Utility: Spells & Items browser

[ese-aSH]

Hi folks,

I open this thread to share with you a little tool I made, hereby know as "Spells & Items browser".

A Screenshot :



What is this?
A little java application that allows to parse dominions 3 spells and items data more easily than what the game offers.
It contains spells & items data from the unofficial wiki, and offer the possibility to sort, filter, parse spells & items data.


What is it for?
I found myself in need of such a tool. I consider myself neither as a noob nor a veteran. I know most of the game mechanisms, but I did not spend time on each nation to get the best strategies. I dont know the complete list of spells and items, and before each game I start I spend hours reading the manuel in order to figure my strategic goals (which spell do I want, which item will I be able to forge, what are my mages strenght...).
This tool makes these things easier.


How should I use it?
Choose a nation you dont know, and try to establish strategy for it. You can use the tool to see accurate capacities of each mage, to determine your research priority, it can also help setting the pretender magic path if you see a spell/item beyond the reach of your nationnal mages that would fit the strategy.
Keep the manual close, you will still need it.


What is it not?
Its not 'great', its not 'awesome', it wont do miracles. Its just a limited database with simplified access and some presentation effort.


Troubleshooting
- To run on non windows OS, get java and run "java -jar com.ap.d3.jar" command in the unzipped directory.
- Look & feel is platform dependant. Sorry for that if it does not look cool on your computer.
- Be aware that nationnal spells are not filtered by any mean


Thanks
- Lch for his comments, help and advices
- All contributors to the unofficial wiki that gathered all data


Closing
This tool could be improved, a lot. Yet I wont probably spend much time on it.
- If major issues are found, I will try to fix it
- If some people want to provide a CBM version of the spells and items data, have a look into the files "spells.xml" and "items.xml" ; its pretty easy and anyone should be able to modify the data here. If someone does that, I will add a way to switch data on the fly in the application.
- If some people want the source files to go further, I can provide it. One can imagine adding units and nations data for instance.


I hope some of you will try it, and hopefully find it usefull