Category Archives: EverQuest II

Wishing Everyone a Merry Christmas for 2015!

EQ2 Christmas Tree 2015Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas for 2015! πŸ™‚ There’s some cruddy weather in many places so everyone take it easy out there and stay safe as well. Oh, the Christmas tree on the left is the one in the city of Maldura in EverQuest II. πŸ™‚

I’m including one of my favorite Christmas Lights to Wizards in Winter music videos again. I hope you enjoy it!

Website Changes for September 2015

Main Website

The only noticeable thing I did to my main website since adding links to my Winamp Skins on the Winamp Info page, was adding a new Twitter widget to my Entertainment page in the TV Show section. It looks for all the tweets I’ve sent with the #TV hashtag. I figured that’s the best way to indicate what shows I am watching since GetGlue/TvTag shut down. Yeah, I know I’m the only one that gives a flying fruit cake about it. πŸ™‚

Blog

Updated the blog to WordPress v4.3.1 which was a security and bug fix. Did the usual backing up of the database and file structure before applying the update. Then added my various code tweaks back in.

Galleries

Updated both of my galleries (mine, Mysstie’s) to Zenphoto v1.4.10. Followed their upgrade instructions and backed up the themes and zp-core directories as well as the database before copying over the new files.Β  I then used Windiff and code comparisons in PSPad to integrate any new changes in the default Garland theme into my custom Garland theme.

Pelicar Forum

Patched the Pelicar Forum to SMF 2.0.11. Like everything else, backed up the database and files first.

Mysstie’s Website

I added a EverQuest II Legends of Norrath Loot Card Links page. I just wanted a quick way to view the various loot card pages specific to EverQuest II. Actually, I guess I added that at the end of August. Oh well, LOL. πŸ™‚


That’s all I can think of for now.

Website Changes for July 2015

Blog

My blog was updated to WordPress v4.2.3 a couple days ago. Backed-up the files and database like usual and clicked the update button. This post is also a test to make sure everything still works correctly.

Galleries

Updated both my galleries to Zenphoto v1.4.9 a few days ago. Followed their upgrade instructions and backed up the themes and zp-core directories as well as the database before copying over the new files.Β  I then used Windiff and code comparisons in PSPad to integrate any new changes in the default Garland theme into my custom Garland theme.

Mysstie’s Website

Well, the folks at EverQuest II introduced new Time Locked Servers. As such, I created a character on the PVE server, Stormhold, called Mysstie and updated Mysstie’s Website to reflect the addition (Mysstie on Stormhold).


Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. If I think of anything else I’ll add to this post. πŸ™‚

Website Changes for November 2013

Main Website

Well, I guess the biggest change was adding a Contact Form to my website for sending me email. Before, I used a bit of JavaScript to construct my email link. In an effort to keep the search bots from seeing it, I’m not including a direct link to it here. In fact, if my site detects that a search bot of some kind is viewing it, it doesn’t display the link. I’ve also added my “I am a human” verification, like I’ve done with my guestbook, to it. In the process of creating and testing this form, I’ve improved some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, mostly to do with debugging. In a weird twist, I had to rewrite and debug some of my debugging aides.

Mysstie’s EverQuest Website

Well, even though it only affects me and what I can do, I’ll go ahead and talk about it. While doing the Nights of the Dead 2013 quests in EverQuest II, I was always wondering if I had already gotten a particular house item reward. You can’t search for the item in game if it’s been placed in a house somewhere or is sitting in some moving crate or is being stored in a salesman’s crate of some kind on the broker.

At the same time, I had purchased the Fright Manor and wanted to create some walls and ceilings for the basement. This got me to learning how to use the Layout Editor which uses the house layout files. I then had a “light-bulb” moment and realized I could write my own PHP scripts and MySQL database to upload and parse these files and add the items into my database which I could then load up Mysstie’s site and search using the game’s browser or my preferred browser while out of game.

After a fair amount of coding work and the transferring of hundreds of house items from broker and house vault storage to house moving crates, I’ve completed that task. Unless I missed something, I’ve got 3,282 house items spread across my toon’s 14 houses:

EQ2 House Database

In the tables that show the actual items, I include links to an item’s description and image at EQ2 Furniture so I know where it came from and what it looks like. I use their search feature and just substitute the item’s name in the URL. Since this stuff really only benefits me, I’m the only one that can see and use it. Anyway, I just think it’s all kinds of cool and rather handy to have now. πŸ™‚


That’s all I can think of for now. πŸ™‚ Hmm, two posts in one day.. that’s got to be a record LOL.

Calculating The Length of a Tweet in EverQuest II

EQII Share Dialog

As some of you might know, EverQuest II allows you to Tweet and post updates to Facebook via its EQII Share interface. The problem is, if your tweet message is too long, it will fail with some cryptic error in your chat window. While the EQII Share dialog window shows a character count, it does not take everything into account. Here are some additional things to consider:

  • Every tweet contains the automatically added #EQ2 hashtag. Along with the additional space character to make ” #EQ2″ that’s 5 characters added to the tweet.
  • If you have your character’s name set as a prefix in the EQII Share options, this needs to be counted as well. For example, if I use the name Krysstie as a prefix (8 characters) then a total of 10 characters will be added to the tweet as “Krysstie: “. You must count the added colon and space that comes after the name.
  • If you include a screenshot with your tweet, this is another 21 characters taken away from your message. 20 for the URL itself and 1 character for an additional space. The URLs will be something like: http://t.co/OTgeCCFg which happens to be a screenshot one of my characters took.

So, in the case of Krysstie, my message in the dialog can not be more than 104 characters if I include a screenshot. 10(name) + 104(message) + 5(#EQ2 hashtag) + 21(screenshot URL) = 140 characters. If I don’t included a screenshot, then my message can be 125 characters.

I’ve sent feedback from within the game to improve the dialog to take these things into consideration when calculating the character count; however, with the Chains of Eternity expansion just about to be released, I’m pretty sure it will be way down on their list of priorities. πŸ™‚ Anyway, hope someone finds this tidbit of information useful.