April 2019

April 2

For today, I have some anticlimactic news. In the previous Dev Log, I mentioned the possibility of spending all of April on the Titles module. That will not be the case, I have already finished about as far as it can go for now.

I also promised at the time that I would show some pics of the old version as well. I am here to deliver on that, and to talk about how this finished ahead of schedule. To start off, for the reference to explain things, here is an image of the Titles module in its default state:




Each is hovering on Ruins of Sanctity, and as labelled, the left-side one is the old version. I have dubbed this state "Grid view", where it will list in a grid all of the sub-groups within the selected category. In this case, it is listing each region within Colhen as a selectable title group. Clicking one of the other categories will switch the grid to display that categories sub-groups, and so on. Upon clicking one of the sub-group options...




Here we have "List view", where all of the titles within this group are listed. At the top, you have the category you have selected, and then the sub-group you are viewing. Clicking the label for the category will take you back to grid view. Clicking one of the title blocks will mark it as acquired, and this will be indicated by the box on the right turning Green.

As you can see, while the grid view design is pretty close to identical between versions, this one changed more substantially. Instead of a plain scrollable panel, it is now a full on table complete with a header. The title descriptions have been swapped out for the goal descriptions, which are much less lengthy. The selected state has changed from coloring the entire block to only coloring a right-side indicator. What hasn't changed is the unfortunate need to reserve two lines for title descriptions, as it is still required in some cases.

Additionally, list view has more options, as compared to the old version. For a focus on only titles that will increase your stats, you can check the box to filter out all statless titles. For those wanting to just do all of the titles, you can check the box to remove the filler of every title you have already done and dusted. Or you can even check both at once to really slim the list down.

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The focus of this module's design has been to make it manageable to parse through over a thousand titles. To do this requires numerous efficient filters and organization options. Not yet present, grid view will have a second row of tabs added. This second row will be to change categorization methods.

The default type is "Region"; the other three will be "Type", "Difficulty", and "Brevity" (names not final). These will, in order, group titles based on type of task (kill boss, do breakoff, kill mobs, etc), by difficulty (easy repetitive actions, semi-skillful tasks such as breakoffs, and so on), and by time investment (titles that can be quickly knocked out vs those that take a lot of runs).

There will also be a series of "Mark all listed titles", "Give all stat titles", "Give all titles" etc options, but I don't know where I want to put these yet.

Notably absent in the new version, you can see that there are no markers or labels for title sharing across an account. This was one of the biggest sticking points that walled me on handling title data. To not only have to handle 1000 plus titles per character profile, but to also cross-reference across an entire grouped account to sort out what an individual profile has and what stats it has. I can't think of a way to explain this that does justice to the complexity of that, at least at my current skill level.

I debated how to resolve this, and even designed a version of the Titles module that had extra indicators for a title was shared or shared but also level locked. In the end, I have decided to cut this functionality from the Armory. It would certainly have been convenient, but between the difficulty and the possible confusion it could cause, it's not worth it. Even if it worked server-side, there would still be instances where a user accidentally groups their actual ingame char profiles with a theoretical build profile that has a bunch of extra titles marked that they don't yet have. These titles would be shared, causing stat mismatches on every other profile, that would be a pain in the ass to track down the source of.

So it was easier to cut the feature out, and work around it from there. Some mechanism will be added to allow users to copy over their choice of either all titles from another profile, or all sharable titles from another profile, for as many profiles as they need to import from. This makes it a fully controlled setting by the user, and massively reduces server-side workload.

But with all of this talk of server-side saving character profiles, we ignore the bigger issue. The Armory doesn't actually have such a thing yet. This is why I can't fully finish off the Titles module yet. My new task from here is to create a Profiles module, so that such a thing can exist.

Unlike the old Armory, where a save was everything together, v4 splits them conceptually into Profiles and Loadouts. Profiles will store character type, base stats, skill ranks, titles, Ein Lacher progress, and Redeemers progress. Each Loadout save will store up to all 10 sets in the Gear tab, as separate saves from character data. The Item Storage module will remain separate from these as it did before, and be saved on a per account basis.

April 3

Today was spent thinking on how I want to handle character profiles, and dealing with another issue that has been bothering me lately. I have news on the profiles front, but the smaller topic comes first.

For those who previously used the older Armory build, you would have quickly become aware that while there were ten equipment sets, they all shared the same NX tab. This was an annoying limitation mostly due to the necklace slot, and it is one that I can say is over with. I've been doing some more poking at the Gear module, and it now looks like this:



The vertical tabs have been replaced with the standard v4 tab design, and each gear set now has its own NX slots. The design isn't yet final, but this is what I am leaning toward now. It seems much more sensible than how it was previously split between two tabs.

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But the Gear module isn't what the focus is on this month, it was all about Titles. Yesterday, I made a rather large logical blunder. I believed that because profiles were unsupported, it would be impossible to set titles. This line of thinking is completely wrong, though. It shouldn't require an account and an active character profile just to manage titles.

The assumptions I had on how the module would function yesterday were a mess of thoughts, primarily due to initially trying to juggle handling shared titles. After a calm day of thinking on this, I've determined everything about my previous plans was terrible. I haven't decided how I want to handle title stat calculation yet, but I do know how I want to handle title setting/unsetting.

The answer is rather amazing in its simplicity. The Titles module is not going to care about what profiles are, or if you have loaded one. It is only going to care about the current list of titles marked as owned. When you go to save or create a profile, the Profiles module will ask the Titles module for the list of titles it says the profile has, and the Profiles module will sort out the rest.

With that, April is back to a full on focus on title handling. I am going to get this module to a 100% completion state, with no more major detours from here.

April 5

Adding and removing titles now updates your profile's stats in real time. This does, of course, mean that handling for title stats is now fully implemented as well.

Previously, when I mentioned the four categorization options you could choose, I mentioned that they would be: By Region, By Type, By Duration, and By Difficulty. That last one, "By Difficulty" has been cut. I couldn't feasibly think of a way to divide it into enough groups to be worth using. In its place, the fourth categorization is now for Storyline titles. This option will show only story titles, grouped by region. I don't know how I want to handle the vast amount of titles that do not take place in a specific region, but I will figure it out eventually.

I am currently working on rebuilding my data for categorizing and grouping titles. I have setup tools to help me do this, and the process is 6% done so far. This has to be completed before I can finish, so it may as well be now.

April 13

Title progress is at 50%. I haven't been posting any Dev Logs meanwhile since there wasn't anything worthwhile to mention. That hasn't exactly changed, except for the 50% mark itself.

The sheer number of Event titles has me stumped on how I want to handle these. I'd like to sort them by year, but gathering together that much data seems unlikely at the least.

April 13, Again

Here is another impulse decision, though maybe the first this overt since the Dev Logs started up again. The Titles module and the Skills module are shelved. They will be resumed later, but I have changed up my priorities of what to work on. The Titles module was the current focus because out of all of the modules, it had the most data to throw around. It was the best load test for juggling lots of values.

My priority now is to get the Armory itself online. This will require releasing v4 massively incomplete, but I will be adding everything back in over time as it is completed, so I don't think anyone will be too upset.


The new task list is roughly this, subject to change order based on my whims:

1: Create a Base Stats module that functions as the v2 Armory's did. This will act in place of the Titles, Skills, Ein Lacher, and Redeemers modules. Its existence will be permanent, becoming toggle-able when those modules are implemented.

2: Finish filling in loose pieces on gear handling and item tooltips. Things like bracelet sockets don't actually work yet.

3: Create a temporary module to select a raid battle from, for purposes of calculating caps/damage. This temporary module will be replaced with a full battle selection module at some point after release.

4: Create a module to replace the old "Battle Info window" of the v2 Armory, showing relevant data such as the current Additional Damage multiplier, Effective ATT, and Average Power.

5: Create the previously explained Profiles and Loadouts systems to save char data and equipment sets.

6: Create a system to register accounts (A login/logout system already exists).

7: Bug testing

8: Go online as an alpha release



Even from v2, this omits several features. However, once the v4 Armory is online and stable, features to be added will be prioritized by how much QoL each would provide. Or by popular demand, I suppose.

April 14

Task #1, a Base Stats module, completed. Creation, Design, and Implementation done.





This particular task happened to be easy, since not only is the idea behind it simple, but it was just a bunch of inputs. I needed to negate the effects of each stat on the other stats, but I already determined how to do this with the v2 Armory.

I will be ending each Dev Log from here on with a repost of the "To do list". This is both to help people following along see the path to go, and as a self-reminder of what I am *supposed* to be doing.

The remaining tasks to get a bare minimum Armory build online:

1: Finish filling in loose pieces on gear handling and item tooltips. Things like bracelet sockets don't actually work yet.

2: Create a temporary module to select a raid battle from, for purposes of calculating caps/damage. This temporary module will be replaced with a full battle selection module at some point after release.

3: Create a module to replace the old "Battle Info window" of the v2 Armory, showing relevant data such as the current Additional Damage multiplier, Effective ATT, and Average Power.

4: Create the previously explained Profiles and Loadouts systems to save char data and equipment sets.

5: Create a system to register accounts (A login/logout system already exists).

6: Bug testing

7: Go online as an alpha release

April 18

I've ended up in cleanup again, this time going through all of the defined outfits and removing sets that are not available in NA or EU. I've cleaved off a hair under a thousand sets, and a few stragglers remain.

In Discord, I've been trying to coordinate info to individually confirm each of the 300-ish outfits remaining in my data, and remove those that look to not be present here.

So that's my current stage, and might take a while. This is the biggest task remaining to do, likely. I will be using the time waiting to complete the data on clearing out more outfits from the three slots I haven't touched. I will also use this time to start figuring out how I want to handle setting battles for stat caps.

April 27

It has been a whole 9 days since the last log, but I bear good news.

Duplicate/junk item cleaning is as done as it needs to be before the Armory goes online. More junk cutting could certainly be done, but at this point it is becoming a bit messy on what to keep and what to toss. The current db load size is 20% of what I started at. The Armory is not loading any types of boxes, hairs, inners, and with a few exceptions, is not loading event items. The items being cut at this point, for the most part, would have to be re-added later, so it is beginning to feel wasteful.

The current work is on getting the concept of sets implemented to the Armory, and functional. I will be taking a break from work on the Armory for at least a week when Eira comes out, so I want to at least have made good progress by then. In these last three days, I have three objectives I want to complete:

1: I want item tooltips to show set items and set bonuses, and I want set bonus stats to apply successfully when valid.

2: I want to fix some apparent text issues with item bind/trade text. Some combinations of states apparently result in no text at all, which is obviously wrong.

3: I want to tackle either bracelet sockets, composite gear abilities, or enchant scroll effects that aren't just stats, such as Berserker's stamina regen. I won't have time for all of these before Eira, so I want to resolve any one of these, for now.

So far, I have constructed a process server-side to combine together all info on sets, into a comprehensive object. This places together the items in the set, the name of the set, the set bonuses per number of parts, and the name of each of the "parts" of the set, all under one variable. My next job, which I am still working on, is to attach this info to the actual item data, so that items know that they belong to a set.

From there, the server can have the rest of the set data piggyback off that relation, then the Armory client-side itself gets passed the ball and has to parse it and display it correctly. This includes showing which parts of the set are equipped via highlighting, and the total count of items equipped of the set.

If progress continues as is, tomorrow's Dev Log should be reporting that #1 is completely finished.

April 28

Handling for set bonuses is now completely finished. For quite a while I was concerned that when I finally had to implement it that it would take a while. As it turns out, it fit in pretty cleanly, so that was anticlimactic.

Have an image of the current state of v4 tooltips, as the one flashy part of this:





As it turns out, I have also finished #2 on my list. Several necklaces had incorrect or wrong trade/bind information. For the necklace with the missing trade text, it turned out to be a simple case of forgetting to set it. For the items with incorrect trade information, the problem was a little more complex.

[Removed story about issues with Kitty items and their trade rules]

My final job before my break to play Eira will likely be to look into effects on enchant scrolls, and figure out how to get them to display on the Armory. Currently, it skips anything that is not a stat. This results in missing data on scrolls such as Consistent.

...I'm also going to figure out why my Astera Mail tooltip thinks it is a pair of gloves.

April 29

I've ended up on a detour from what I originally planned to do today, but I could not let it go once I noticed it. My icons on the Armory can recolor, but their colors were too dark to be truly accurate. I've been adjusting my code for this for a decent while today, and while it is a lot closer, I haven't fully resolved it yet. There is something I'm missing still.

Given that I plan to stay awake through the update maintenance, I will probably continue working on this today. If that ends up happening, and I make progress, there will be an April 30th Dev Log about it.

On the plus side, my armor no longer says "Plate Armor, Gloves". It turns out one of my tricks to more efficiently transfer data was a little *too* efficient, and cut off some needed information.