Admin / Trusted Player Tool - Game Save Visualiser

[MirageUK]

 

Admin / Trusted Player Tool - Game Save Visualiser

Just a quick post of my own instead of hijacking others and name-dropping a new tool I've been working on.

It's essentially my own UI which visualises some of the great work by others who have worked on parsing the save file data and providing "toolkits" for others to use.

The work was originally based on a java based utility called ark-tools which used ark-savegame-toolkit to output JSON text files which encouraged me to make something simple to list the information in master/detail grids.  For more information on his work check out his GitHub repository - https://github.com/Qowyn - Thanks for the inspiration @Qowyn

He was obviously an inspiration to others as his work was converted into a language I'm a LOT more familiar with and once again provided as a library/toolkit I could work with.  It's called the ARKSavegameToolkit and you can find out more information over at https://github.com/Flachdachs

I'm now aware that a similar project was undertaken called Larkator by @coldino so please feel free to check his work out - if I hadn't already started this before discovering his it would also have been a good influence.

Anyway this is what I'm working on:

Save Game Support:

• Auto download of save data from FTP servers.
• Limited single player support (wilds just dont spawn unless the player is around em)
• Offline save game support.

Supported Maps (Ark Survival Ascended):

• The Island
• Scorched Earth
• Svartalfheim

Supported Maps (Ark Survival Evolved):

• The Island
• The Center
• Scorched Earth
• Aberration
• Extinction
• Ragnarok
• Valguero
• Crysyal Isles
• Genesis
• Genesis 2
• Astral ARK
• Hope
• Tunguska
• Caballus
• Fjordur
• Fjell
• Tiamat Prime
• Glacius
• Antartika
• Lost Island
• Olympus
• Ebenus Astrum
• Amissa
• The Volcano
• The Earrion
• Svartalfheim
• TaeniaStella The RenewalAlpha

Structure Locations

• Choose which structures to display on the map and click on the image if you prefer a more detailed list.
• Beaver Dams, Wyvern Nests, Deino Nests, Water/Oil/Gas Veins, Obelisks and Artifact crates.

Custom Map Markers

• Add custom map markers to keep track of things

Creature Locator:

• Displays a drop-down with summary information on wild or tamed creatures showing a count, min level and max levels.
• Selecting a creature from the summary list will show a detailed grid and add blue markers to the map showing the approx. locations.
• The detailed grid shows you the gender, location, levels and number of wild/tamed points allocated to each stat.
• Ancestor Views for selected tamed creature.
• Inventory view for selected tamed creature.

Player Locator:

• Allows selection and drill-down of players by Tribe
• Displays detailed list of player locations, levels, stat allocations and last played date/time.
• Tribe/Player inventory views for selected player.
• Tribe/Player tamed creature view.
• Tribe logs

Discord BOT:

• Player and admin commands to display lists and marked maps from ASV within a discord channel using slash commands.

Latest download link:

ARK Viewer Download:

• https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BA4JsQDO1ajyQZ2_cMgcb7drWNOSZrQW/view?usp=drive_link
• https://github.com/miragedmuk/ASV/releases

Donations

Please don't feel you need to donate ANYTHING but if you really want to you can at https://ko-fi.com/mirageuk

Edited 11 hours ago by MirageUK
5.1.0.2 - Latest fix for file format change (ASA)

[Larkfields]

It looks superb Mirage.  I can't wait to have a play.

[Zhandroid]

Looks like a super promising tool! I'm exciting to take it for a spin!

[Zahlea]

This looks amazing. Thanks for doing this!

Would it be relevant to add Bee Hives to structures you can show? Or are Bees shown as a dinosaur, with level?

[MirageUK]

Bee's are essentially shown as creatures - it's rare you'll have a Queen Bee on the map that isn't in a hive.

Just working on the designs for the inventory views for a player (and any tibe owned dinos/structures) atm so good time to post a couple more screens whilst answering.  Going simple at first but coul extend it to show durability and stats of weapons and items etc at a later date.

Not sure how I'm going to layout the ancestor views yet but that could be interesting to work on.

[MirageUK]

Another screeny but with a little data populated for the player inventory, looks v.minimal now that I've removed the location fields which will free up some space for further item stats to be included.

 

[MirageUK]

Player/Tribe inventory views now complete.

Will use this to finish the selected creature inventory view this evening and then start work on the player/tribe tames and ancestor views.

[MirageUK]

Just a quick update guys - still working on this but as I keep adding adddional features it's now delayed for release until mid January.

I recently added charge nodes and rock drake nest locations to the structure listings - and colour coded the marker borders for nests (Wyvern, Deino, Drake) so that nests which contain eggs have a green border marker and nests without have a red border marker.

I also still have to start work on the tamed dino ancestor views.

Further updates to follow in the next couple of weeks.

Edited December 30, 2019 by MirageUK

[MirageUK]

... and the feature list continues:

+ Player Tribe Log View

Edited December 30, 2019 by MirageUK
added image

[user314]

Looks very nice. How is it going?

I'm looking forward to run it:)

[Norlinri]

@MirageUK Does your tool allow admins to visualize any player structure on a map?  Maybe in the future?

Any plans to add The Center as supported map?

That looks amazing! I can't wait to try this. If you need someone to test it, let me know

Edited January 7, 2020 by Norlinri

[MirageUK]

@Norlinri - it wasn't something I had considered as the custom map markers would allow you to "mark" user base locations but I guess it would be possible to at least map out and ceiling/foundations - the map is only top-view after all.

The center - I can include that, just have to create a map of the same size/scale.  I will look at adding this in the next few days.

@user314 - I have a bit of time off over the new year and ended up playing ARK more than working on this tool.  It's been a busy couple of weeks of being impregnated by Reaper Queens on Aberration.  My tribe and I have been testing it whilst playing and so far so good.  I plan on getting back on it in the next couple of days to complete the player tame view and tamed dino ancestor views.

I might release it as-is this evening when I get home for you guys to try out and give me some feedback whilst I continue work on the additional features.

[Norlinri]

11 hours ago, MirageUK said:

@Norlinri - it wasn't something I had considered as the custom map markers would allow you to "mark" user base locations but I guess it would be possible to at least map out and ceiling/foundations - the map is only top-view after all.

The center - I can include that, just have to create a map of the same size/scale.  I will look at adding this in the next few days

That would be awesome if we could keep track of player's foundations/pillars/spike walls at least (walls and/or gates would be great too), just to get an idea of which tribe is where really  On our servers for example we are trying to keep a map as clean as possible so that would really be perfect!

Great! I will keep an eye on this thread and give it a go whenever it's out!

[MirageUK]

The Center now supported:

Couple more tweaks to the search filters and I'll get a public beta uploaded.

[MirageUK]

@Norlinri - I can get the foundation lat/lon but there doesn't seem to be any information available to recover the angle - so if I were to map them out it would be square to the lat/lon and not representative of the actual foundation position / rotation in-game.  I will do some experimenting and see how it looks.

Edit: Grey Box = Foundation (any material), Lime = Pillar (any material)

Edited January 9, 2020 by MirageUK
Foundation and pillar sample

[Norlinri]

3 hours ago, MirageUK said:

@Norlinri - I can get the foundation lat/lon but there doesn't seem to be any information available to recover the angle - so if I were to map them out it would be square to the lat/lon and not representative of the actual foundation position / rotation in-game.  I will do some experimenting and see how it looks.

Edit: Grey Box = Foundation (any material), Lime = Pillar (any material)

That looks good to me already like this, thanks! This would give me a nice idea of what is where. Mostly to keep an eye on people who want to pillar the map etc  Would be perfect if it could map out every single structure in-game but honestly, foundations and pillars/gates/spikes are already very nice! Does it separate it per tribe by the way?

Does it give you the overall structure count of each tribe as well? (even if it doesn't map them all out)

Edited January 9, 2020 by Norlinri

[MirageUK]

Wow - I guess I got more work to do lol.

It doesn't currently give a structure count - this quick mock-up I did to test it works by showing foundations,ceilings,pillars, spikes for the selected player/tribe. 

I will work out how I want to lay it out with co-ords and counts etc. and include that functionality later. 

I still have the ancestor stuff to do yet but thanks for the input.

[MirageUK]

@Norlinri - I will need to create a key map for the structure names but something like this - so you can drill down tribes, players and structures to get a count and location of each and highlighting all the filtered structures on the map.

Edited January 9, 2020 by MirageUK

[Norlinri]

1 hour ago, MirageUK said:

@Norlinri - I will need to create a key map for the structure names but something like this - so you can drill down tribes, players and structures to get a count and location of each and highlighting all the filtered structures on the map.

That looks perfect to me! Can’t wait to put it to the test

[MirageUK]

@Norlinri I decided against the "square box" layout for structures and went with the dots instead but with a filter so you can drill down the tribe/player/structure you're interested in displaying on the map.

I should have a version to upload for you guys to try out later this afternoon whilst I continue working on the rest.

[MirageUK]

First public preview uploaded - http://www.miragesoftware.co.uk/ARK/Apps/ARKViewer_Preview1.zip

Instructions: Unzip into a folder of your choosing and run ARKSaveViewer.exe. 

For FTP you will have to select FTP Mode then click "Add Server" - the dropdown turns into a textbox to give the server a unique name.  Enter the remaining details and click "Add Server" again to apply your changes and then click Save.

I have shown my own settings (but removed the IP) for an example of what each field needs to contain.

I will try put together some documentation but until then if you have any questions feel free to post em up here.

Work in progress:

• Tamed creature inventory view
• Tamed creature ancestor view
• Settings - Creature Names - to complete functionality to allow users to add/edit friendly names.
• Settings - Item Names - to complete functionality to allow users to add/edit friendly names.
• Settings - Server export (with settings to limit what the imported server settings will allow the user to view/use)
• Settings - Server import
• Complete as many item, structure and creature name maps as I can find.

Edited January 12, 2020 by MirageUK
Added TODO

[Norlinri]

23 minutes ago, MirageUK said:

Work in progress:

• Tamed creature inventory view
• Tamed creature ancestor view
• Settings - Creature Names - to complete functionality to allow users to add/edit friendly names.
• Settings - Item Names - to complete functionality to allow users to add/edit friendly names.
• Settings - Server export (with settings to limit what the imported server settings will allow the user to view/use)
• Settings - Server import
• Complete as many item, structure and creature name maps as I can find.

Thanks a lot for your work! I've downloaded it now, will give it a go in a second

Settings - Creature Names - to complete functionality to allow users to add/edit friendly names. Does that mean that we, as admins, could rename players/creatures from that tool directly?

Is it possible to remove structures on the server from the tool directly, like select a tribe (in your tool) that we know has been inactive for a long time, and remove all their structures at once?

[MirageUK]

I don't believe so - it is possible to remove players as they have a seperate file outside of the main game save but structures you would have to rely on decay or use the tool to identify and do a manual cleanup.

... once you identify one structure of a tribe you want to remove you can use admin commands in game to remove all structures of that tribe once located.

Edited January 12, 2020 by MirageUK
added admin command tip

[Norlinri]

Ah alright, no problem, that will already be much quicker for us to find structures for each tribe!

Could I suggest to add a zoom in/out on the map? I'm using it on a 2560*1440 and it's a little bit small. It's not a huge issue but it would be nice to be able to make the map a bit bigger  No rush!

Also, could you make it so it remembers what filters you had already applied? For example, if I select [All Players] and [All Structures] but I want to change to a different tribe, I have to reselect those two criteria again. Once again, not a huge issue.

Would be nice if we could exclude certain structures as well from appearing, maybe another dropdown or something like this?

 

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to use your tool, it's honestly going to be a very big help for us!

[MirageUK]

14 minutes ago, Norlinri said:

Could I suggest to add a zoom in/out on the map? I'm using it on a 2560*1440 and it's a little bit small. It's not a huge issue but it would be nice to be able to make the map a bit bigger  No rush!

It already has zoom functionality using the buttons or sliders below the map? But the base maps I have are unfortunately poor quality - 1024x1024.

Also the filter selections - the reason why it "resets" is that it only lists structures that the selected tribe/player have actually placed.  So for example if a selected tribe or player has never placed / doesn't currently have any spike walls they won't be available as a selection.

Edited January 12, 2020 by MirageUK
Reason behind the filter reset.