Some notes from the author: =========================== - What's new in this version - General notes - Gathering information - Retrieving information via DDE in zMUD What's new in this version (3.1-3.3): ------------------------------------- - added items that aren't armor or weapons but can be worn, for example, certain treasures (except keys, food and drinkcons) - added support for new wear locations: back, face, ankles - added support for 'permanent' flag - filtering for 'hold' items now includes staves, wands, scrolls, potions, pills and salves - because some of them can give you affects when held - a whole lot of items added and updated - v3.3 fixes two small bugs in v3.1 General notes: -------------- - the program currently supports armor, weapons, lights, containers, staves, wands, scrolls, potions, pills and salves as main item types, plus other items that can be worn - for weapons: ident report does not show weapon type. You have to add it ([S],[L],[P],[B],[F],[T] or [M]) to the "Other" field manually based on your own experience with weapons: [S]hort blades - pierce, stab [L]ong blades - slash, slice [B]ludgeons - pound, crush [F]lexible - whip, grep [T]alonous - claw, bite [P]ugilism - blast, suction, unspecified [M]issile - bolt, arrow, dart, stone, pea - the Properties field contains the brief list of item flags. For details move the cursor to that field and press Enter or click the mouse - there are items that cannot be obtained by mere playing the game, like clan equipment (old and new), quest items, etc. These items have the NOT IN GAME flag set by me manually, and you can tell RoD_db to ignore these items when setting filter to avoid being distracted by items you cannot normally get. If you happen to identify such an item and add it to the database, please don't forget to set the NOT IN GAME flag manually - you can delete records from the database by pressing Ctrl-Del. It is better not to have a record of some item at all than to have a wrong record. That is, if you cannot correct the record by editing it - pressing Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Ins fills Windows clipboard with the info of the currently selected item. You may paste it (Ctrl-V) anywhere in Windows (for instance, in zMUD) Gathering information: ---------------------- - you can skip this section if you are not going to add information to the database yourself - this program extracts information from your session logs, therefore you have to turn logging on (Ctrl-L in zMUD) if you wish to gather information rather than just use the database - log files must have the ".txt" extension, and they must be DOS-style text files (each line terminated with CR/LF), not UNIX-style text files (each line terminated with LF). Use TODOS utility to convert logs if you are mudding from UNIX - it is recommended that you log each session to a different file - to gather info more efficiently, it is recommended that you turn the AUCTION channel on and use triggered AUC command (triggered by "A new item is being auctioned"), although it will add some spam. If you have an alt character that has nothing to do, it would be perfect for auction logging - it is highly recommended that you set the prompt for your logging character to start with a "<" and end with a ">", otherwise some information can be overlooked by the program - you must have CONFIG +BLANK in order to gather information - the initial database already contains some item info gathered by me using this program. Try doing it manually for comparison ;-) - known problem 1: items with the same name (especially new/old versions of the same item) may lead to confusion. To avoid it, you can edit item name by adding something like "(old)" to it so the program will not modify that item's record anymore. Also, don't forget to set the NOT IN GAME flag for "old" items - known problem 2: enchanted weapons may cause anti-good or anti-evil flag set for a weapon that initially didn't have it. Avoid identifying enchanted weapons if possible. The program automatically recognizes enchantable weapons and correctly "enchants" them by adding +3HR/DR and the "enchanted" flag without setting anti-good/anti-evil flags. If you see a "wrong" anti-good or anti-evil flag, feel free to remove it (edit the FLAGS field) - also please avoid identifying renamed or glory-enhanced items. If you see such an item in the list of updates after reading a log file, just delete it (Ctrl-Del) - don't add brewed potions, scribed scrolls, clan potions and pills, out-of-game potions, pills and salves, immortal-made tonics, etc. They will only get in your way when you need to find a 'natural' item Retrieving information via DDE in zMUD: --------------------------------------- - RoD_db supports DDE data requests. DDE application name: "RoD_db", topic: "Info" To send a request: execute a macro containing the request string To retrieve the result: read item "Data" Request format: [n.]text{ text} or all.text{ text} Example: "dragon" will retrieve first item that has "dragon" as a substring in its name ("Dragonslicer"), "2.dragon" will retrieve the next item containing "dragon" ("dragon fang"), "dragon hide plate" will retrieve first item that has "dragon", "hide" and "plate" in its name (which is obviously "Dragonhide Breastplate"). The substrings can be separated by blanks or dashes. Specifying "all" as prefix will retrieve all items with names containing the substrings. Example: "all.dragon" will retrieve a list of all dragon-related items An example of a zMUD alias: #ALIAS info { #DDE RoD_db Info {%-1}; #SHOW %dde(RoD_db,Info,Data) } Then you can use it like this: info all.dragon scale Note 1: Items can be retrieved by fragments of their names, not keywords. SMAUG does not show keywords in ident reports Note 2: Using zMUD DDE functions sometimes causes RoD_db to crash on exit. It is due to zMUD's way of working with DDE, and it will hopefully go away in the future. Nothing serious, no data loss. - and yes, this program is FREEWARE Enjoy! Alexian/Axius/Aibolith @ RoD, aka avi@kscable.com