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+--- Thread: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread (/showthread.php?tid=8156)
RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Titor - 09-02-2014
Hullo,
I am a programmer/software engineer and also a RPer. I really want to make some helpful tools and future addons for the RP community.Â
There is not an addon API right now, but as soon as they release it I want to make a (hopefully) standardized RP addon for the RP community, similar to WoW's MyRolePlay (MRP).Â
However, in order to get started on it as soon as any details about the plugin API is announced, I would like to know what the RP community on FFXIV would like. I am pretty familiar with MRP from WoW, and was planning on somewhat modeling it around that. If there are any particular features you would want or not want, please let me know.
Since the API is completely unknown right now, some features may be very easy to implement while others are impossible. For now, please just throw out anything and everything you would like to see, and I can then try to implement the most wanted features first.
I know that the API is probably a ways away (I think at the first expansion) but I would really like to get features and a potential look and feel that I can begin architecting, then fit to specs later. This takes some time, and I think it would be good to begin planning now.
Outside of an in-game addon, is there anything out of game you would like to see or have? There are wikis already on this site, and a few other tools I think. I am not willing to make ToS breaking applications such as 3rd party parsers or whatever, so those would be out of the question.
Please let me know any and all ideas that you have for a future RP addon, or any web/organizational features you would like to see now. I am here to make your life easier and your RP experience more enjoyable.
- o7
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Faye - 09-02-2014
They'd be nice to have, but Squeenix seems to be very against anything altering the game.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Aldotsk - 09-02-2014
Back in FFXI, there were plenty of DAT modders who actually tweaked the game to change your game musics, change your model skins and interface art changes. However, for FFXIV - the players are still working on new mods for players to enjoy. However DATs are much harder to mod than WoW.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Titor - 09-02-2014
SE has said many times that they plan on releasing a dev kit/addon API, but it is in the works, so this is for when they get around to releasing it. I suspect it will probably be around the first expansion, so it will be coming (according to multiple reports since 1.0 and even in some live letters)
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - TheBlob - 09-02-2014
I loved MRP and GHI in WoW.
Creating interactive quests for players and sending them on missions to be rewarded with stashes and such. GHI was my go to for creating items used in RP. I miss actually having a bag of medical supplies for my doctor to tote around and use on people that also had the addon. Buff and debuffs... *reminiscent sigh*
One day... one day...
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - FreelanceWizard - 09-02-2014
They also promised us they were seriously looking into an RP server, but we didn't get that, either.
That said, what I'd personally like to see in an RP add-on, in no particular order, is:
- Immediate identification of RPers by pop-up, name color change, mouseover unit frame, etc., if it's at all possible. Making people right-click to see if someone's an RPer (as the TSW-RP add-on required) is a huge pain
- Automatic link to the RPC wiki page using the character name
- Not being hosted on Curse. Instead, host here for free and without ads
- Open source
- Specified communication protocol, preferably via RESTful web service API (again, I can host it here for free )
- Built-in browser to view wiki pages
- "RP mode" that automatically hides all of the UI except for specified chat windows
- Just a place for a description. MyRP has a ton of other features that aren't really necessary; all you really need is status (IC, OOC), interaction preference (open to walk-up RP, send tell first, busy), and the character description
- "RP items" functionality, much like GHI from WoW
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Kage - 09-02-2014
(09-02-2014, 04:52 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: An automatic chat logging utility would be nice, but that might as well be a parser and so probably runs afoul of ToS.I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - FreelanceWizard - 09-02-2014
(09-02-2014, 04:56 PM)ExKages Wrote: I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable.
Really now... I'll have to take a look at that.
The lack of chat logs has been a constant pain for me, especially coming from EQ2 and CoH (where there's a nice checkbox for "log all chat").
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Jancis - 09-02-2014
I think the trick is with those logs is they also do not parse everything.
My extremely limited understanding of it is being a dump after the in-game log gets past X amount of lines.
I only say that because I haven't found everything I've done in it before. It's so-so.
Someone with bigger more sophisticated words please flesh this explanation out.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Kage - 09-02-2014
(09-02-2014, 05:07 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote:(09-02-2014, 04:56 PM)ExKages Wrote: I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable.
Really now... I'll have to take a look at that.
A certain friend of mine *cough* was looking into making a parser of sorts for RPers in RPC. The problem with the logs is that SE has no real.... logical? programming and logging system. The logs are all over the place, over-written and etc. You basically have to get the logs just after you log off. Otherwise it could be overwritten by other RP, battle logs, etc.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Phayte - 09-02-2014
(09-02-2014, 04:56 PM)ExKages Wrote:(09-02-2014, 04:52 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: An automatic chat logging utility would be nice, but that might as well be a parser and so probably runs afoul of ToS.I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable.
I've actually tried dabbling in something with an addon and the logs probably won't work even if you parse them right. ACT use to try and do the same thing, but the data isn't real time (delay between in memory cache and dump to log files) and there's only so much data you can extract from logs.
I think many people are skeptical that any mod tools will be released anytime soon. The only real feasible way is to scan the memory for signatures, but that feels rather dirty to do and officially against ToS to datamine the game (but that's what sites like xivdb do). I had hopes of attempting to make a better UI for buffs and skills that require triggers, but it's rather tedious trying to find the right pointers and it feels a bit dirty too even if you aren't cheating or doing anything gamebreaking modifying.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Coatleque - 09-02-2014
(09-02-2014, 04:56 PM)ExKages Wrote: I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable.
I've tried looking through these logs to pull out RP sessions I forgot to copy. The problem is it's not a "true" chat log. It also logs all combat information as well, so you have to sift through that as well.
What happens is, the game logs your entire chat window from login to logout. You can literally scroll all the way back up to the beginning in every window.
After something like 1000 lines, it will dump this log to the next available file in that folder, and overwrite its contents (when enough logs are created). If you then log out of the game before the next 1000 line quota is reached, you lose everything from the last dump.
So yes it does "log", but not in real time. This made me sadface when I realized I lost half a session.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Phayte - 09-02-2014
Having reread the post again, figured I should actually contribute something on topic. One thing I know most people find tedious is cleaning up logs to post stories. It's a pretty tedious task to clean up everything even on the most basic levels (get rid of other OOC chatter from players, systems messsage, etc).
Not sure if it would be borderline against ToS, but a non-realtime tool to use the log files. But I know it probably wouldn't be too hard to right an application that would read in specified logs and do so automated cleaning. Some features would be like:
- Filter only things said/done by certain characters
- Remove all OOC comment (i.e. anything between your typical (( )) )
- Add formatting for quoted text
- Add formatting for whispered text (i.e via tells)
- Some wiki template format to copy and paste for posting
Those would probably be easy to do in regex. I may actually try this myself just for fun actually.
Edited: Just saw Coatleque's comment, and I've found it to be the same where not everything may get dumped so this may not be feasible directly. However, if someone actually copy and pastes their entire chatlog into the application, it's still doable. It's just slightly more manual.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - Titor - 09-02-2014
I am looking through the folders and found the log files, however they seem to be logging everything but player text, a brief scan over them does not show any player text at all (though I see the npc chat logs there)
Hmm. I really like regex and have written things much more regex-heavy before so could probably get this to format nicely if I look into it a bit further.
RE: RP Tools and Future Addons Request Thread - McBeefâ„¢ - 09-02-2014
I wrote a program in java many moons ago to pull out the logs. I'll find it and post it here.