everspy2

[odiopopulis]

So, i've been messing with this nice little beta utility today, and i must say im impressed, Its in beta so it has alot of room for growth and alot of bugs to work out, but it is definately a good start.

Main box = amd64 3200+ gig ram nvidia 5700le OC vid card wireless network
One of other boxes = pent 3 800mhz 512ram (i use teamspeak on it etc) wireless network

I have noticed after about 4 or 5 zonings it seems to crash, and it seems to be a really big ram hog. I run it on a second monitor on my main box, and it runs like a champ, but after a few zones or a while with alot of mob updates, it seems to eat away at my ram and i start to get some performance issues.

I also tried running the remote feature with the other box i mentioned. I couldn't get it to work and it would make my main box loose connection to my wireless router and not be able to get back on until i turned off everspy2.

I'm not sure if this is something i'm doing wrong, or if it is something that is caused due to the wireless nature of my network.

I have also noticed a couple of things. Larger zones seem to have a smaller radius of information (mobs, ghosts, etc) where as smaller zones have a HUGE radius of information. I guess this is to make it easier on your machine having to load so much.

One thing im curious about, however, is the fact that here is a way to check to see if a lot of mobs are up:

Example: Location :commonlands (make sure you have nothing targeted)

type: /wave light

If Lightbringer wisp is up you will see "yourname waves at Lightbringer Wisp"
If Lightbringer wisp is not up, you will see "yourname waves"

Type: /wave ram

If Ramn'ai is up you will see "yourname waves at Ramn'ai"
If ramn'ai is not up, you will see "yourname waves"

This only works in alpha order, and only with one work after the emote.
For example

Type: /wave captain

If captain Gaer is up you will see "yourname waves at Captain Gaer"
If captain gaer is not up, you will see "your name waves at captain isla"
You can NOT find ogof using this, because isla is always up and I comes before O.

Anyhow, if u are able to use these emotes to see if a mob is up in a zone ANYWHERE, then there has to be some kind of centralized database of what mobs are up, when and where.

Type : /wave high
If high priest of val'marr is up you will see "yourname waves at High Priest Of Val'marr"
If high priest isn't up, you will see "yourname waves"

The interesting thing about high priest is the fact that he's not on tracking for scouts. I was in a group looking for him, and did my /wave thing, and saw he was up, i told the scout to check for him, and he couldn't see him.... even when we were 5 feet away, he wasn't on track, BUT i could see he WAS up by doing /wave high .

If we could see what/where the /wave command gets its target information from, then we might be even better off than using the player based bubble.

Anyhow, these are just some random things i've seen/come across. Figured i'd share them with everyone.

[Acid1789]

Im not sure whats going on with your memory issues. I have no problem with it. Im developing using a wireless network so thats not the issue. I havnt seen it use a whole lot of memory, but I havnt run around large zones yet either.

As for your little wave trick, almost every / command is sent to the server for processing, very few are handled clientside (with the exception of ui and /pizza). That existence check for your emote is done on the server. The client only views a little piece of the world (always 75 meter radius). The server only sends updates for stuff in this small area (excluding group members). It destroys anything that moves outside your little bubble and only sends create commands when something enters.

[Acid1789]

Thanks for the heads up on the memory thing. I found a particularly nasty memory leak and a couple of crash bugs related to it

[odiopopulis]

damn, you are quick. lol. i'll keep seeing what things i can come up with.

[onied]

runs remote rather well through winex (cedega) as well. seems to only crash about as much as if i ran it localy on my windows machine.

my linux machine is only a celeron 667 with 256mb PC133 ram hehe =)

I tried to run it with plain ole wine, it works... kinda the mob list on the left side of the window flashes hen the mouse goes to that side of the window other wise its all black with map icons.

Question, how do you overlay maps? I didn't see an option for it but i think it could be really handy.

[BlueAdept]

Congratulations Acid on those high scores in the arcade. You did a nice job of cheating

[Acid1789]

Question, how do you overlay maps?

Maps arent supported in this version. Still havnt decided what the best way to handle maps is. Any suggestions are welcome

Congatulations Acid on those high scores in the arcade. You did a nice job of cheating

Thank you I always cheat

[Freakyuno]

Maps arent supported in this version. Still havnt decided what the best way to handle maps is. Any suggestions are welcome

At one time I was working on a skinable 3d engine that would allow rendering of the SEQ spawn data in real time, in a 3d enviroment. IE: Depth filtering would take on a whole new meaning with a rotateable and positionable spawn grid. Imagine the rotating particle visualation for Windows Media Player and you get the idea.

I gave up on the project because SEQ as a whole was almost dead at that point, and my EQ career was over. If this is something your interested in, let me know.

[Acid1789]

What were you using for 3d data? And why bother rendering 3D data in an orthographic viewport?

[Freakyuno]

I used the X, Y and Z of the decoded Mob data. I wasnt rendering it in the SEQ 2d viewport. I used openGL to draw a resizeable frame that you could grab with the mouse and twist on an axis relative to your position in the space. Basically your toons dot would become absolute center and you could rotate it on any axis based on that center position.

[Acid1789]

Druppy suggested a feature similar to that the other day. Its not very usable however.

The first phase of my next project involves creating a zone viewer. It would be possible to merge the zone viewer into EverSpy2 as a 3D mode option. Basicly you would get all the zone geometry in a 3D view and a free cam to fly around and look at the data in 3D.

Dont count on seeing this feature until after the first release of EverSpy2 though

[Freakyuno]

This was much more simple than that. Didnt even include map lines, just floating "skittles" in a 3d grid frame. Look forward to a zone explorer though.

[high_jeeves]

A simple way to do mapping: (My home grown showEQ did this):

Create an XML file (or database table, or other structured storage system) which contains information about each map (map image name, seed coordinates, Z-range, etc). When a user enters a zone, you load the image specified in the XML file, and use the seed coordinates to create a tranformation matrix to convert between bitmap coordinates and EQ2 coordinates. Then it becomes as easy as applying the transform before you render your ghosts. This also makes things like rotation, scaling, and panning very easy (as they all work through the same transformation matrix).

Here is an example XML structure:

<zones>
  <zone name="Stormhold">
    <map image="stormhold1.gif" zmin="-100" zmax="100">
       <coordinate imagex="25" imagey="54" eq2x="234.4" eq2y="445.3" />
       <coordinate imagex="345" imagey="543" eq2x="1234.8" eq2y="943.2" />
       <coordinate imagex="83" imagey="238" eq2x="423.6" eq2y="732.5" />
     </map>
    <map image="stormhold2.gif" zmin="100" zmax="400">
.... more coordinates ....
     </map>
  </zone>
</zones>

note, this data is made up, but you get the idea. When a player is at zloc 50, you see map stormhold1.gif, when player is at zloc 200, you see map stormhold2.gif. You use the coordinates to determine how EQ2 coords map to the .gif coords for that map. You could also allow for multiple maps in the same Z-range, and give the user a hotkey to flip through all the available maps.

I'd be happy to help out with the coding effort for EverSpy 2, if you are interested in farming out some of the work.

--Jeeves

[Acid1789]

Heh rendering an image is not hard. Getting the image is. Who would be making all these maps?

[high_jeeves]

This site has great maps: http://www.gry-online.pl/eq2/index.asp

They do not allow for distribution of them, but they do allow download of them for personal use. Create and distribute the XML or other data files which work with these (or any other available maps), and publish those XML files... the downloading of the maps can be the end users problem, unless you can get permission from the orignial authors. If you make the map loading/rendering code nice and generic, with a user editable config file, any user can create/download/use any maps of their choice.

--Jeeves