Changes since build 166: v2.4.12.167 2007-03-22 Russian Localization Falling damage should now be ignored. Pet data merged into their masters should be a bit cleaner and will not truncate the last character of the pet's name. Single log lines that specify more than one type of damage should now be correctly parsed. The Encounter Logs window is now colorized for Russian. Changes since build 165: v2.4.12.166 2007-03-21 Russian Localization Parsing A new log file language setting (in General Options) will set ACT to read log files from Russian localized clients. The Russian parsing engine has one Russian specific setting under Miscellaneous to merge pet attacks into their master's data. As this is the first release of this engine, and I do not know any Russian at all, consider this a beta test. Main Window Graphing A new main tab graphing mode has been added. This mode will show the DPS of 'yourself' and 'your allies' as a bar chart every second with a line graph showing the average DPS for the last few samples. The number of samples to use as the average is set in options. This data is collected directly from the parsing engine, not stored encounter data, so while it is quick to calculate it cannot be used in static HTML exports. It can however be used in the "Current Encounter" page of Full Screen HTML Viewing. Custom Triggers Due to a strange performance fault in .NET, Custom Triggers are no longer case insensitive. You must make sure to use proper capitalization in Custom Triggers, but they will now take about 2/3rds the CPU time. Miscellaneous The Encounter VCR should work more reliably. The French version of the skill Traumatic Swipe should now properly affect Spell Timers. Changes since build 164: v2.4.11.165 2007-03-03 Full Screen HTML Viewing This feature has been reworked to function with the embedded Mozilla based web browser added with GU32. A minimal aspect UI replacement has been included with ACT with collapsing URL controls and can roll-up into a small button. In addition to old features, the "current graph" feature can now display main encounter tables; both will auto-refresh without user interaction. This allows a more or less real-time display of the current encounter in fullscreen EQ2. Another addition is a Spell Timers window clone page: whatever the timers window shows, this page will show. Spell Timers Apart from the timers window being cloned to HTML viewing, spell timers can now be scaled from 0.5 to 2.0x in size. Changes since build 163: v2.4.10.164 2007-02-20 Duration Calculation Fixed an error in calculating the duration of healers that heal past the encounter duration boundaries for merged encounters. Changes since build 162: v2.4.10.163 2007-02-18 Startup Wizard A simple startup wizard has been added for first time users. If ACT cannot find its XML configuration file, it automatically opens the wizard in order to help the user find the log file they wish to use and provide some quick tips. You can manually open the wizard by a button on the General Options tab. Zone Detection Startup and File import zone detection should work better. Additionally opening another log file, manually or automatically should also have zone detection. Duration Calculation Calculating duration on merged encounters should be much faster. This should address a slowdown during exports since build 161 where the duration was first calculated correctly for some of the lower tables. General viewing of merged encounter data should be quicker as well. Clipboard HTML The main tab context menu selection "Copy as HTML" now will place plain text of the HTML and "HTML Format" (CF_HTML) into the clipboard. Applications like Notepad will paste the plain text, while applications like Word will paste an HTML table. Most WYSIWYG applications will choose to paste the HTML table. The new EQ2 forums, while pasting the HTML table in the editor view will unfortunately strip all HTML tags once you hit Submit. Changes since build 161: v2.4.9.162 2007-01-22 Logitech G15 LCD The LCD functionality should have better error handling than after ACT's zone/encounter restructuring. It should be safe to press any LCD button at any time. Generating the LCD bitmap should take less than 1/200th of the CPU time it used to. ACT Clipboard Sharer routing (see next section). ACT Clipboard Sharer The ACT Clipboard sharer now requires v2.0 of the .NET Framework, just as ACT does. You may need to get the new sharer version from the ACT website, as it is not included in the updater. The sharer should now better handle(less CPU usage) extremely large clipboard clips, in small part due to optional visibility of new data in the sharer interface. The sharer now accepts G15 LCD data to be routed via the clipboard connection. LgLcd.dll is required to be with the sharer. This will allow ACT on another computer to access the G15 LCD on the sharer's computer. You may access this option in the usual place on ACT, but you must be already be connected to enable it. Changes since build 160: v2.4.8.161 2007-01-13 ExtDPS-CharDPS-DPS Each table, where applicable, will have DPS columns calculated by different duration values. DPS as always will be damage divided by the duration listed in the duration column of that table(visible or not). CharDPS will be damage divided by the combatant's duration. If the combatant's duration is the duration for that table, CharDPS would be the same as DPS and is not listed. ExtDPS will be the damage of that table divided by the encounter's duration, as usual. Durations for all tables should now be properly calculated for merged encounters and the DPS calculations based from them. ODBC/SQL/XML Exporting CharDPS and ExtDPS will be added as columns to datasource tables. For ODBC exporting, ACT's table validation will add these new table columns if necessary... so be sure to do so if required or ACT will not be able to export new data to these tables. Old versions of ACT will have no trouble exporting to the updated tables. Zone Detection ACT will now back track through the log file in order to find the current zone name when first starting ACT or importing logs from file. This should avoid most cases of “Unknown Zone” or “Import Zone” for those situations. Custom Trigger Results Tabs The results tab of a custom trigger will now attempt to sort columns by number first instead of alphabetically, if possible. Text to Speech (SAPI5) In many cases where ACT was using medium to high amounts of CPU time, TTS audio would be cut off. As a last resort to fix the issue, ACT now writes the speech to an intermediary WAV file and plays that instead. While it will not be interrupted for seemingly no reason, any other WAV played by ACT will interrupt the audio. The spell timer window now can use custom TTS strings. Main Table Context Menu A new copy cell to clipboard context menu option has been added to create a new line in export. Changes since build 159: v2.4.7.160 2006-12-19 Encounter VCR This feature will now track the amount of damage and healing each entity receives and show colored bars below the entity circle showing how much of the total has been done so for for that time index. Also the entity circle will use this data to show a pie chart representation of the entity's current health as well as is known. Unless the entity has died, this pie chart will only display the current health range of the maximum amount of damage taken without healing. If an entity representing a tank takes 5000 damage and is after healed 5000, they will show as zero health and full health respectively. If previously the entity had suffered 10000 damage before, then from 100% it will drop to half health then full health respectively. In other words, the current health indication is reliant on proven damage tolerances for that encounter. All of these indications have mouse-over tool tips to show the raw data. CPU Affinity A setting in General Options, on the right side, will allow you to automatically choose which processors on a multi-core system to use for ACT. No optimizations have been made to ACT for this, so it will be no different than using the Task Manager to accomplish this. Invalid log messages Log file imports will now silently ignore invalidly formatted log lines that do not specify how much damage was done. It will also silently ignore log lines with SoE formatter strings as damage amounts, such as: "$2". Changes since build 158: v2.4.6.159 2006-11-29 German Localization The German parsing engine will now parse logs from after the last expansion. Merged Encounters and Personal Duration The personal duration of combatants, and thus DPS values, in merged encounters will now be calculated in a similar fashion as the encounter's duration. This will be the first time that merged encounters have correctly calculated personal durations. Make no mistake that before build 153 it was correctly calculated, it was merely closer to the encounter's duration. Table views below encounter view still use the same calculation as after build 152. Changes since build 157: v2.4.5.158 2006-11-08 German Localization The German parsing engine will now parse lines from before and after the last SoE changes ~Nov 4th. Echos of Faydwer and multiple damage types Single hits as of the EoF expansion can have multiple damage types, due to adornments or mob ability. ACT will now read these lines correctly, and depending on a setting found in Misc, count the attack as one hit added up, or split the attack into separate damage types. Changes since build 156: v2.4.4.157 2006-10-31 Selective Parsing Fixed a bug that could cause the duration of an encounter created under full selective parsing to be corrupted by data after the battle. The Selective Parsing list is no longer locked to the encounter as soon as it starts... any list changes made will be immediate, if not retroactive. Damage Types combatant breakdown A new context menu item, 'Lookup by Combatant' has been added to Damage Type items in the TreeView(IE Melee (Out)). This window will show a breakdown by combatant, then spell name, of the damage source/destination... instead of showing totals of all combatants. So if you were to request a breakdown of Incoming Damage on a specific mob, you could see who did the most damage for only that mob instead of adding up the individual swings yourself. ATM, this window is somewhat sparse for options and graphs... table sorting follows the Main table sorting options and must be changed via normal methods. ODBC Exporting Batch ODBC exporting will now remove checkboxes once it has exported an encounter to the database. If a 10060 error is reached (timeout error for MySQL), it will not uncheck that encounter and you may safely try again. All exporting errors will cancel that specific encounter from exporting, as normal, but the export complete status label will list the number of errors at the end indicating if you should review the error log. ACT will no longer attempt to create/validate a 'raid_table', as it did not ever directly add data to it. Instead, a pair of tables can be made using a new PHP file in the ODBC sample zip on the website. These two tables will be more SQL 'standards' friendly and the other PHP files have been updated to reflect the new usage. Changes since build 155: v2.4.3.156 2006-10-20 German Localization View Logs context menu window is now colorized for German log lines. ACT File Importing ACT files with multiple encounters will create their own zone branch named after the ACT file. "Spell Timers" mode Two log file language settings have been added to the pulldown menu in General Options. Localization specific, these language options will only perform parsing actions necessary to the spell timer window. No parsed data will be collected on the main window reducing CPU overhead of those who only care about timing spells. ODBC Exporting In order to simplify compatibility concerns with Microsoft type SQL databases the 'time' column in 'swing_table' has been changed to 'stime'. This change is only necessary on non-Microsoft databases such as MySQL and ACT will automatically perform this renaming upon table validation. A popup window will appear at that time to notify the user that database frontend changes may be needed. The needed changes have been reflected in the PHP samples zip hosted on ACT's website. A new table, 'raid_table' had been added. ACT does not write to this database table however new PHP files have been provided to make use of it. search_encs_by_date.php and create_raid_def.php can create these database entries. raid_table.php will read from this table and display hyperlinks to view_raid_def.php for each 'raid' in the table... the resulting pages will look very similar to encounter_table.php but only show encounters in that raid definition. ODBC/SQL Client Window Next to the ODBC export button, you can open an SQL client window that connects to your currently used ODBC database. This is just a simple SQL client to display tables or perform custom queries. Commandline Switches A commandline switch -minimize has been added. When used, ACT will minimize upon loading. This brings the total to two, where -noload will suppress loading a log file upon starting. Changes since build 153: v2.4.2.154 2006-10-13 German Localization Partial fixes for LU28 changes back into English. Resists reports and pie charts will not function properly until SoE reverts to German again. ACT File Import/Export It's again possible to export a single encounter to file without using the checkboxes. ACT files when imported should be mergeable now and not lose proper duration info. v154 ACT files when containing a merged encounter should retain duration information. Changes since build 152: v2.4.2.153 2006-10-06 Zone -> Encounter Branches Instead of a master "Encounters" table at the top of the TreeView, each detected zone will have its own base table. ACT Imports and Merged encounters will be sorted into an "Import" zone category. Clipboard and File imports will start in an "Import Zone" category until their zone location changes and then will act like real time parsing would. Automatic Encounter Culling isn't as applicable in this setting, and has been removed. Encounter Merging Encounters, when merged, will no longer rewrite the timestamps of merged actions. Instead the encounter duration will be calculated by internal start and end times. ExtDPS values should remain the same, however DPS values based off of the combatant's duration will use the real life time boundaries and will be much less. A defaulted option will include an "All" encounter at the top of a Zone branch which will display merged encounter data for that zone on the fly. This "All" encounter is identical to a merged encounter of all encounters in that zone except that it is non-static. This option will possibly use 1/4th more parsing time than normal and can be found in Misc settings or the Performance Wizard. Virtual ListViews Encounter level caching and ListView row caching has been added to reduce the CPU time used to draw/manipulate the ListView. As a reminder to WinXP+ users, you can reduce the amount of visible drawing of the ListView(Main table) in Misc settings. Encounter Ending An option has been added to disable the internal timer in ACT for ending encounters based off of combat inactivity. Previously the encounter would be marked ended when a log timestamp indicated N seconds of inactivity after the last combat option, or an internal timer counted N+2 seconds of inactivity. The timer is useful only if very few events happen in EQ2 that create log lines after a battle(such as in soloing). If you do not use clipboard exporting, the timer is useless as it does not matter when an encounter is marked ended in real time. Encounter VCR An option has been added to hide enemy combatants when they have not attacked or been attacked for 15 seconds. Combatant rings with more than 4 "lives" have been rearranged into smaller less intersecting rings. Infective Bites (Shaman AA) Automatic tracking of this recast affecting spell has been added(similarly to Traumatic Swipe). As the AA skill has a variable percentage, you must set that percentage on the Timers Window(2-16%). This setting will also affect how it is recalculated on the Spell Recast Calculator window. This ability will only be tracked for the English localization until I can get confirmation of the German AA emote. Changes since build 151: v2.4.1.152 2006-09-21 German Localization Fixed a parsing bug causing some attacks from mobs ending in 's (apostrophe-s), with no swarm pet, not to be entered. Virtual ListViews Fixed a bug causing automatic table refreshes not to update the number of visible entries. In practice this caused only the first couple of combatants of an encounter to show up and update until the table was refreshed to include more table rows via manual refreshing or table browsing. Graph Panel The old graph panel tool tips have been replaced by ones that will show the value of the object the mouse is over instead of the value of where the mouse is. For line graphs it will show the time, line labels and plot values; for bar graphs it will show the bar label and value. Graphs will no longer be generated when you browse the TreeView with the keyboard... only automatic selection and mouse selection should. Changes since build 150: v2.4.0.151 2006-09-19 German Localization German parsing engine remade to work with SoE's latest LU changes. Its optional whether or not swarm/dumbfire pet's attacks are included in their master's data automatically. Also optional is to merge grammatical differences of mob naming into one entry. Importing log files The date/time pickers have been replaced by seperate controls and will follow the time format defined by your computer. Additionally you can select the begining or ending of the log file as import points. Virtual ListViews The main encounter table and encounter log file viewer now draw themselves incrementally. For small tables this will be little change, but for very large tables there will be a very substantial reduction in the CPU time required to show the data. Encounter Data Calculation Two new options have been added that can effect DPS calculations. First is the recalculation of warded hits(Default on). If a combatant attacks someone through a ward, their attack will be recalculated to include the absorbtion amount. This does not include stoneskin. Second is the calculation of encounter durations(Default 'shorten'). Previously when using only a timed termination of an encounter, during the number of seconds waited to terminate, heals were still recorded and while not resetting the termination timer, could affect the encounter's duration. Disallowing this effect will still record the heals after the last attack, but will not lengthen the encounter duration. This (default)option will slightly alter ExtDPS values for any encounter that had heals after the last attack(but before termination), but will not affect others. Text Only Formatting {maxheal}, {MAXHEAL}, {maxhealward} and {MAXHEALWARD} have been added as variables for use with clipboard exporting and mini-window formatting. Their intended uses are similar to {maxhit} counterparts. {maxheal} will not include wards as the highest heal, but {maxhealward} will. Timeline Window As a context menu option below View Logs, the timeline window will generate a timeline of events within an encounter. Events include: combatants entering combat, dying; an enemy combatant changing apparent autoattack targets; an enemy AEing several combatants at once; any Custom Trigger with a results tab. Each second in the time line also shows damage done by the main mob to its autoattack target/anyone and any mob attacking an ally as bar graphs. Tool tips will display extended info for each second including loglines if available. Encounter VCR As a context menu option below View Logs, the encounter 'VCR' will show graphical replays of an encounter. The replays will take the form of combatants displayed as colored circles, surrounding a group of enemies, in a ring or separated arcs with red/green arrows drawn between combatants showing damage/healing for that frame. The 'VCR' can play, increment seconds and seek to different times in an encounter. Optionally, the 'VCR' can link(realtime mode) to the active encounter and draw events as they are recorded by ACT.