Filters don't work due to names changing

[xerxes]

Hello,

I noticed most of the filters that Blue has in his sig do not work. At some point, the mobs with "a", "an, "the", etc., in their name was moved to the back of the npc name.

Example filter:
a ghoul assassin

Filter does not trigger since name now shows as:
ghoul assassin, a

This could probably be fixed pretty easily with a script for someone that's so inclined.

[BlueAdept]

Thanks. I never noticed since I havent used filters probably since 2010. What about mobs with # in their name and an a or an? Does it still follow that rule?

[Newby]

Showeq messes with names beginning with "a", "an" and "the", by moving them to the end of the name with an interspersed comma. Presumably, this is to make the spawn list sort more reasonably. I find it a bit annoying, but not sure I'd like it better if it stopped doing that. Another change showeq makes to the name is to remove any digits, which it just throws away. I agree that the digits should go away from the name, but I wish it kept it somewhere so, if we, the users, wanted to, we can differentiate "a_patrolling_gnome00" from "a_patrolling_gnome01". BTW, the offending code for all this is in spawn.cpp, starting at line 774 through 810.

Showeq doesn't mess with names that start with "#", so those are always as delivered from the server. This makes autocreating hunter filter lists a little tricky since they don't always start with "#" (especially in the early expansions). Fortunately, there are only a few nameds in the hunter achievements that begin with "a", "an", or "the". The filters are regular expressions, so you could change it to ".*crag spider" and that would match both "crag spider, a" and "#a crag spider".

[xerxes]

Showeq messes with names beginning with "a", "an" and "the", by moving them to the end of the name with an interspersed comma. Presumably, this is to make the spawn list sort more reasonably. I find it a bit annoying, but not sure I'd like it better if it stopped doing that. Another change showeq makes to the name is to remove any digits, which it just throws away. I agree that the digits should go away from the name, but I wish it kept it somewhere so, if we, the users, wanted to, we can differentiate "a_patrolling_gnome00" from "a_patrolling_gnome01". BTW, the offending code for all this is in spawn.cpp, starting at line 774 through 810.

Showeq doesn't mess with names that start with "#", so those are always as delivered from the server. This makes autocreating hunter filter lists a little tricky since they don't always start with "#" (especially in the early expansions). Fortunately, there are only a few nameds in the hunter achievements that begin with "a", "an", or "the". The filters are regular expressions, so you could change it to ".*crag spider" and that would match both "crag spider, a" and "#a crag spider".

If the display is truly a SEQ thing and not how the spawn names come from the game, it seems that SEQ should be using the real names, and not the SEQ display name. This seems like a bug that someone made the change and broke all of the existing filters. Personally, I like the display, but it shouldn't be breaking all of the existing filters.

FYI, you can see the mob name in the bottom left corner of the window when it's targeted, so you know which is "01" etc. It only works for the current target though.

The display/sorting needs an overhaul. The columns and constant shuffle make it hard to sort by spawn time and keep the new spawns at the top. Playing with immediate update, keep sorted, and keep selected visible breaks SEQ to the point that you can't sort anything and need to restart the app.

[cn187]

Hello,
I noticed most of the filters that Blue has in his sig do not work. At some point, the mobs with "a", "an, "the", etc., in their name was moved to the back of the npc name.


As far as I can tell from looking at the repo history, the moving of the article to the end has been happening since the beginning (the first SF.net commit from 2001 has it). And it looks like the filters have always used the modified name. It's puzzling, since it makes me wonder how those filters ever worked in the first place (though they must have!). I have to be missing something. I'll keep digging, but I won't have time to do that right away.


Showeq messes with names beginning with "a", "an" and "the", by moving them to the end of the name with an interspersed comma. Presumably, this is to make the spawn list sort more reasonably. I find it a bit annoying, but not sure I'd like it better if it stopped doing that.

Ignoring the article when sorting seems to be a pretty common UI pattern. I've seen cases (like SEQ, but not only SEQ) where the article is moved to the end, but I've also seen cases where the article is left at the beginning, but completely ignored for sorting purposes. Maybe that would be an improvement here? I'm not sure - UI/UX is not my strong suit.



Another change showeq makes to the name is to remove any digits, which it just throws away. I agree that the digits should go away from the name, but I wish it kept it somewhere so, if we, the users, wanted to, we can differentiate "a_patrolling_gnome00" from "a_patrolling_gnome01". BTW, the offending code for all this is in spawn.cpp, starting at line 774 through 810.



For display purposes, one option might be to add a toggle to show the "raw" names instead of the "cleaned" names. Or another option might be to add another column for "raw" name and let the user choose which column (or both?) they want to display.

For filtering, we'd probably want to extend the filter format so that the user can match against either the "cleaned" name or the "raw" name depending on their preference.




The display/sorting needs an overhaul. The columns and constant shuffle make it hard to sort by spawn time and keep the new spawns at the top. Playing with immediate update, keep sorted, and keep selected visible breaks SEQ to the point that you can't sort anything and need to restart the app.

Completely agree about the overhaul. The current UI code is all based on pre-Qt4 ways of doing things, so all the sorting, column show/hide, filtering, etc., is done manually. Qt4+ can handle a lot of that stuff for you, so we could potentially simplify a lot of the UI code. That's on my TODO list, but it's a big job. I've poked at it, but haven't gotten very far with it.

[BlueAdept]

I made all the filers. I only really used the filters up until POP. After PoP, I used alla to get the names of the rares. I know that some of them work because I have a fart mp3 that plays and sometime it is many fart noises, but I don't pay any attention because I am usually just passing through.

I will try to look at it this weekend. I am doing maintenance tomorrow night so my sleep will be all messed up for a couple days.

[xerxes]

I made all the filers. I only really used the filters up until POP. After PoP, I used alla to get the names of the rares. I know that some of them work because I have a fart mp3 that plays and sometime it is many fart noises, but I don't pay any attention because I am usually just passing through.

I will try to look at it this weekend. I am doing maintenance tomorrow night so my sleep will be all messed up for a couple days.
Fair enough. To be fair, I'm playing in classic zones and nothing past PoP, so it might just be the legacy filters that have the issue.