Suggestion for Infobar (Request)

How about next to the zone information to add a level range based on lowest/highest level of normal (not NM) monsters?  All you'd need do is look on the wiki for each zone and look at the lowest level monster and the highest level monster and add those in.  If you want for time you could add those fields into the dll and db and I can look them up and update the database and send it to you, I can at least do that part since I have no idea how to decompile a dll.

a) InfoBar is not maintained anymore, so nothing will be added to it

Wiki is inaccurate and stupid ;p

c) Some zones have mob ranges from 20 to 80, so I don't imagine this being very useful in many zones

d) Decompiling the DLL wouldn't help you even if you could do it

a) InfoBar is not maintained anymore, so nothing will be added to it

Wiki is inaccurate and stupid ;p

c) Some zones have mob ranges from 20 to 80, so I don't imagine this being very useful in many zones

d) Decompiling the DLL wouldn't help you even if you could do it

As for point A, I wouldn't say that.  The dll file may only be updated to fix the offsets needed to keep it working, but the database is (slowly) being updated. 

However, the other points kind of stand; especially point C after they added GoV. 

As for point A, I wouldn't say that.  The dll file may only be updated to fix the offsets needed to keep it working, but the database is (slowly) being updated. 

Even if someone updates it, it's not being distributed. And the DLL is maintained in the sense that it's recompiled when FFXI structs change, but no feature has been added to it in over a year and it won't be. It has no maintainer at this point, someone really needs to remake it as an addon.

I'm working on updating the database myself.  I was the one who was updating it before and it was basically done before SoA was released.  Around that time I ended up taking a long break from FFXI and got distracted with other things. 

This free week that SE is giving everyone has reinspired me to continue to try and get the database fully updated. 

I've added Yahse Hunting Grounds and Ceizak Battlegrounds this morning.  However, like you mentioned, point B is extremely valid.  The wikis (both of them) are missing tons of real information on the monsters in those areas.  As such, everything is sort of a crapshoot.  They'll be in the database but it may not be 100% accurate.  Unfortunately the plugin itself is not working 100% correctly right now (the last update sorta broke it) so I can't test anything to see if the monsters are showing up properly, but I've never had a problem before so I'm going to assume they will.

but no feature has been added to it in over a year and it won't be

Sad, but true.  But, really, for what it does it does well.  It's probably my favorite plugin and a very quick way to tell what's going to aggro you or not (eventually, of course, you come to learn and may not even need infobar much for that aspect, but it's still handy for level ranges if nothing else). 

someone really needs to remake it as an addon

I agree completely.

Anyhoo, all this aside, I'm working on the database as fast as I can in the limited time I have.  When I'm done I'll post it on my FFXI-related blog (see signature).  If it's okay, I'd like to come post it on the board as well or email it or whatever I have to do to make sure it's included in the next infobar update. 

I wrote an addon version for this plugin a couple of months back. That is really the trivial part.

The real value for this is in the data.

The database for the existing plugin, when I examined it closely, showed a LOT of junk, duplicates, and inaccuracies. Most likely because they were maintained by hand.  I even found versions (some newer) of the same DB out there online, but they all had similar issues. I think I even downloaded a version from your site back then.

The data needs to be rebuilt from scratch, with some significant differences:

- It should use mob IDs instead of mob names (as there are areas where you have multiple mobs with the same name but significant differences)

- Gathering of data can't be done by hand to avoid human errors.

There is the issue of size. This DB can get fairly large. Memory usage by the add-on is a concern for some.

However, ultimately, the real difficulty is the gathering of the data (which is why I ended up putting this project on hold)

IMO, most of the data should be automatically gathered in-game and sent to a centralized location (similar to how the FFXIDB site gathers drop data, or how the guildwork plugin gathers other data), but unfortunately some of the data (like weaknesses, detection/aggro type, whether it links, level range) has it challenges.

I wrote something to gather some of things for me as I traveled around...but there's only so much one guy can gather....

This is what the FFXIDB plugin was supposed to do, but that project has not been maintained either. Its purpose was to gather data automatically, and that is the best bet for this, because it wouldn't need any maintenance by hand.

It's possible to gather detection/aggro behavior, linking behavior as well as level ranges automatically (the latter extremely easy). Weaknesses have their challenges though, I'm not sure if that can be gathered easily. If either of you is interesting in helping maintain FFXIDB for this purpose let me know, as a project it has a huge potential but it's completely lacking developers right now, which is a real shame :\

The database for the existing plugin, when I examined it closely, showed a LOT of junk, duplicates, and inaccuracies. Most likely because they were maintained by hand.

Back when I first took over trying to update the database file someone on this forum (I don't remember who and of course the old thread is long gone) wrote a script to re-create the database completely from the wiki.  I took that as a base and decided to start updating by hand from there.  That was...to put it mildly.. a pretty big mistake as the script pulled info from the wikis but didn't do it completely right on all monsters.  As such, a lot of monsters had some major mistakes (such as zone names that were mispelled, drops listed wrong, monster types being set as weaknesses, etc).  I didn't notice until way later though and by that time it was just easier to try to use queries and whatnot in SQL to try and fix what I could and continue just adding things by hand.

With all that said, I completely agree that it'd be muuuuuuuuuch better if we could just maintain it from the game itself using monster IDs.

Unfortunately my time is fairly limited or else I'd definitely hop on the FFXIDB project.  That sounds just like what we need for this.  I wish everyone luck with that and hopefully one day in the future I'll be updating Windower and seeing a brand new, much more complete, Infobar-esque addon with a fully up-to-date database. 

The duplicates are different job styles of mobs sharing the same name, for example Sea Serpent Grotto has 2 types of Ghast, one is warrior and one is black mage, and in Inner Horototo Ruins there's a warrior Wendigo and a black mage Wendigo, both have different drops.  I tried to alter my database to include the different jobs but it only reads the first entry and doesn't differentiate the different job types.

Do you currently have the newest database available to download somewhere so I can try it out?