NEWS Huge upgrade to the Hunter's Guide for Publish 97!

[BrianFreud]

With Publish 97 now here, on behalf of the senior Stratics staff, I am pleased to announce the release of a huge upgrade to the Hunter's Guide!


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{td=336x@}TL;DR version:

1. Edit with forms
2. Submit animal lore readings
3. Support for new information
4. UO Taxonomy
5. Notable NPCs
6. Antislayers
7. Localization support

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• Publish 97
• Hunter's Guide
• Wiki Forum

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First, rather than having to figure out wiki markup and how to work with the templates, you now can edit mob pages using easy forms:

Next, for those who may remember the old Hunter's Guide, Petra used to collect submitted animal lore readings to assemble that info. Mob pages in the wiki have now been enhanced to allow you to submit animal lore readings, including all the new publish's info, and the wiki will update the info on the fly - you'll see instant results as your new info is added to the page. You don't even have to fully copy over all the lore info (although that always is encouraged!), as the wiki considers each field separately, so even just copying in a single field, such as 'HP', helps build up the info for that type of mob.

At this time, please only submit readings for pre-tamed mobs.

To edit mobs, just go to their page and click on the "Edit" tab up top. To add animal lore readings, click on that tab instead:

Third, mob pages in the wiki have been upgraded to handle all the new publish's info. So (as everyone helps edit mobs and submit animal lore info), you'll be able to see everything from HP, Int, HPR, and Mana Reg right down to all the different skills mobs now can have:

Fourth, the idea of "related mobs" info has been improved. To that end, I've built a giant pseudo-scientific taxonomy for *all* mobs (and mob-like items, such as fish) in the lands. The entire taxonomy tree is huge; anyone who's curious, you can see it at http://brianfreud.rf.gd/taxonomy.html

It's based on whatever scraps of lore, RL equivalents, and whatever else, plus a bit of whimsy, using a few simple rules:

1. Every mob can have only 1 'parent' type of mob that they 'evolved' from, and
2. Every mob can have unlimited #s of 'children' mobs they evolved from them, and
3. For any mob that is human + something else - Ophidians, Ratmen, Lizardmen, Werewolves, etc - the 'something else' is the parent mob, else we'd break rule #1, and,
4. Every mob is part of at least one 'family' of similarly grouped mobs. (This helps the code work.) And last,
5. 'Undead' is only a descriptor for a mob; all mobs came from something else before they died and became undead. (To this end, 'Undead' is one of the 88 'families' of mobs.)

I invite you to to head over to the wiki forum to debate the taxonomy, to suggest changes, to point out things that should be added, etc. Now that the code to generate them has been built, it's easy to tweak the info. Every mob generates its own unique taxonomy, which is then displayed at the bottom of it's page in the Hunter's Guide:

Fifth, using the taxonomy info to figure out what types of mobs are 'similar', mob pages also will now list any related 'notable' NPCs just above the taxonomy section. That list is all linked to within the wiki, though currently almost none of those NPCs yet have a page. Those who're in to UO lore, I invite you to come help flesh out those (and any other!) pages, to move info over from the old Stratics pages and to expand upon it!

Sixth, Not only will the slayer type(s) for a mob display (assuming someone's added that info in the editor), but the wiki will also now show you the anti-slayer type(s) for that mob.

Finally, for all those for whom English isn't your native language, the Hunter's Guide (and both editors) now is localized!
You can change your language setting with the select up in the top right corner:

At the moment, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish are supported. The German translation isn't yet to 100%, but hopefully it'll be there soon.

It's also quite easy to add support for additional languages in the future. If anyone is interested in helping with translations, would like to add a new language, etc, you can make your changes/additions at Animal Lore i18n . After you finish your edits, PM me to let me know, and I'll update the code to support the new translations.

I would like to take a moment to thank all the testers, and especially the following people who contributed their time to help with translating:

German/Deutsch: @Belmarduk, @Eärendil, and @petemage
Spanish/Español: @Alex"Drake Iron Heart"CS
French/Français: @Lord Gandalf, @panoramix2009, et @ziox
Japanese/日本語: @spin

A HUGE thanks to all of you for your help!

Translation in the wiki currently only extends to the Hunter's Guide pages in the wiki, at least for now. But hopefully this opens up that data - both to use and to edit - to a much larger playerbase!



I hope everyone enjoys all the new features. For the next little while, as this is all new code, please consider this a beta release; if you notice any bugs, problems, or anything else that just seems wrong, please head to the wiki forum and post there so I can look into it.

Now we need your help; even the smallest additions will add up to help flesh out and update the info for all the mobs in the game. We thank you in advance for all of your future edits!

-Brian



Note: As UO is a desktop game, the Hunter's Guide, and the wiki as a whole, is designed for modern desktop browsers. This means Edge, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Safari. Microsoft has stopped upgrading Internet Explorer to support modern web techologies; the editors and such will not work on IE.

@Elenni, @Giggles, @Larisa, @Nexus, @Oscar the Grouch, @Riyana

 

[MissEcho]

Nice work, only a BIG problem is the resists as listed are out of order so when trying to check how your resists stack up they are out of order and it is seriously aggravating. Ie they are listed: Phys/Cold/Energy/Fire/Poison (left to right), yet the animal lore gump has them Phys/Fire/Cold/Poison/Energy (top to bottom)

When trying to compare it is really hard to read the web having them one way and in game having them another. Doubt there is any chance now of making them read the same.

 

[BrianFreud]

When trying to compare it is really hard to read the web having them one way and in game having them another. Doubt there is any chance now of making them read the same.

Thanks for the feedback - I've changed the order now to make it match up.

Also, thanks for the reminder in ICQ: Anyone submitting animal lore info, for now, please only submit pre-tame readings.

 

[MissEcho]

great, makes it much easier to compare between the web screen and lore gump

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

I've compiled a list of the stat range for Crimson/Platinum Drakes. Here it is. Crimson/Platinum Drake Stats
Tried putting in some of the info for the Crimson Drake (Fire), but i forgot to fill some parts out in the "Add an Animal Lore" reading part, and so despite me putting in 2 more readings, 1 for the minimum stat range, and another for the highest stat range, it still displays that their lowest Stat/Resist/Skill range is 0. It appears that if you leave any part of that "Edit an Animal Lore Reading" part blank, it immediately drops the displayed Minimum to 0, which skews the data.

 

[Swordsman]

The update added a lot of contents, great !

 

[Tina Small]

Fantastic work, Brian! Can't wait to check it out.

 

[petemage]

Wow, the Taxonomy looks super sweet. I personally maintain a private monster rune library. Unfortunately, with a lot of runes for ilsh mobs and the like, they too often only drop you near a moongate of my choice

 

[railshot]

Thank you for the update.
I don't know how much work is involved, but please consider adding a classic theme to the wiki, as it clashes with the main site if you use the classic theme.

 

[BrianFreud]

Thank you for the update.
I don't know how much work is involved, but please consider adding a classic theme to the wiki, as it clashes with the main site if you use the classic theme.

In terms of the software which runs the different parts of the site, the wiki is separate from XenForo, which runs the forums. Themes for the wiki is not planned.

 

[Poo]

hey @BrianFreud , LOVE the new set up, im gonna start to pour in animal lore readings for everything i run into.
question, for those of us with OCD (ya Brian, im talking to you!) is there any ways to show a running tally of how many submissions have been made for the particular animal we are looking at?
knowing im looking at numbers that come from 1000 readings means more to me than numbers from one sample of the animal group.
know what i mean?
so is there a place to put "number of samples: 785" somewhere on each animals sheet????

 

[BrianFreud]

hey @BrianFreud , LOVE the new set up, im gonna start to pour in animal lore readings for everything i run into.
question, for those of us with OCD (ya Brian, im talking to you!) is there any ways to show a running tally of how many submissions have been made for the particular animal we are looking at?
knowing im looking at numbers that come from 1000 readings means more to me than numbers from one sample of the animal group.
know what i mean?
so is there a place to put "number of samples: 785" somewhere on each animals sheet????

Way ahead of you.

If a mob has any animal lore submissions, that's actually displayed twice, under "Combat" and "Skills". If you don't see that line, it's old data from before this upgrade, and new animal lore submissions will wipe that data and start the collection of data for that mob afresh.

I know it's a little tedious to manually copy lore readings over. There's not much of an alternative though. But I do have one other thing planned, at least for EC users; I'm just waiting on @Pinco to update his UI for the new publish.

Anyone with total OCD, though, there is a page with reports on some basic "missing" info; just ignore where it says to add stuff to the templates - the new editor works just as well for all of that. BrianFreud/HuntersGuideReports - Stratics Community Wiki | Stratics Community Forums It's quite system intensive to update all 1000+ mobs for the 10 things it does check; once those get trimmed down in size, I can consider adding other things to be checked.

 

[railshot]

In terms of the software which runs the different parts of the site, the wiki is separate from XenForo, which runs the forums. Themes for the wiki is not planned.

Thank you for the explanation. I was just confused because the header of the web page ends up being classic theme color and the wiki is black.

 

[BrianFreud]

Thank you for the explanation. I was just confused because the header of the web page ends up being classic theme color and the wiki is black.

No problem.

We went with the black look because it fit best with all the themes, even if it doesn't look the same as some themes. The site is running mainly on XenForo. The wiki is running MediaWiki, which a third app 'bridges' into XenForo. So everything you see that's the lighter colors, that's coming from XenForo itself. Everything in the center where the black starts, that's the wiki being inserted by the bridge. (For those who've asked me, that's also why wiki URLs look like stratics.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page instead of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online, with even the page name here being an argument, rather than a URL fragment.)

 

[Ru TnT]

Is there a place to enter loot and special abilities?

 

[BrianFreud]

Is there a place to enter loot and special abilities?

Yes; on the "Loot" and "Combat" tabs in the editor:

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

You don't even have to fully copy over all the lore info (although that always is encouraged!), as the wiki considers each field separately, so even just copying in a single field, such as 'HP', helps build up the info for that type of mob.

Actually, it looks like you do need to copy over all the lore info, otherwise it considers the blank entries as "0", and it ends up skewing the data. For example, the Crimson Drake (Fire) is showing "0" in it's Minimum Resists, as well as it's Minimum Skills, because the first time i entered a report on them, i only included the Stats (STR/Health, etc). I entered two more reports, one with all of the Minimums, and the next with all of the Maximums, and it still shows "0" as the Minimum for Resists/Skills.
The Crimson/Platinum Drake's real Min/Max Stats/Resists/Skills, are listed here. Crimson/Platinum Drake Stats

 

[BrianFreud]

Actually, it looks like you do need to copy over all the lore info, otherwise it considers the blank entries as "0", and it ends up skewing the data. For example, the Crimson Drake (Fire) is showing "0" in it's Minimum Resists, as well as it's Minimum Skills, because the first time i entered a report on them, i only included the Stats (STR/Health, etc). I entered two more reports, one with all of the Minimums, and the next with all of the Maximums, and it still shows "0" as the Minimum for Resists/Skills.
The Crimson/Platinum Drake's real Min/Max Stats/Resists/Skills, are listed here. Crimson/Platinum Drake Stats

There was a bug which caused that. I fixed it last night, as well as all other bugs that have so far been reported.

Blank entries were never counted as "0"; they are counted as "null", which was inadvertently not being stripped out when the page info was rebuilt to include the new info. "null" entries are now being stripped out properly. Any mob pages that were showing incorrect info due to that bug will have it automatically fixed as soon as the next lore reading is added.

Side note, for skills listed as "---" in the in-game lore gump, that does mean "0", and should be entered as such.

 

[BrianFreud]

Just a note, the translations aren't at 100% just yet. Any German speakers, I could still use your help to finish up that translation. Animal Lore i18n

Anyone who'd like to add any other languages - Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, etc - feel free to start a new column and add in the new language's text. I'll add it in as soon as I notice the new translation, or just PM me to let me know it's ready to be added.

 

[Lore]

Prob out of the question, but... If I converted my spreadsheets into a .csv or fixed width file or some other file type could you upload it instead of me manually entering everything? I'd just need to know the order of columns your table has and the field names.

 

[BrianFreud]

Prob out of the question, but... If I converted my spreadsheets into a .csv or fixed width file or some other file type could you upload it instead of me manually entering everything? I'd just need to know the order of columns your table has and the field names.

If you want, maybe just copy the spreadsheet to a Google sheets doc and send me the link; I'll turn it into something I can merge in.

 

[Poo]

@BrianFreud I was putting in some Miasma yesterday and noticed that someone else had put some in but when they put theirs in they had put some of the resistances at "0" instead of putting in the real number which has totally messed up the resistances.
it now lists the minimum resistance possible as 0 and as such also messes up the average resistance column.

any way to fix that?

 

[BrianFreud]

@Poo, I'll give it a look; something like that needs me to manually take out that 1 bad lore reading.

 

[Tabby Kapak]

If a mob has any animal lore submissions, that's actually displayed twice, under "Combat" and "Skills".

We have a question about this, since we have kept track of our Lores mostly in Excel and for some creatures we have up to around 60 lores, but we can't add every individual lore as we merely have 2 columns, the lowest and highest values next to each other. How do we add such info without losing the fact it really is coming from some 60 creatures?

 

[BrianFreud]

We have a question about this, since we have kept track of our Lores mostly in Excel and for some creatures we have up to around 60 lores, but we can't add every individual lore as we merely have 2 columns, the lowest and highest values next to each other. How do we add such info without losing the fact it really is coming from some 60 creatures?

The simplest way to add that data would be to add 2 lore reports, one with all low values, and the other with all the high values. To 'trick' the system into increasing the counter to indicate that that is actually 60 mobs' worth of combined data, not 2, you could submit 58 more empty lore reports, but that'd be tedious for you. After you submit those 2 lore reports for any mob, if you just PM which mobs need their counters incremented, and by how much for each, I can manually go in an adjust it.

 

[Mervyn]

If i accidently put a figure in that brought the maximum/minum to a wrong amount, can i delete that?

 

[BrianFreud]

If i accidently put a figure in that brought the maximum/minum to a wrong amount, can i delete that?

Let me know if that happens, and I can do it.

 

[Mervyn]

Let me know if that happens, and I can do it.

This is very very likely to produce a high percentage of errors on the website. Perhaps you sholld somehow code it to require 2 entrys of the same amount to verify the limits.

 

[BrianFreud]

This is very very likely to produce a high percentage of errors on the website. Perhaps you sholld somehow code it to require 2 entrys of the same amount to verify the limits.

It's not been an issue of yet.

 

[Mervyn]

you're asking for 100% accuracy in the data that people put in, it's a lot of figures to type in, just takes one typo/misread.

 

[BrianFreud]

you're asking for 100% accuracy in the data that people put in, it's a lot of figures to type in, just takes one typo/misread.

Well, hopefully folks are checking what they're typing. Apart from that, there's also something coming for EC/Pinco's users to avoid the need for all that typing. But even beyond that, it doesn't just have to be a typo in any field that would throw the #s off, but a typo that would actually throw off the min or max for that particular value, which both lowers the chances of any random typo messing up the #s, as well as enhancing the chances of someone spotting the error (and letting me know, so I can find the problematic lore reading and remove that bad value).

 

[Parnoc]

@BrianFreud You said: Note: As UO is a desktop game, the Hunter's Guide, and the wiki as a whole, is designed for modern desktop browsers. This means Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. Microsoft has stopped upgrading Internet Explorer to support modern web techologies; the editors and such will not work on IE.

We can't use Firefox to access this new information and have it display properly?

 

[BrianFreud]

@BrianFreud You said: Note: As UO is a desktop game, the Hunter's Guide, and the wiki as a whole, is designed for modern desktop browsers. This means Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. Microsoft has stopped upgrading Internet Explorer to support modern web techologies; the editors and such will not work on IE.

We can't use Firefox to access this new information and have it display properly?

Apologies, I should have included FF in that list. Basically, the point is, IE is dead, even though it still has a large install base. The % using it here is low, and Microsoft isn't working on upgrading it to support HTML5, CSS3, or ECMAScript 6, all of which the wiki uses.

 

[Basara]

Now if Broadsword would just fix the %$^#%$^%$ing Client patchers to open their links with something other than IE when you click on them. Even if you have a different default browser, the CC and EC patcher links open IE, last I checked (a few weeks ago)

 

[BrianFreud]

Now if Broadsword would just fix the %$^#%$^%$ing Client patchers to open their links with something other than IE when you click on them. Even if you have a different default browser, the CC and EC patcher links open IE, last I checked (a few weeks ago)

Simple enough solution... run the client from linux under wine, and don't have IE installed; it opens in Chrome for me.