm starting to work it into a spreadsheet. Seems I'm slow to remember how to do those things, so don't expect much quickly. I will share if I ever get something presentable.

As an aside, is it possible to get a "dump" of the entire wiki? Would scripts to import it into a database be easy enough? If so, would there be an easy way to update the sheet/database? I could then fill in the extra info with all the NPC coordinates, r-shift shortcuts, etc over time. Any help or direction appreciated.

I think that a libre office/OOo database would be better suited to that use than a spreadsheet.

wiki import: It is possible to dump the wiki: the only tool we have to do this, is as o11c said to use the special:export tool wich will allow you to "export the text and editing history of a particular page or set of pages wrapped in some XML." for example [[Category:quest]] pages. But pages were not designed with this in mind and do not even follow a strict standard as the layout is continuously updated and (I hope) improved. The parsing work that you would have to do to be able to retrieve information from them and the utility you can retrieve from it are not of the same order of magnitude; Thus it seems to me that it is preferable to do it manually at the moment.

I think o11c and Crush understood that you wanted to develop some bot to generate wiki content from such a database, which would be a nice tool. I understand you in a different way.

However designing a quest db requires to ask ourselves what is a Quest first, then what kind of game objects it has to deal with, if it is possible to retrieve automatically information from server and client data about these objects, and finally if the job is worth the effort compared to the information we already have and have to keep uptodate.

Without trying to be exhaustive here are a few points I can see, after redaction of several wiki quest pages:

• A quests is a sequence of accomplishments. Quest and accomplishments can be "To do", "doing" (% done), or "done"
• A quest can have a certain degree of fun, of utility (player advice)
• A quest may have requirements: dependancies ( level, other quest, skill, accomplishment...)
• Accomplishments can be:
  • Speak to a npc
  • come to a npc with a certain quantity of item(s) in inventory (or wear some equipment)
  • answer correctly to a (sequence of) question(s) by NPC
  • Gather a certain quantity of items, of money.
  • Kill a certain number of Mobs (may be whithin a certain duration)
  • Kill another character
  • Fit some date conditions
• A quest has rewards: items, money, skills, levels,

It is possible to retrieve information about items,or mobs from files, but acomplishments cannot at the moment and rewards only if they are a list of items but not the list itself.

[cinderweb]

It would be a nice addition to the game as long as we keep adding quests. If we don't add anymore quests to the game then i think it is a wasted feature.