Guide - How to ditch that rubbish EQBC and get with the times with the sexy MQ2DanNet (1 Viewer)

[exspes007]

you don't need to mimic netbots. you simply don't need it. but i will give you a comparison..

if i recall my netbots, it has been a while.: ${NetBots[CLIENT#].Buff.Find[SPELLID].ID} (could be off on that). but you would pull this or something similar every time you needed to know if the toon has the buff w/o having to target it. of course if you target it there are other methods

DanNet observer
/dobserve <Bob> -q "Me.Buff[SPELLNAME]" -o Bob_SPELLNAME. now no mater what, your character will know if ${Bob_SPELLNAME} is there on that toon. you can set simple loops of characters in a group in DanNet, cycle their names with the attached spellname and know if they have it!? you dont have to ask the character anymore. you simply know. my curers know when someone has something wrong with them, they don't have to ask.

realistically, anything a character can see on themselves, someone else on DanNet can get from you and use. any TLO, any member, any combination, any outer variables set on a character someone on DanNet can see.

and i'm not going to say DanNet does things better. It doesn't. it is a completely different approach to getting data. you are trying compare something with inherent limitations to something where the only limitation is how far you can find ways to twist it.

as far as KS conditions, i've no idea. i suppose if the observers are preexisting then yes. it would be doable.
edit:spelling is hard

 

[ctaylor22]

I have started incorporating DanNet into KA, but just for the parts that use EQBC for sending messages. I will want to do some further testing before pushing it any farther. You will have the option to choose between using EQBC or DanNet.

If DanNet holds up under our testing, then I will look at changing some things over. I would love to get rid of the Kissassist_buffs.ini file. Using DanNet would solve the problem of running characters from multiple MQ2 instances and/or multiple computers and not getting buffs.

DanNet has huge potential, but it has to hold up in various situations before we will invest the resources to fully implement it into kissassist.

 

[braedo]

the real question here is, where can I get me some "platinumdupe.mac"

 

[saar]

i run core with 25 toons auto buffing auto assisting healing triggering phrases through dannet. Most if not all my commands are talking to a group within my mini raid setup or to the raid as a whole. Response times have gotten better since the swap to dannet, buffs have been more stable, with my amount of volume of toons I am running would crash/overload eqbc via netbots spam. With dannet you get the information you want only when you want it, netbots sends all the data every pulse from every toon connected and the chatter starts to lag random instances till jibberish starts happening, commands start to fail. Dannet is to eqbc/netbots/netheal as mq2nav is to advpath/moveutils.

 

[william12]

i run core with 25 toons auto buffing auto assisting healing triggering phrases through dannet. Most if not all my commands are talking to a group within my mini raid setup or to the raid as a whole. Response times have gotten better since the swap to dannet, buffs have been more stable, with my amount of volume of toons I am running would crash/overload eqbc via netbots spam. With dannet you get the information you want only when you want it, netbots sends all the data every pulse from every toon connected and the chatter starts to lag random instances till jibberish starts happening, commands start to fail. Dannet is to eqbc/netbots/netheal as mq2nav is to advpath/moveutils.

I run 10 groups on the same PC all using netbots and eqbc and never ran into that issue.

So explain how to do this. How do i setup my tank and cleric so the cleric knows if the tank is mezzed or has a certain debuff on say delude ?

 

[dannuic]

I run 10 groups on the same PC all using netbots and eqbc and never ran into that issue.

So explain how to do this. How do i setup my tank and cleric so the cleric knows if the tank is mezzed or has a certain debuff on say delude ?

There are 2 ways. If you don't mind there being a bit handshake time, you do /dquery tankname -q "Me.Mezzed" and then you can check the output at ${DanNet.Query}. (there are actually a couple ways to do this if you don't want to use TLO's, exspes made a post about this, I think).

The other way if you need to avoid handshake time is to do /dobs tankname -q "Me.Mezzed" and then the data is continually cached locally in ${DanNet[tankname].Observe["Me.Mezzed"]}. Again, there are a couple of ways to do this if that doesn't completely suit you, explained in that post.

 

[ctaylor22]

Yea, Dannet lets you ask the specific toon for information using /dquery. The example dannuic used above would have your tank execute the Me.Mezzed and return the results back to the character who issued the query.

 

[exspes007]

DanNet has huge potential, but it has to hold up in various situations before we will invest the resources to fully implement it into kissassist.

i'm curious to how you are testing it. have some examples?

 

[ctaylor22]

Here is what I have been using. DanTest

The next testing phase will be anyone that uses KissAssits. You will have the option to turn it on and use DanNet instead of EQBC. Will only be using it for Messages to start with. If all goes well then we will move on to allowing you to use the Kissassist_Buffs.ini file or DanNet to queary the characters for their buffs.

 

[AnotherJohn]

Hi,

I loaded a macro that needed MQ2DanNet to function (IHC385 CLR). The macro installed the program and my little crew worked fine. However, now when I log on my CPU usage is maxed out and my characters cannot even move. When I try to unload MQ2DanNet the program just crashes. Is there any reason this should be happening? I have not seen anyone else having any problems, so where would you suggest I look first? Thanks, AnotherJohn

 

[ihc385]

Hi,

I loaded a macro that needed MQ2DanNet to function (IHC385 CLR). The macro installed the program and my little crew worked fine. However, now when I log on my CPU usage is maxed out and my characters cannot even move. When I try to unload MQ2DanNet the program just crashes. Is there any reason this should be happening? I have not seen anyone else having any problems, so where would you suggest I look first? Thanks, AnotherJohn

That is strange, this is even without the mac running? ( wanna be sure its not my mac eating up your cpu ). If unload is crashing, can you set MQ2DanNet=0 in the macroquest.ini and get in? The only thing I've ever heard of being an issue with dannet is mixed win7/8 and Win10 pc's on the same network, are you running on just 1 pc or multiple?

 

[Tone]

I run 10 groups on the same PC all using netbots and eqbc and never ran into that issue.

So explain how to do this. How do i setup my tank and cleric so the cleric knows if the tank is mezzed or has a certain debuff on say delude ?

I'm in a similar boat... I use EQBC so I can run a server per group... if GroupA is on Server1 and GroupB is on Server2 on the same pc or even same network... How does this new p2p setup separate my characters into their own channel?

I also have years of development around EQBC that queries the characters in game and I have outside code that reacts to the JSON payload that I produce.

 

[AnotherJohn]

That is strange, this is even without the mac running? ( wanna be sure its not my mac eating up your cpu ). If unload is crashing, can you set MQ2DanNet=0 in the macroquest.ini and get in? The only thing I've ever heard of being an issue with dannet is mixed win7/8 and Win10 pc's on the same network, are you running on just 1 pc or multiple?

Hey,

When I did the last unload of DanNet that crashed my toons (one at a time as I unloaded the program) I guess it did unload along with the crash. When I started things back up it all ran normal. I did not use the new IHCClr macro which seemed to be how DanNet was loaded. So all went fine. I am running only one computer and yes when I originally logged on no Macros were running just MQ2 and plugins. At some point I will try to start the DanNet plugin before starting the IHCClr Macro and see if that gets me better results. It maybe that having IHCClr macro load the plugin I am running into some kind of conflict. I didnt do it yesterday as after about an hour and a half of changing things to get it to work I just wanted to play the game. I will continue to play and see if I can get DanNet to work as it seems I will eventually need to so I can use future IHC macros.
I just dont know this programming stuff well enough to figure out some of the errors and conflicts that can arise. Sometimes, if I know where to look I can play with stuff and figure it out and I guess I was hoping someone else with more knowledge might be able to point me in the right direction on what could be the possible problem(s). I will continue to tinker with it in the near future and collect more info. In the meantime if anyone has had this happen and knows what it could be let me know.

Thanks, AnotherJohn

Ok, an update. Today when I started my crew up I logged them on with ISBoxer. Then, started MQ2. Then, loaded the DanNet plugin. Then, loaded the macros including the latest version of IHCClr (I think it is 2.9) and everything seems to be running fine. So, either it was a conflict with DanNet being loaded by IHCClr or just a one time fluke with my setup. I would guess the later as my toons, settings, macros, ini's are all being held together with Duct tape and chewing gum. I tend to keep playing with something until it seems to work but dont have the knowledge to know if what I did will create a problem down the road until it does. Happily, everything is working now and I am sure I will be posting again "down the road" when something I have done in the past comes back to bit me. Thanks.

Problem still happening upon logging in for new session. After playing perfectly all day yesterday I logged on my crew the same way I always have. First ISBoxer, then started MQ2 and immediately my CPU usage pegged to 100% and toons couldn't be moved. This is before I even start any macro. I then unloaded DanNet (plugin MQ2DanNet unload) and all toons crashed. I have sent the crash dump to EQMule per crash instructions. I didnt know if it contained personal information so wasnt sure if I should attach that here in the post. Let me know if it posting dump here would be helpful and appropriate. Any ideas on what I might be doing that could be causing this, let me know please. In the meantime it looks like I can work around it by doing what I did yesterday and just unplug DanNet and crash out at the end of each session. Thanks.

 

[saar]

If your having issues, find the plug-in load part and edit the end to reflect noauto and it won't save it to the ini file

 

[playj]

I appreciate the funny write up on MQ2DanNet.

Sadly, I didn't have a good first experience with MQ2DanNet (crashing on simple info request on a single computer) .

Meanwhile regular MQ2EQBC has been chugging along like a champ supporting up to 50 chars.

The only advantage for MQ2DanNet is that it would be slightly simpler to set up for first time users.
The minus is that you can't really configure it for different networks.

Is there any other plus to DanNet?

The big disadvantage for MQ2DanNet is that does not work across multiple subnets.

Another thing: MQ2EQBC server-client topology is not bad per se.

Just because peer-to-peer is in vogue doesn't make it inherently better/best suited for everything.

Those peers have to perform some sort of discovery, keep-alive etc etc, that all eats network traffic and is not necessarily more efficient/faster than a good client-server setup.

 

[Knightly]

EQBC is not a good client server setup. You're not incorrect that p2p discovery is less efficient than a direct connection, but that's only on the first discovery, after that p2p and client/server are equal given correct implementation of both. Compared to EQBC the traffic from DanNet is a lot less (you can see this through Wireshark or looking at how EQBC works in the code) but that's primarily due to the way EQBC is written and not because of the client/server aspect. All of your information is also sent unencrypted with EQBC so running across multiple subnets you need to be careful about transgressing Public networks.

The information regarding p2p efficiency vs client server efficiency is incorrect, but the comment that DanNet doesn't currently work across multiple subnets is correct.

As far as the pluses, you can't setup an observer architecture with EQBC. You can try to layer on NetBots to come close to what DanNet can do, but EQBC was designed to push information, not to pull it. So, querying for information is the best example of where DanNet can do things EQBC can't (and that is it's primary purpose, that it happens to be able to replace EQBC was incidental).

Was your crash recent? If so, you're probably running into an issue of MQ2 where incorrect syntax can cause a crash. I don't think DanNet has outstanding bugs in that area right now. You can crash EQBC the same way (use a method on a TLO that doesn't exist). If you want to post your query then we can help troubleshoot.

 

[ihc385]

The main reason I chose to use it has nothing at all to do with replacing EQBC, as knightly said that was incidental, it's all about access to another characters data for me. Loading 1 less plugin is always a plus in my eyes so I made a personal choice to move over completely. Some people like a million plugins...I'm not one of those people lol.

Theres a few threads on here lately that make it seem like its EQBC vs DanNet and people are scrambling to transition or don't want to change and feel they need to support eqbc and resist a change...a change that doesnt need to happen! Its not one or the other, you can run them both, you don't need to unload eqbc to test dannet and vise versa.

DanNet as a dependency in a macro is a personal choice for some of us ( me ). I chose it because of speed, I would like my macro's to be as fast and efficient as any real player ( whether they do or not I duuno, they make me happy and that's why I wrote them...for me, bonus that others like them too) and a player doesn't need to cycle targets checking for debuffs, buffs, targets etc. Its slow, inefficient and gets toons dead in challenging content. A real player is going to be able to just see certain things ( does a buff stack with what a character already has on? ) and communicate others ( healer:Hey anyone Cursed? ber:Yep I am! ). This is what DanNet provides and its not limited by a set of TLO's a plugin writer decided to include ( which is requiring yet another plugin ), its all TLO's every connected character has.

I'm just going to make a guess and I could be wrong but people running 30/40/50+ characters across multiple networks probably aren't running the most current content with max gear/aa chars sitting at their screens playing the game for progression and fun, seeing just how much they can squeeze out of their crew but more for farming/pl/cash/krono purposes with under geared/developed chars, that's not my personal focus for my macs so I have less concern for these issues because there are plenty of macs out there already that accomplish this.

 

[AnotherJohn]

If your having issues, find the plug-in load part and edit the end to reflect noauto and it won't save it to the ini file

After a lot of playing around I am still having the issue where Dannet runs perfectly if I load it manually at the beginning of each session and unload it at the end of the session. If I don't unload the plugin the next session will max out my CPU usage at startup and make the game unplayable due to the lag it creates. I am guessing something is in conflict and is creating a loop or something that is taxing my computer.

I tried to look for the "plug-in load part" and have no idea where it could be. The only thing in my Dannet.ini is:
[General]
Command Echo=off
If I try to open the Dannet.dll file with Notepad++ I get unreadable symbols. Is there somewhere else I should look? Or do I need to manually add something to my Dannet.ini? Any help or ideas appreciated.

Thanks, AnotherJohn

 

[Knightly]

Is there somewhere else I should look? Or do I need to manually add something to my Dannet.ini? Any help or ideas appreciated.

saar was talking about your MacroQuest2.ini for the load part (or loading the plugin with /plugin mq2dannet noauto).

Paging Dr. @dannuic . Is Dr. @dannuic in the house? This man needs a troubleshooting tip, stat.

 

[AnotherJohn]

saar was talking about your MacroQuest2.ini for the load part (or loading the plugin with /plugin mq2dannet noauto).

Thanks Knightly, I found it in my macroquest.ini, it is currently set to 0. However, I was just doing /plugin mq2dannet which I am guessing will reset the number to 1. I will try using /plugin mq2dannet noauto on my next session which will help me when I forget to unload the plugin which it seems I usually do. This should be a great way to work around my problem. Appreciate the help, AnotherJohn

 

[dannuic]

hmm, are you doing anything with dannet when it does this? Or is it just passively increasing CPU? also, can you do `/dnet info` and see what version you are running?

 

[AnotherJohn]

hmm, are you doing anything with dannet when it does this? Or is it just passively increasing CPU? also, can you do `/dnet info` and see what version you are running?

Hey Dannuic, the version is v0.7510. The CPU maxs out when I start up MQ2 and mq2dannet auto loads. If I manually load mq2dannet it runs fine. It is just when I start a new session and mq2dannet is auto loaded. I have been using /plugin mq2dannet noauto to start each session so it does not auto load. It would be nice not to have to manually load it on my toons each new session but it is not critical. I have no idea what could be causing the conflict, I guess it could be almost any program on my computer. Since I seem to be the only one having the problem, are there types of of programs outside of EQ and MQ2 that might be a problem? Anyway, low priority since I have a work around thanks to Knightly. Thanks, AnotherJohn

 

[Knightly]

Have you tried excluding EQ and MQ2 directories from Windows Defender? I'm not sure it's related, I'm just curious.

 

[AnotherJohn]

Have you tried excluding EQ and MQ2 directories from Windows Defender? I'm not sure it's related, I'm just curious.

Knightly,
I looked for Windows Defender in the past since others were complaining about performance problems with it. Since I have Norton running as my security program it looks like Windows Defender is not running on my computer. At least this is what it looked like to me but I am no expert. In looking at Norton it appears that I could exclude EQ and MQ2 from scans. Not sure if that would help since it seems that scans are not the problem but some type of "live" monitoring since the problem happens immediately on auto loading mq2dannet. Let me know if you think excluding the programs from scans with Norton will help and I will do so. Thanks for the suggestion, AnotherJohn

 

[ihc385]

Hey Dannuic, the version is v0.7510. The CPU maxs out when I start up MQ2 and mq2dannet auto loads. If I manually load mq2dannet it runs fine. It is just when I start a new session and mq2dannet is auto loaded. I have been using /plugin mq2dannet noauto to start each session so it does not auto load. It would be nice not to have to manually load it on my toons each new session but it is not critical. I have no idea what could be causing the conflict, I guess it could be almost any program on my computer. Since I seem to be the only one having the problem, are there types of of programs outside of EQ and MQ2 that might be a problem? Anyway, low priority since I have a work around thanks to Knightly. Thanks, AnotherJohn

Glad to hear theres a partial solution here and wondering if you would have ever even had this problem if I just used the noauto switch when loading plugins from my mac. I'm gonna add the noauto switch into the ihcmac's, lesson learned on my end...sorry it was at your expense

 

[Onamatter]

I have the same problem where dannet tries to kill my cpu ( cpu hit 100%, normaly around 30% ), but i have found that if I load mq2 with dannet auto loaded before I start any eq clients it all works fine. I dont use auto login and sometimes forget to load mq2 before I start my eq clients and they all lag like crazy, then i have to kill eveything and restart.

 

[Sic]

I have the same problem where dannet tries to kill my cpu ( cpu hit 100%, normaly around 30% ), but i have found that if I load mq2 with dannet auto loaded before I start any eq clients it all works fine. I dont use auto login and sometimes forget to load mq2 before I start my eq clients and they all lag like crazy, then i have to kill eveything and restart.

same

 

[AnotherJohn]

Glad to hear theres a partial solution here and wondering if you would have ever even had this problem if I just used the noauto switch when loading plugins from my mac. I'm gonna add the noauto switch into the ihcmac's, lesson learned on my end...sorry it was at your expense

ich385,
I love your macros (especially enchanter) and have been using them for a while now. It seems the switch to dannet is needed to make your macros even better so I am happy to switch over. Dannet works great if I manually load it each time there just seems to be a conflict somewhere when it is auto loaded after EQ has been started.
When I first started using MQ2 the guy who told me about MQ2 said that I needed to start MQ2 after EQ was loaded and end MQ2 before logging off EQ to avoid detection on EQ's end. I am sure that is an "old wive's tale" but old habits die hard. I use ISBoxer with some fxvideo click through hotkey areas and I also find the ability to hit one key to bring up a character's screen helpful. So I have always fired up ISBoxer first and used that to load up my EQ characters. Then I start up MQ2, then load the individual macros and that has always worked fine. It now seems a few others are having a problem with CPU usage when auto loading Dannet and MQ2 AFTER EQ is loaded. So I will wait a while and see if there is a fix for this or not. If there is no fix forth coming it sounds like I may just have to change the order I start all my programs.
So bottom line, ihc385, is I would have run into this problem when I switched to Dannet (which seems to be the wave of the future) whether I used your macros or not. This just brought the problem to our attention sooner so it can be fixed sooner and maybe save others from this problem if it gets fixed soon. I love both the ihc macros and Dannet. So thank you ihc385 and dannuic for sharing these with us, AnotherJohn

Edit: Looks like this problem has been fixed in one of the last few patches. I no longer have to use the noauto. Dannet auto loads fine now without maxing out my CPU.

 

[howlinhoss]

Here is what I have been using. DanTest

The next testing phase will be anyone that uses KissAssits. You will have the option to turn it on and use DanNet instead of EQBC. Will only be using it for Messages to start with. If all goes well then we will move on to allowing you to use the Kissassist_Buffs.ini file or DanNet to queary the characters for their buffs.

Searching some older threads. Can KA with DanNet query buffs for all chars on the server like it does with EQBC? I am running 2 groups from two different computers and would love KA to buff other group.

 

[ctaylor22]

KA 11.005 will buff anyone in the DanNet ALL group. The number of computers is irrelevant. Also added a list you can add characters too for buffing. For more on the extra list, go check out the kissassist thread.

 

[Sum1]

KA 11.005 will buff anyone in the DanNet ALL group. The number of computers is irrelevant. Also added a list you can add characters too for buffing. For more on the extra list, go check out the kissassist thread.

Will I be able to load DANnet for the buff functionality while still using EQBC for all other things? Sort of like using DANnet as a bootleg MQ2Netbots while ignoring everything else about it?

 

[ctaylor22]

Yes. I still have all my hot keys using EQBC while kiss uses DanNet for everything DanNet.

 

[Sum1]

Yes. I still have all my hot keys using EQBC while kiss uses DanNet for everything DanNet.

Hrm.... maybe I'll consider firing that up, then.

 

[howlinhoss]

Will I be able to load DANnet for the buff functionality while still using EQBC for all other things? Sort of like using DANnet as a bootleg MQ2Netbots while ignoring everything else about it?

Never thought to use both. I'm using EQBC and have all my hotkeys set up for it but like you I want the buffing aspect of DanNet. Let me know how it goes using both. I wonder how it is in cpu usage.

 

[Sum1]

I wonder how it is in cpu usage.

I suspect minimal cpu use.

 

[Gareldar]

So I have been trying to convert over to EQNext/MacroQuest after my break, this post really helped me get familiar with MQ2DanNet

 

[mroutlaw]

when i try to use this in power shell admin mode it throws errors
Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\EverQuest" -Filter "eqclient*.ini" | ForEach-Object {
(Get-Content $_.FullName)
ForEach-Object { $_ -replace 'bcaa\s\/', '(dgae\s)' -replace (bca\s\/), 'dge\s' -replace '(bcg\s\/)', 'dgge\s' -replace '(bct(.*)\/)', 'dex$Matches[2]` -Replace '(bcg\s\/)', 'dgge\s' -replace '(bcga\s\/)', 'dgga\s' }
Set-Content $_.FullName
}

keeps saying unexpected tokens although i am in the right directory and running it in powershell admin and regul;ar same effect

 

[Myysterio]

    Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\EverQuest" -Filter "eqclient*.ini" | ForEach-Object {

        (Get-Content $_.FullName)

        ForEach-Object { $_ -replace 'bcaa\s\/', '(dgae\s)' -replace (bca\s\/), 'dge\s' -replace '(bcg\s\/)', 'dgge\s' -replace '(bct(.*)\/)', 'dex$Matches[2]` -Replace '(bcg\s\/)', 'dgge\s' -replace '(bcga\s\/)', 'dgga\s' }

        Set-Content $_.FullName

    }

I have nothing in my eqclient.ini regarding MQ2 or otherwise. Shouldnt this be your character files to change your hotkeys?

 

[Knightly]

Correct, that was just an example, if you read above that G7 mentioned you want *.ini and he just does eqclient*.ini as an example. But it would also probably be in other files, like if you use MyButtons. @imgregrice had something he was using. G7 doesn't come around much anymore.

 

[Redbot]

Such a good post though, I wish he'd come back.