Please help me test thisFollow

Very nice page! (Especially the cheerleaders...)

Seriously, I think that it's a nice tool... but you'll have to invest an awful lot of work to keep all the spells updated... If you got loads of spare time, go for it!

Well, I come into work at midnight. By 0500, I may have taken 10 phone calls, so yeah, I have some spare time. Get paid for it too!!

This field is giving me fits. If I put in the values it raises or lowers a stat, or whatever, it makes it harder to search. I may put a drop down box here, but that would be one hell of a drop down box. Any ideas on a better way to do this is greatly appriciated.

I agree, but you only have to use one. The other two default to Name. So, if you only select the primary sort, it will sort by that field, then by Name. I just added the third one bacause I could, and it is not really hurting anything, IMHO. Please let me know if there is a reason having 3 sort fields is bad, other than just not being needed.

EDIT: Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the third sort field is a waste of space, and makes it look a lot more intimidating. It is gone, unless someone can give me a good reason to put it back.

Edited, Tue Oct 11 05:57:54 2005 by mrtiedye

Dang it, and here I thought I was going to get away with just enchanter spells. Doh!

Anyway, it may be some time before I add any more spells. It would really suck to enter 1000s of spells, only to figure out I need to add, change, or remove a certain field. Then, I would have to go back and edit all of those spells individually. Of course, I will need to do this to keep it updated, but I want to save myself as much time and effort in the beginning as possible.

Come to think of it, I guess I need to add a "class" field, and make it to where you can compare two classes, search for only one class, or search all classes. Damn, now I am going to have to make it only display 200 results per page or something like that. Back to the drawing board....

Keep the comments comming. The more I change now, the easier things will be later. Thanks for all your help!

EDIT: Crapadoodle. I added the field for class, and began entering enchanter for each spell. I got to about the 8th spell when it fiannly hit me that more than one class might use this spell. Is there any spell that is available to ALL casters? What is the most number of classes that might use a given spell?

EDIT2: Cripity crapped on crapper! While on a smoke break, I started thinking about the more than one class problem, and realized that the level will change depending on the class as well. *Head explodes!* Oh, wait. Just thought of a way to fix this. Just enter the spell again with the different class. That way, it is still searchable by class, and level. That solves that problem. YAY!!!

Still not sure how to work the "effects" field. Any suggestions?

Edited, Tue Oct 11 06:40:45 2005 by mrtiedye

You might get some ideas from Caster's Realm New Spell Database.

Very nice...Streamline...one field that would be nice would be Exspansion. Certain spells came out with certain exspansions...

would be really cool to search only for ldon or LoY or OOW spells.

When you think about it, the effect field will boil down to a context search feature. Type in something like "strength", and all spells with that word (or phrase, or part of that phrase) in the spell description show up.

If the field was supposed to represent effects like "extended enhancement", it's kind of useless for spells since those effects are only on items, and that's a whole 'nother story.

Edit: I also noticed that the spell descriptions for the wizard DD spells tell you "decreases hitpoints", but not by how much. I know that those spells are only there for test purposes, but it's something to remember when you're doing the final entries. Also, the page would look much more appealing if the table boxes weren't so bulky. The thick cell borders and large text is a bit unneccesary (and slightly inconvenient) if you search for a long list of spells.

Edited, Wed Oct 12 04:49:14 2005 by Demea

You were right. This page did wind up helping inspire me. Check out the New Look. Thanks for that.

I think I know what you are talking about here, and it would be AWSOME if it worked that way, but right now, when you limit your search by effect, it only searches for the exact same thing.

In other words, if the spell had an effect such as "Decrease Hitpoints", you would not find that spell if you searched for "Hitpoints" or even "decrease HitPoints". I think I have a solution for this, but it may be a couple days before I change anything about the search on this field.


See the post above with the following quote

I did add the new field, but I have only updated a couple of the test fields. If you look at all the spells, you should notice some of them now have the values like you would expect.

What do you think about the way it looks now? Better? Anything I can do to improve the look even more?

That is what the two sort options at the top are for. You can sort by any field you want. I guess I need to make this more obvious, but I am not really sure how.

Also, please note that I have added a search for expansion, but none of the spells have any expansion info in them yet, as I am still not sure where to find this info. So, for right now, if you limit your search by ANY expansion, even None, you will not see any spells.

Ok, hope that answered everything. Please check out the new layout, as well as some of the new features, and let me know what you think. Please be aware that I have added a bunch of new fields, but for the most part, have not added that info, so it will show up as either 0 or blank. This will change, hopefully tomorrow.

P.S. Sorry to leave the spells in such a "broken" state, but the morning rush is upon me, and I doub't I will have time to do much more this morning. Things should look a lot better by this time tomorrow.

Edited, Wed Oct 12 07:18:31 2005 by mrtiedye

Im sorry, if you are a premium user, why dont you use this tool?

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spelllist.html?1

It is the link under spells on the left. Then, you can search thru the spells info in the chart. Or is that too complicated? I do my spells for both my chanter and my druid like that. I do also use Magelo to tell me if I am missing any spells tho. It is just easier to do that than to track it on paper.

Well, I have also written a nice little form with drop-down menus to input the spells as well. Helps alot.

I do use that tool. It is the only tool I use right now. In fact, all of the spell info I am using in the database comes straight out of Allakhazam's database. But the whole idea here is to be able to sort and search spells on more paramaters than just level and class. It will allow me, and others, to be much more specific when looking for a spell or comparing spells.

But more than anything, I am a programmer, to the core. Couple that with my love of Everquest and add in that I really want to give something back to all the people who have helped me with this game over the years, and this project just seems to fit.

I got rid of all those stupid radio boxes asking if you wanted to limit your search. I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I put them in. If you don't enter anything, it will now know that you don't want to limit by that field.

The effects field is now somewhat searchable. The search is no longer case sensitive, and will ignore any spaces and most punctuation. However, you have to spell it correctly. Please check it out and let me know if it works the way you think it should.

To-Do:
I still need to find the expansion info for each spell. I need to finish putting in all the info for the test spells. I need a logo, and something to say on the welcome page. Other than that, I am not really sure of anything else I need to do before I start inputting all the spells.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I also need to limit the number of spells it displays per page. I think I will work on that next.

Please let me know if I am missing anything, if something doesn't work the way you would expect, any error messages, anything you can think of that would make this a better tool.

Thanks so much,
Mr. Tie Dye

Edited, Fri Oct 14 03:34:33 2005 by mrtiedye

The only suggestion i would make would be adding a colum that lists what combines you use to make spells? I know you are not up to that level of spell yet, but you may want to plan for that.

I like your plan and idea, and wish you tons of luck.

Ok, I finally finished limiting the number of results per page. Right now, it is set to only show 2 spells per page. This is just so you can see how the navigation menu works with more than 10 pages. Once I get some more spells entered (if I ever get to that point hehe) I will change this to something like 20 or more. I have tested it with 20, and it still works.

Anyway, what do you think? Is 20 per page too much? Not enough? Thanks again for your input.

This is another great idea, but I need to be able to find the info in order to put it into the database. I am running into the same problem with the expansion field.

If anyone has any info that might help me fill in these two fields for every spell, please let me know. I would really like to have the expansion info as well as the stackable info in the database, but I can't seem to locate this info.

Of course, I would need the stackable info for d-buffs as well.

Edited, Mon Oct 17 00:32:30 2005 by mrtiedye