User talk:Acrothini

Welcome to Sarc's Page

If you want to talk about any topics with me, please feel free to post here. Hit the '+' in the tabs up top to start a new section

My main focus is the update and maintenance of the Artifact pages. --  Sarcandosa  talk &bull;  cont

Map Search
I tinkered around and got a proof-of-concept map search working. The hard part is just pulling the data off the wiki, but as things are organized now I don't think there's a better option for keeping up-to-date as new contributions are made.

To populate the database, it scans the Category:(Zone)_Artifacts page and then each artifact's own page to find the instances of the coord template. Those get plugged into the table of locations. The image generator queries that table with the zone and the item name when it runs.

It works but... it's kind of a kludged-together solution and presently has to run on another host. I don't think my free sandbox one will want me bringing in MMO traffic. :)

All of this would be trivial if coordinates were all submitted from forms that automatically inserted them into a database. Easy enough from a general perspective, but I have no idea how to go about it in the context of a wiki. I looked at some wiki templates and my brain melted a little.

edit: I'm sure there's a way to set up a template that would position each marker in its own div, positioned appropriately against an underlying image. That's probably the best bet to take care of the issue of how to make use of the comments for certain nodes, too. That'll be tomorrow's angle of attack. :)

Psiharis 04:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, I would like to see your sandbox. Also if you would like to take a look at my spreadsheet, we can work on a standard that will bring this together in a more uniform way. Supporting each other will go a long way to making this a project that people will actually want to reference.

--Sarcandosa 15:34, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I've been focusing on the game Log.txt format so far, but I'd be happy to take a look at the layout of your spreadsheet and add an option to process that data too.

I think the biggest hurdle will be figuring out how the coordinates are going to be stored on the wiki long-term. The lists are getting long already. There's also a question of how to associate items with /locs. I don't want to do hundreds of near-simultaneous page loads at a time.

I think the locations page can transclude the /locs from the artifacts' pages. That still might cause headaches for the parser though. Either way a standard format would be a huge help. Maybe it's time to wrap the coords template in one that has a parameter for an item name and rarity, and maybe the sub-zones too.

Psiharis 00:11, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

the file is constantly being updated. But you can view it here https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkhEinqnF2NddE1qX0w1d1FtOWFEV3ZsTmpXU0hxRUE&hl=en&authkey=CJKX3voB

I think breaking the page up into areas like a mentioned earlier would be good. The coords on individual artifact pages should keep the total down a bit. Possible have a static map with all the locs marked for view once a definative list is obtained. We need the Admins to chime in.

--Sarcandosa 01:19, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Cool, I'll take a look tomorrow. Sifting through CSV data is pretty straightforward.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be a static map, just one hosted in a place that the update scripts have access to. I could sprinkle the cron updates throughout the day to mitigate the bursts of activity on Telarapedia's servers. The Mediawiki API is pretty snappy and might not need the help, but hey.

I'm looking into methods that would let my scripts automatically upload maps to Photobucket each night, which is a whitelisted image host for the wiki. Of course, getting my own domain whitelisted would save me a heck of a lot of work, but I quite understand why Photobucket would be preferable from an admin's point of view. :)

I'm slowly picking up a bit of wiki markup language. A template to wrap the present coords template could also place the mouseover info divs on the page. I believe it would be possible to tuck the list away in a hidden div then, easily editable but out of sight for readers.

Without real loops in wiki templates, though, things like the zone test (and therefore map updates) will have to stay in PHP form. Psiharis 03:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * So how can I help you guys? :) I kind of see what you are talking about, but need more info so I'm less lost! -- Ciovala Talk 20:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Cripes, you've been collecting all that data by hand? You had item rarities for more than half the artifacts in the Trion XML file -- that saved me a ton of work!

How's this formatting for you? http://psiharis.com/rift/artifacts/parsecsv-byzone.html

I can rig an option to sort by item name instead of zone if you want, but after skimming some wiki documentation, I think it would be easier to transclude labeled sections from the zone artifact locs page onto the individual item pages than vice versa, from a parsing and updating point of view. I don't think most users are going to want to edit each of the hundreds of artifact pages by hand.

Ciovala, how about a whitelist for .jpgs hosted on the psiharis.com domain? Then I could get the map images to automatically update instead of plunking along by hand. The Photobucket API is... a challenge I will face another time. :P

Psiharis 03:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I just responded to your post on the Rift forums, so more information there. I have a game specific email to facilitate communication theriftless@gmail.com. I love your parse and will start using it once I know I have a good description of every location and no longer need to capture that.

I agree that the from artifact to consolidated list is the best approach. In fact I may defer from posting locations on individual artifact pages until we get enough data to determine if that information matters. I.E. is the artifact loot table per location, area or zone wide. Just not enough data yet to determine that. Once you have a know list by zone, determining the best what to break that list down on the Wiki should be easy. I prefer by area of the map within a zone, but that just me. For those that are in the area of the map of the map name, then in ascending order by X coord is probably best.

I am going to finish the update of my tab one with all artifact sets, their image file names then figure out a way to concant the code needed to update all the individual artifact pages minus locations and then the set pages. Then I will break down tab to to individual zone pages to easier manage and analyze the locations to answer the loot table questions.

I have a word file with all the Wiki loaded images to allow a search by name or image of all items. they are all png files. If you have a place to host it, great, otherwise I was going to break the file down into pieces that I could upload to my google docs. Currently it is to large as a single file.

At some point I should get you all in my vent so we can talk instead of typing and work through some of this stuff a bit quicker. If you would like to do that, shoot me an email and I will get you the information.

I think this joint effort in two different but related parts of the project is great. I am really enjoying what we are doing and what will will be providing to the community.

--Sarcandosa 17:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC) Just updated the spreadsheet with tabs for each zone. Link above takes you to that file.

--Sarcandosa 23:09, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Helper on hand
Hi and OHHH MY GOD, ive needed something like this for a while so thanks, found it on the main forums and having seen the work by Psiharis i have started to collect some data for uploading already.

ill start updating it later tonight, ive normally pick up about 20-30 artifacts a night so ill update the spreadsheet as and when i do. Noticed that some of the x y z co-ord are not in the correct format in that Y is missing and the z part is in Y, want me to edit it? as i can do that while im not in game or at work :)

is there anything else that you want/need?

also do you know of have a method to track currently collected artifacts over different characters, as i would like to complete my main characters collections before i complete my alts :) but it seems to be a matter of either repeated logging of characters or a spreadsheet of some sort   Larryl0099  talk &bull;  cont 16:48, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for wanting to help. I work on a local copy and suggest you do the same. The one on Google Docs I only update every week or so as the Real Time updating can get frustrating and does not play well with multiple users. Just email you updated file every so often, I will merge the data and update the reference file for everyone to see the latest. If you don't want to email me, you can just update the wiki directly.

Some have only two coords as I collected those when opening the map to get the coords. I have since switched to a mcro that I hit when I collect an arti that gives me the three part loc. Only the X and Z are needed for the wiki, but I am also revivifying a number of the old ones as errors were found once displayed by Psiharis's maps. I am updating them to the three digit coords once I collect from that spot again. If you have the updated info, great. Any help is appreciated.

I do have a way to track who has what. If you look as tab 1 Set info, you will see two columns, one with a K and the other with an S, those are the first letters of my two toons. Once the both have an arti, I italicize the artifact on the location pages so I know that it is now an extra to sale or trade.

--Sarcandosa 17:10, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Artifact comments
Take a look at my sandbox http://telarapedia.com/wiki/User:Psiharis/Sandbox -- I still have to add calculations for zones other than Freemarch and test different skins/browsers/text-sizes to make sure things line up as they should, but it's mostly there.

You can see where the comments are thick and overlapping. They'll have to be consolidated somehow, or culled so that not all location data is displayed as a mouseover. I don't think most of the obvious locations ('next to a rock') need special attention on the map display.

Psiharis 18:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I like it, very nice approach to what I was suggesting. I am planing on reversing this area and the description on the Wiki though, hopefully this won't change what you have done. Reason for this is the Coords are a fixed length, the areas are fixed, but descriptions can vary. This way we can short by Coord or area and the description would just follow. Overall I think it will just be cleaner. Also if at some point we want to strip the descriptions, it is just an append not a re-arrange of things. I was also thinking that I may want to define a description criteria and format. But haven't gotten to that yet as I have been working on getting the spreadsheet done and ready to populate the Wiki. I have also been working on the set template on the Wiki to define the best way to present it. Have asked for admin help where I got stuck with the icon. Once all that done I then can focus on the location part of the project. I still see a number of errors listed despite me removing some of them.

I know it just a test, but your Location List and Item List tabs don't match the Front Page. But thought I would point it out in case it was an oversight. Also, have you seen some of the HD maps that have been showing up on the forums. I was going to suggest that you take a look and see if you could possibly use them. They give a much better idea of where on the map a coord is located. But they area also much larger. Maybe keep the ones you have but link to a blown up version using the HD ones for those that want to take a closer look. Would be really nice for route planning, especially where elevation and barriers cause problems.

Keep up the great work, you are doing things I wish I knew how to do.

--Sarcandosa 19:18, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd pasted data from Moonshade in before, and at some point changed the image to Freemarch for... no reason that I can recall now. Do not be alarmed by inconsistencies in the sandbox. ;)

The parser doesn't really care where in the comment the area is specified, it's just looking for anything enclosed in double brackets. It'll fail on oddball cases where a link to some other page comes before the area, but so far that hasn't come up and is easy enough to fix by hand.

The test version is now sorting items by set and then by item name, locations by area is up next. Shouldn't take long. I asked on Ciovala's talk page about an extension that would make the big lists much easier to use for related pages (individual items or areas, say), so that's being looked into.

For the HD maps, it'd be easy enough to generate them -- just plug in the new pixel width for each zone's image. I'm a little concerned about whether the PHP image library is suited for generating very large images, but I haven't gotten any nasty notes from my webhost about CPU usage yet. ;) The bigger barrier is that Photobucket shrinks uploaded images to a maximum width, which puts me back to square one in terms of updating map images without a lot of manual edits. The updater could stick .zips of the HD maps in a public FTP directory, but that's not especially user-friendly.

e: Haven't tested too extensively but it worked OK with the zones I did try. http://psiharis.com/rift/artifacts/postcsv.html

It strips '-' out of comments as it goes. For a lot of comments the only difference was whether they were prefaced by one dash or two, probably a result of inconsistent emdash conversions, so I skipped that whole headache and purged them. Can always re-add one to the front if there's a strong preference for that formatting.

Psiharis 20:49, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Spreadsheet Complete
OK So I have finally completed my spreadsheet as much as possible with the information that I have. I have also re-evaluated all location both in my spreadsheet and those currently listed on the WIKI. I used Riftmap to delete all coordinates referenced that are clearly not in the right zone. The only thing left is the icon references for a couple of sets and verification of Vanity Text for Artifacts I haven't seen yet. I find it humorous how many sites out there have Artifacts listed under the wrong zone because they just used a script to take the Trion feed and process it without any validation.

If you would like to see and use the completed Spreadsheet, let me know. Psiharis, we will need to purge the current location list to get rid of all the bad coordinates. Any coordinates in my file that has a zero in the "Y" column, came from the WIKI so I can't verify any of those as of yet. I will not get coordinates from the WIKI again to merge with my spreadsheet, entirely to much work to get it formatted to fit in the right column. There seems to be know Reverse Concatenate in Excel, so you have to write a script, which I just didn't have time for today.

Anyways, I am ready to update the WIKI Artifacts and Sets with the data, minus the locations whenever the template is ready. Either in Auto Mode via a BOT or manual, awaiting Ciovala's input on that part. 1144 individual Artifacts is a lot of Data, 1230 if you are looking at how many you need to complete every set. (86 you have to get twice).

So the question is, should I update my spreadsheet at Google Docs or is there someplace else I should put it, or should I not put it anywhere and just have it available to those that have a need and ask? --Sarcandosa 21:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The current version of the parser is blindly trusting the XML zone data (trying to save a whole lot of geometric calculations); the testing version doesn't, which should correct quite a few of the bogus coords. I'll have the new version up at some point tonight.

Haven't really had time to look at the other issues yet.

Psiharis 23:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)