Spell/Item Database App
 

I'd like to bounce a project my friend is working on off of anyone willing to give feedback.

He's building a searchable database for spells and items. When finished, one should be able to type in research level and/or magic paths, and find all associated spells and items.

It's in the beginning stages now, but is looking pretty functional. Would you find this useful? Is there already something like this? Any suggestions for handy features?

Thanks, I know he'll appreciate any feedback.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

The closest thing for items is the BaseI page of the Dom3 DB. For spells, DrPraetorious has made a spell modding guide which has a list of all spell names, numbers and effects. They are not in a searchable DB format, though, just spreadsheets.

Whether the Dom3 DB of units, nations etc will appear as a searchable DB depends on how much help I can get with it, but that prospect has been on the table a few times in the past and may be so in the future.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Dominions II Grimoire http://www.sangster.org/dominions/grimorie.php was quite nice tool.

There have been fan-made (sometimes printable) pdf guides with color codes for showing various items for both DomII and Dom3. I can't give you any links, but hopefully someone can provide a link. It's nice for seeing what you can forge with spesific paths, but you can't easily compare different ways to achieve things. Item guide in which you can search for e.g. items that grant lightning resistance and/or immunity, or for items that grant reinvigoration - that would be very nice.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Sure. Stuff like this was introduced a number of times by different people - check Endo's link. Since I don't suppose that your friend wants to build this for all the platforms that Dom3 supports (Win, Linux, Mac) I suggest that he makes a web app out of this. And give it a nice interface. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

agreed web app would be most nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Web app might be doeable. Thanks for all the input, guys. We'll probably release an early version within a few weeks.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Oooh, I made one of those once:

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/dom3/spells.html

It's not very cross-browser compatible though, only works in Opera and FF, effectively excluding some 75% of the community http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Plus it doesn't have forgeable items in it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Wow Snoddasmannen, that's sensational! Can't believe you never mentioned it/I never heard about it before.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

I know that I've seen it before, but I must admit that I forgot about it, too. Looking back at the thread I'm amazed about how much replies I gave to it not too long ago, and I still forgot everything about it. Time flies...

Snoddasmannen still gets bonus bogo points from me for doing something which is XML/XSLT based. That's very cool in my book.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Snoddasmannen ... you should add this link into your signature.

Also one question... any other tools ?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

awesome Snoddasmannen ! goes right to my favourites =)

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Hihi, thanks for all your encouragement guys http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I could probably have been a bit more proactive marketing it, but I never finished it so it kind of fizzled out. It is useful though, even in its current state.

DrPraetorious did the difficult part, extracting all the data from the binary. And of course lch helped me get it running in FF.

The thing I did after this was a random map generator in javascript. Using a canvas object to draw the map. The results weren't all that bad, but pretty slow - took about 15 minutes or so to generate a small map. Plus it was getting painful to maintain it all in javascript http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So now I am sporadically working on a map generator in C++ instead. Much faster and hopefully just as nice. I've attached a screenshot of it running - note the elegant trees and uhm, lush grasslands http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Oh, awesome. I was looking into that myself, and there are a number of things that I came up with. But I didn't come up with anything usable yet. What I have:
- an EXTREMELY fast (linear time) fractal heightmap generator which gives nice results
- a fast and accurate algorithm to find neighbors of provinces
- ideas to make them both tileable, too

I usually lack the energy and determination to get such a thing through from start to finish, but I'm very good at being a code parasite. Give me a code and I'll quickly come up with improvements for it and room for extension.

So in case I'll find time for it, I'll look into your code. EDIT: Oops, that attachment was no code. Come on, share! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Hey all; we've decided our focus will be on summons and forged items. Could be used as an SC builder.

Ich: Maybe we'll toss some code your way when we get the databases finished.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

Ich, what algorithm are you using to generate "an EXTREMELY fast (linear time) fractal heightmap generator which gives nice results"?

Quite some time ago I toyed with an application that produces fractal heightmaps (and let's you view* them in glorious 3D**), but I just used the Diamond-Square algorithm.
* - You can move the camera in every direction as well as change Pitch and Yaw, but you can't Roll. You can change the perspective vector though. (There was also an isometric version if you feel like changing the perspective type http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
** - It was actually an experiment into projections more than one in terrain generation (I just stole code from my terrain generation experiment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif), so it actually does all the projection calculations itself and draws it in 2d http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (Not even hardware accelerated 2d, though it is definitely fast enough to enjoy unless you asked to generate a huge map)

*** - my comments are bigger than the rest of the post http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

The concept is great and I like that it does searches for specified spell requirements, but I get this message when using it on my MAC "Exception while loading: TypeError: Null value". I am part of the 75%.

Re: Spell/Item Database App
 

I stole it from Xmountains. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I had a look over the various techniques and example implementations on the web, since diamond squares isn't all there is to it, and Xmountains has a lot of optimizations in it that makes it the fastest I know.

EDIT: Moved to the actual thread about Snoddasmannen's page.