EQ2MAP Map Spoiler Project
 

Ok, I realize EQ2map is in and of itself a bit of a spoiler... but in a map with dozens and dozens of POIs, it can be hard to locate the one that is the next step of your current quest. That's where the map spoiler project starts.

Included an image of Living Tombs trade court, the only zone currently considered fully functional. Lost Legends of Lavastorm HQ should be about done, except for not being converted to the new colors.

If you want to try it out, you'll need to drop an include for eq2ui_mainhud_maphelper.xml somewhere. I've been sticking it at the end of mainhud_map while testing it. Trying to decide on a place to put it permanently.

I've solved a lot of the technical issues, just looking for interest if this is a project worth pursuing. Or, more importantly, someone interested in helping make spoilers as all the spoilers need to be generated by hand and I'd burn out long before completing them.

edit: new version of the zip file in my most recent post.

Very nice! I urge you to keep up the work. I allways get lost staring at all thos POI's and you solution is what we need! Not much of a XML techy so I'm afraid I can't help you do this. But if my words of encouragement help you any well then I have done what I can. :p :D :)

Just when I thought eq2map couldnt get any better. Excellent work.

That looks awesome, definitly worth pursuing :nana:
What kind of knowledge is needed to help? Is it just a matter of looking at Ogaming, write down the loc's and names and such, then type it all in to something..? after its been verified that loc's are correct of course..

I'm going to try to get it to that. For the two that exist currently, I did them by hand, but I'll try to write something that'll just take a text file of locations and output the XML as my next priority now that I see that the concept works and there's interest in it.

Wow! This is great! This would be so cool if it could come true.

My concern is for you though. . . .

There are SO many quests is SO many zones. And to include spoilers for them in a great list format like you have by zone would be SO helpful but would take FOREVER to do by hand. Not to mention updates to the game, changing quests, ectra.

I would think you would have to have it set up like EQ2 map with an auto update and everything. Pulling info from the map web site uisng the PoI and player submitted data.

I don't envy you taking on this task!

How do you close the helper window once it displays?

I dropped your files in, added the <include> into eq2ui.mainhud.map.xml, and when I open my map window the helper window displays; but I can not find a way to close it except to use /hide_window MainHUD.MapHelper.

LOL. that's why it's pre-beta... there'll be controls before it reaches release

Rapid Prototyping
 

Ok, for anyone who wants to contribute spoilers, no special knowledge required!

I've written a script that converts text to XML for the spoilers, so all that needs to be done can be done in Microsoft notepad with no special training. Here's the first part of the Living Tombs Trade Court for an example:
Until I find some other way to do it, to submit a spoiler, just reply to this thread with your text either attached as a file, or in a code block. If you want name recognition, by all means put a "Submitted by:" line in the file.

Depending on the amount of interest, you might want to put a placeholder message in for a zone you're working on so that no two people work on the same one.

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps! If I get spoilers coming in, I can go back to work on the interface itself and get it out of pre-beta!

Ok, here's the newest version. Going to try to get this move to the beta forum. Although most everything is working, I'm not done moving things around, so we're not going to full release for a bit. I'd like to have more than 2 zones done as well before release. Hopefully the eq2map writers can help me out by getting text lists of POIs for zones, so that they're searchable even without someone writing a specific spoiler for the zone.

Changes in this file:
Window controls... ask and you shall receive. Opacity settings work, window can be closed. To open it again, look in your map window, there should be a small button towards the top left (probably destined to move, but I wanted to put it in).

Sinking sands landmarks added. This one was generated completely from a text file through the script I wrote. (Had to verify the code actually worked, and didn't just make something that looked like it worked.)

Lot's of little internal code changes.

Anyhow, anyone that tests it, let me know what doesn't work / can work better. More feedback I get, the better I can make this.

Edit: attachment removed because it's not the most recent.

I want to start helping by writing some of the text files for you, but I have a question.

It seems from your example that you can only write a walkthrough if the entire quest is completed in one zone. Right?

From:I don't see any zone information, leading me to believe that this quest is all in one zone.

The spoilers are tied to the map page that is displayed.

So, yeah... all the quests in a single file are for the same zone. If a quest spans more than one zone, you could do something like:

Sort of thing and hope that the person who does the Stormhold map put's a location in for the Caveroot horror on their WT. Or you could just skip the entries for the parts of the quest you're working on that are out of the zone and figure that people can look at their quest journal to see what zone they should be in. Your choice.

But the short answer is: Yes, if you do a file, it is all in one zone. More than that, if it's a zone with more than one page of map, like antonica or rivervale, then the file is only for that particular page of the map. East and West Antonica would have different walkthroughs.

If I wasn't clear, please write back and I'll try more to explain :)

Ok, I really need feedback from anyone that has downloaded and tested.

I experimented with copying POIs direct from EQ2MAP and making a list from that. It's the west half of Antonica.

This has the benefit that it can be generated completely automatically and could rapidly fill all the maps. Just need to streamline my scripts a little more and I could theoretically make them all in one swoop.

The disadvantage is that the points are not sorted by quest. Also, since so many people submit POIs to EQ2MAP, there's really no standard format. And it becomes really obvious when you have something like:

2nd Channeling spire
First channeling spire
Spire #3

Multiply that by 200 POIs and you can really see what I mean. As tooltips, it's not that big of a deal, because you only see one at a time, but...

So, my current thought is that I could auto-generate lists for every zone, and as hand-written ones are submitted, have the huge script I'm going to have to make prefer the hand-written ones over the automatic ones. Does this sound logical? Are the automatic ones useful enough to justify putting in at all?

If Antonica is representative, I could cut 30-40% of the total length off of the page by dumping the MOB clusters. Are they useful enough to keep?

Thanks to anyone testing or submitting.

Edit: Oops, that was yesterday's version. Here's today's.

Hey.
For now the automagic parsing of eq2map you done works out ok, lets do that as a start and then add the important quests after that.
Ideally the spoiler would sort its list so that HQ:s, Writs, Access-quests etc comes first, then the regular quests and last mobs, or something similar.
And last i must say that its a damn fine addon, hope you have the time and energy to continue working on it.
Cheers, Reznor@Splitpaw, 38 Guardian of Vilda Vikingarna.

Please Keep up the Work on This
 

Map Spoiler is a GREAT idea. Eq2 maps should definately at this to the main file. I will try to help out with the spoiler list as soon as I have some time. Going on a vacation these next two weeks but I definately plan on working on some of the zones that have yet to be done. Great work thus far and I can't wait to see this completed at some time. Please everyone help out with this if you can. Maybe people should post the zone they will work on here so we don't all copy others work or double up. If someone picks one zone at a time to work on and posts then others can pick another and so on. I will post which one I will work on first when I get back.

Sage :cool:

Not sure if anyone has noticed but the spoiler doesn't work with any of the "Fallen Dynasty" adventure pack zones. I imagine it will just have to be updated in some way to support them.

Adding the Fallen Dynasty isn't a problem... but there's no point until eq2maps has some poi's for the zones, since that's where I pull the data. I'll probably update beginning to middle of next week.

Meanwhile, i'm just hoping the map guru's get done with their version of the spoiler thing and release it as it's entirely cooler then the map spoiler project.

there is already a good amount of POI's pretty much over night. I'dsay about 15 or 20 in The Village of Shin last time I checked. But if some update is going to be coming out anyway I suppose its not needed immediately.

Even as a beta, this is one of the best UI mods I've ever seen. I check this for things I'm looking for before checking the map itself! Great work on this, thank you!