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Item Collector abandoned ?Follow

#1 Jul 08 2016 at 10:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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Is it safe to assume that Lucy's Item Collector has been officially abandoned?

I know that Rale kept it regularly updated after each patch, but it seems that in Rale's absence no one is keeping it updated. Item Collector has always been a major contributing factor towards my decision to maintain a premium subscription over the years. However, if Item Collector is a thing of the past, then that premium subscription has lost a great deal of value to me.

Might want to remove the prominently displayed download link from the front page.

Edited, Jul 8th 2016 1:51pm by Tobynn
#2 Jul 08 2016 at 2:43 PM Rating: Good
Tobynn wrote:
Is it safe to assume that Lucy's Item Collector has been officially abandoned?

I know that Rale kept it regularly updated after each patch, but it seems that in Rale's absence no one is keeping it updated. Item Collector has always been a major contributing factor towards my decision to maintain a premium subscription over the years. However, if Item Collector is a thing of the past, then that premium subscription has lost a great deal of value to me.

Might want to remove the prominently displayed download link from the front page.

Edited, Jul 8th 2016 1:51pm by Tobynn


Rale is no longer with ZAM.

ZAM says they have another developer coming in to work on the site including the item collector. They have done some work on the site lately so hopefully we should see the item collector updated soon.
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#3 Jul 08 2016 at 5:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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So, I'll move "start using item collector" off of my Things to do soon list. If possible, let us know when it's available again.

Tobynn, a question for you... are you required to have a premium ZAM account to use the item collector? I'd think they'd want all the data they could get, even if the user isn't premium.

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#4 Jul 08 2016 at 8:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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No, a premium sub is not required to use Item Collector. However, Item Collector has been the means by which Alla's EQ items database has been stuffed -STUFFED- for years. Now, with Item Collector inoperable, the items database relies solely on manual submissions. No slam to the volunteer admins trying to keep the site afloat, but they can only populate so much via manual submission.

Every time new content become available, and Item Collector remains defunct, many new items are not making it into the database. Therefore, in the big picture point of view, the entire items database becomes more and more inaccurate with each content release. Automatic detection and uploading of new items > manual entries.

I have paid a premium subscription for many years quite simply because the items database was nearly infallible. Everything was listed. I have recently been asking myself why I should continue to pay the same premium cost when a major chunk of the site's usefulness has been abandoned.

Edited, Jul 8th 2016 9:27pm by Tobynn
#5 Jul 09 2016 at 12:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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Got it, thanks for the clarification
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Tatanka Wolfdancer, 115 Wood Elf Druid, 9 x 300+ Master Artisan, 7 maxed trophies (dang research! :)
Michone, 115 Troll Shadowknight
Anaceup Mysleeves, 115 Erudite Mage, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
Snookims Whinslow, 112 Erudite Enchanter, 2 x 300 Master Artisan
<Inisfree>, Tunare (Seventh Hammer!)
#6 Jul 14 2016 at 2:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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Hi everyone! Just to be clear we have every intention of getting "Lucy" back to functional again, it's just at present we don't have anyone familiar enough with it to fix it.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone here feel they have the knowledge/expertise to do so?
#7 Jul 14 2016 at 5:11 PM Rating: Good
Sas148 wrote:
Hi everyone! Just to be clear we have every intention of getting "Lucy" back to functional again, it's just at present we don't have anyone familiar enough with it to fix it.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone here feel they have the knowledge/expertise to do so?


Thanks much for responding Sas148. I've put out a post on the official Everquest forums asking if a developer would like to help out with that. I told them to either come here or PM me. I'll let ya know if I get any responses.
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#8 Jul 14 2016 at 6:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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Sounds good. You know how to reach me. Thanks! :)
#9 Jul 16 2016 at 3:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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I don't know if help is still needed, or if I am familiar with the languages involved, but I am a Software Developer with a fair bit of SQL experience and a modest amount of experience working with data services.

If you have some idea what languages are in use and what data service protocol is being used I could get a better idea of how helpful I could be and how much of a time commitment this would be. Towards that end, any info on what type of maintenance challenges exist (i.e. what, generally speaking, is actually broken about it and what regularly breaks during patches?) would be very informative to whether my skills would actually be of any assistance.
#10 Jul 16 2016 at 3:30 PM Rating: Good
Zarmak wrote:
I don't know if help is still needed, or if I am familiar with the languages involved, but I am a Software Developer with a fair bit of SQL experience and a modest amount of experience working with data services.

If you have some idea what languages are in use and what data service protocol is being used I could get a better idea of how helpful I could be and how much of a time commitment this would be. Towards that end, any info on what type of maintenance challenges exist (i.e. what, generally speaking, is actually broken about it and what regularly breaks during patches?) would be very informative to whether my skills would actually be of any assistance.


This is just speculation as I've never worked on the program before. I think what the Lucy Item Collector does is read memory from Everquest. It basically does the same thing magelo updater does among some other software that reads Everquest memory we won't mention here. Every patch the memory address changes with the game and the item collector has to be recompiled to run on that address. There may be more to it than that but this is what I've gathered reading up on how these programs sniff data from other programs.

I'm not exactly sure which language the item collector is compiled in but I would say it's probably either C or C++. I know I had to install WinPcap in order to get it to work. Maybe that will help you understand it a little bit better.
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#11 Jul 17 2016 at 12:27 AM Rating: Decent
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THANK YOU for trying to get this going again! I feel like there's hope, and I haven't felt that on this site for a while. Much appreciated!
#13 Jul 17 2016 at 5:57 PM Rating: Good
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@Gidono,

I was not familiar with WinPCap before but after reading up on it it looks like C or C++ is definitely what is being used based on their library examples and the collector is utilizing their library to do some packet sniffing.

I don't have any doubt that I could figure it out eventually, but this type of coding is certainly not where my experience is at. I am probably strongest in C# which, while it is a c-style language, is a managed memory environment making it a very different animal from C & C++.



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