QDKP (attendance & null dkp recorder, output to xml)

Zee · 04/02/07, 5:40 PM

So in doing dkp for my guild for 18 months, I always wanted a better way of recording everything. It took me until the pre-2.0 weeks to get it working, and then ofc it broke with the 2.0 patch. I've finally got myself to 70, and have been thinking about making it work with TBC.

Anyway, it's designed to run with the system we used, which borrowed a lot from the EJ way. We used "council" decided loot values, with a limited set of upgrades, and null dkp.

There's two parts to it, a recording mod and a "listening" mod that silently reports drops and also shows tooltip dkp values. The idea is that several (or all, if desired) people in the raid run the reporting mod, and one or two run the recording mod.

The reporting mod is there so that loot out of range of the people recording, still gets entered. It's set up with BWL and AQ40 bosses to auto record rollcalls on boss deaths, and will autorecord all epics (except defined ones like ele ore).

In the end I was able to have it recording everything with a very small amount of input while I was raiding, and simply dump it to xml for eqdkp (I also hacked up an import script for eqdkp, which allowed previewing of the raid before submitting to the eqdkp db). After doing it the hard way for 18 months, it seriously was a joy to watch it all being done automatically. All I had to do was list dkp for people interested in a drop.

One shot of the interface

Hacked up interface for viewing/submitting raids

Example parsed raid

I guess my question is - if I spent some time tidying it up, would others want to use it? Adding your own item values and bosses is simple for anyone familiar with a regex and excel.

Or is there a better mod out there now? I made this one because I could never find a mod that suited our system.

♦ Praetorian · 04/02/07, 5:49 PM

Originally Posted by Zee

I guess my question is - if I spent some time tidying it up, would others want to use it?

Yes yes yes yes yes.

Brando · 04/02/07, 6:04 PM

I'd definately be interested. Trying to setup EQDKP the way you want it and figure out the mods to use with no prior experience is quite a headache unless you have a lot of time on your hands, which I unfortunately don't. I'm sure there are a decent amount of people like myself that are running new formed guilds as of TBC that are trying to piece this part of the puzzle toghether. Would be a big help

threat · 04/02/07, 6:31 PM

A long time member in my guild created a RaidAttendance tracker along with a WaitList integrated with it. ( AddOns ) It strictly only records attendance and not loot, but from there it's easy to parse and enter in.

This leads to me remembering to manually write down the Item/Value for each raid, so I'd love that part of it!

Hutchy · 04/03/07, 10:04 AM

"In the end I was able to have it recording everything with a very small amount of input while I was raiding, and simply dump it to xml for eqdkp (I also hacked up an import script for eqdkp, which allowed previewing of the raid before submitting to the eqdkp db)."

Seriously interested in this.

Having a mod that wasn't as bloated as CT Raidtracker supporting a zero sum based system, but still exporting in a eqdkp / ctraidtracker xml format for eqdkp would be a god send.

♦ Praetorian · 04/03/07, 10:17 AM

Basically -- EQDKP annoys me, but I'd be happy with a non-bloated UI mod that:

1) Records all drops and who looted them
2) Records attendance at the time of each boss kill (including the people in a user-specified chat channel as a waitlist)
3) Exports smoothing to EQDKP

By late Naxx, CT_RT was so frustrating, missing seemingly every other boss kill, not correctly attributing some items to the right bosses, messing up join/leave info so that everyone who was ever in the raid group got added to some boss kills, and so forth. I'd almost rather do it by hand than deal with that again.

Anias · 04/03/07, 3:09 PM

EQDKP is awful. Once I realized how awful I started looking for alternatives.

I found, and enjoy:

Immortality's Raid Management Suite. It uses the standardized EQDKP output from addon strings, and does all kinds of nice other stuff. So it might even be compatible with this (apparently superior) addon for exporting. Of course it also has a sensible "copy paste" option for just using something like raid attendance to grab the list of who is here, then typing the name of the items into blanks if you prefer.

There's a project ongoing to mount it on SMF forums if you prefer them to phpbb. If you're reasonably competent with sql/php you could easily migrate it to a different forum integration.

It's worlds better in terms of sql table layout than eqdkp.

Current maintainer while Hulex (the creator) is on hiatus is machus/zai - his site is at:

http://zai.stuff.googlepages.com/rms-updates

It has far too many features for me to list, but the big ones are smooth integration from game to web, sensible backups, good sql back end, coherent handling of alts/mains, very customizable for your prefered methods of dealing with rgp and/or incentives/floors/ceilings etc.

Proeliata · 04/03/07, 4:11 PM

So out of curiosity, and sorry if the answer to this is completely obvious--I'm a total newb when it comes to writing addons--is it possible to write an addon that will log in to your site and update your databases with the correct values as you go along? Are there some sort of security sandboxes that prevent you from doing that from in-game? Or is there simply no readily available support for SQL queries/creating a connection to a non-local database?

Apate · 04/03/07, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by Proeliata

So out of curiosity, and sorry if the answer to this is completely obvious--I'm a total newb when it comes to writing addons--is it possible to write an addon that will log in to your site and update your databases with the correct values as you go along? Are there some sort of security sandboxes that prevent you from doing that from in-game? Or is there simply no readily available support for SQL queries/creating a connection to a non-local database?

WoW does basically operate in a sandbox. You write to the SavedVariables on a log, exit, or a UI reload. Typcially, another utility is then used to extract data from the SV file and do something with it.

Abbi · 04/03/07, 4:32 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

WoW does basically operate in a sandbox. You write to the SavedVariables on a log, exit, or a UI reload. Typcially, another utility is then used to extract data from the SV file and do something with it.

You can cheat by using a certain API call that has the ability to call URLs; obviously it's possible to pass arbitrary information to a web server that way. But I sort of expect that heavy use of that would cause the API call to go away.

Proeliata · 04/03/07, 4:33 PM

Got it, thanks guys.

Apate · 04/03/07, 4:59 PM

Originally Posted by Abbi

You can cheat by using a certain API call that has the ability to call URLs; obviously it's possible to pass arbitrary information to a web server that way. But I sort of expect that heavy use of that would cause the API call to go away.

Ah, that still works.

Ok, there's that then, but I agree that one wouldn't be wise to rely on it.

• Shalas · 04/03/07, 5:01 PM

Originally Posted by Abbi

You can cheat by using a certain API call that has the ability to call URLs; obviously it's possible to pass arbitrary information to a web server that way. But I sort of expect that heavy use of that would cause the API call to go away.

You'd have to use a HOSTS file to redirect www.worldofwarcraft.com to your site, though, as it only allows URLs pointing to WoW's site.

Zee · 04/03/07, 5:04 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Basically -- EQDKP annoys me, but I'd be happy with a non-bloated UI mod that:

1) Records all drops and who looted them
2) Records attendance at the time of each boss kill (including the people in a user-specified chat channel as a waitlist)
3) Exports smoothing to EQDKP

By late Naxx, CT_RT was so frustrating, missing seemingly every other boss kill, not correctly attributing some items to the right bosses, messing up join/leave info so that everyone who was ever in the raid group got added to some boss kills, and so forth. I'd almost rather do it by hand than deal with that again.

What I've written is quite limited in it's functionality; it was only ever intended to make my life easier, for our loot system. It's not very flexible.

Basically, when a purple drops, it compares the looter and item name to the last known drop in it's system. If either one differs, it records a new drop. If the "trash" flag is set, it records a new "raid" with a new attendance rollcall (a rollcalll simply records all the people in the raid, and their location - you can't see their location in the mod, only when you upload - useful for catching late people still on the windrider when the first boss is downed).

People don't get credit for drops within the mod; you start the night's runs with what the website exports, and you get deducted for what you '"buy". Your dkp will go up by the next night (or upload, process & import).

The export to eqdkp is done cut'n'paste style from within the mod; you hit export, it gives you a textbox with everything in it's system in one xml string (the intention is that you would be updating after the end of each night). Alt-tab, paste into my hacked up xml parser. It's not meant to store every raid, only a small number.

The xml format is something I've just knocked together; it doesn't conform to any ctrt format/method.

If I made it available for others to use, I'm happy for people to make changes, but I'd rather they rename the mod, as I'd like to keep it as simple as possible, for our use. However, if someone designed a nice ajax interface for tweaking uploaded data before you add it to eqdkp, I'd be stoked.

At the moment it's simply add or discard; you have to dump the xml into a text editor and tweak it by hand, and resubmit (hence in the screenshots you can see "processed" and "discarded").

Zee · 04/03/07, 5:08 PM

Also the typical disclaimer about not being familiar with lua, my code is so embarrassing, yadda yadda yadda. I thought about ACE'ing it, looked at the ace libraries, couldn't really see much point.

I should get time over Easter to make the minor changes needed for tbc.