The following document is included with all current distributions of Plotty. This document should also be considered the latest document for all earlier versions. Changes to the licence agreement also apply to earlier versions of Plotty.
GW2Plotty README
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Plotty is an unofficial tool for tracking player movement in Guild Wars 2
For legal notices and copyright information for all materials that are not
property of Plotty, please see the legal.txt
IMPORTANT for WvWvW / PvP:
At the moment there is little to no privacy for Plotty data. If someone
knows your save tag and you have real time saving of data to the public
server enabled then your position will be reported in real time. Anyone
will therefore know exactly where you are in-game. This will be improved
in future with better privacy restrictions. However right now if you are
WvW/PvPing, you should turn off the Record To Server option and use the
History browser's Send To Server option to do post-gameplay data updates
to the community mapping server.
IMPORTANT NOTE RE: 2017.5
===========================================================================
2017.5 does a rebuild of the history table to add and update columns.
If you have a BIG history table, it may take a while for the update to
complete. Plotty may appear to hang at the Loading Screen because of
this, but it is still processing in the background. Be patient. It
should finish within a few minutes depending on your Plotty.db size.
Index
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[RM1] Licence
[RM2] Requirements
[RM3] Installation
[RM4] Uninstallation
[RM5] Upgrades
[RM6] Starting up
[RM7] Usage Instructions
[RM8] Current Issues
[RM9] Version History
[RM10] Credits
[RM11] More Information
[RM1] Licence
===========================================================================
Plotty is a free tool for Mapping. You are granted an unlimited use
licence to use Plotty for the purpose it was intended for (personal
mapping of Guild Wars 2 data, and communal sharing of that data), on the
condition that you do not rip off the software; decompiling or
reverse-engineering the software, claiming it as your own, charging for
its usage in any way, attempting to commit any acts which would be deemed
illegal in your home territory or internationally.
Basically; Don't do anything morally/legally bad, and you can use Plotty
how you like for personal use. Plotty is intended for players of the Guild
Wars 2 game only. Some extremely limited support is available, (as and
where time allows), but Plotty is offered with no guarantee or warranty it
will ever work as intended.
This licence may from time to time be updated. The newest licence will
always ship with Plotty and applies to all versions new and old. Updated
licences for older versions may be obtained from the Plotty website.
By using Plotty you agree by these conditions, and agree there is
absolutely no financial liability on the author to any damages occurred
through use or misuse of the tool.
Some components in Plotty have their own licence agreements.
If you enjoy the legal stuff, you should check those out too.
.NET Framework v4.0, Visual C++ 2010 SP1, SQLite, LeafletJS, Log4Net and
Newtonsoft.Json
Plotty itself depends on API services exposed by the Guild Wars 2 game by
ArenaNet. Plotty does not claim any ownership over ArenaNet copyrights.
ArenaNet may choose at any time to discontinue the GW2 API or the Mumble
Link API. It's in their right to do so. If they do discontinue the GW2 or
Mumble Link API, part or all of Plotty may become unable to function
properly as a GPS for GW2. There is nothing the author of Plotty could do
in this scenario, and if that should ever happen, you should discontinue
use of Plotty.
[RM2] Requirements
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Operating System: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (currently)
Architecture: x86 (32bit)*
RAM: 16 MB (MegaBytes)
Disk space: 70 MB+**
Software: Microsoft .NET 4.0***
Visual C++ 2010 SP1***
Game: Guild Wars 2
* The application is built for 32bit support but will operate in both
32bit and 64bit architectures.
** Space requirement increases based on how much data you want to store.
You need at least 70MB disk space for Plotty alone.
*** Most supported versions of Windows should already have these
components installed. Please check on-line if you receive any issues
with launching Plotty due to missing components.
Plotty has only been built and tested on Windows. If you attempt to run
Plotty in another OS using Emulation and encounter problems, you're on
your own. No support will be offered.
Future versions of Plotty will be available for other OS's. Be patient!
[RM3] Installation
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Extract the Zip file to a location on your PC.
IMPORTANT:
If you use Windows Explorer to extract the zip file (not a tool like
WinZip, WinRar, 7zip etc), Windows may mark Plotty as a 'downloaded'
program and block access to it.
If you are told that Plotty is an untrusted or downloaded application when
you try to start Plotty; right click the GW2Plotty.exe file, select
'Properties' and press the 'Unblock' button at the bottom of the
Properties window, then press the OK button. You should now be able to
start Plotty without issue.
[RM4] Uninstallation
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Exit Plotty entirely (ensure the system tray icon is gone), and delete the
Plotty directory.
[RM5] Upgrades
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Always keep a backup of your Plotty.db file when attempting an upgrade in
case anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. Once you are happy that
the new Plotty is running as expected you can delete any temporary backup
you have created.
1) Backup Plotty.db found in your Plotty directory.
(perhaps copy Plotty.db to your desktop / personal directory).
2) Extract your new version of Plotty over the old version.
(If prompted to replace the Plotty.db answer NO)
3) Start Plotty. If the new version of Plotty features database changes,
these updates will be applied during Plotty startup. Plotty will tell
you of any problems during any database upgrade.
4) If there are no errors you can delete your backup Plotty.db file.
- If you do experience errors, keep your backup safe and request help
on-line!
[RM6] Starting up
===========================================================================
Run GW2Plotty.exe from the extracted zip directory.
Plotty is a system tray application - so you will find it by your
taskbar clock in Windows.
On first use Plotty will ask you to enter your Username (eg Plotty.1234)
or an API Key from the 'Applications' page on the GuildWars2.com account
page. Plotty only needs the basic 'account' permission, and this key is
used to validate your username, character name and homeworld server.
The Installation will also ask you for what 'Save Tag' to save data under.
The 'Save Tag' is the grouping used on the public mapping server. If you
want to share data with friends, make sure you use exactly the same tag
as your friends / guild mates.
You can change these details at any time from the Settings menu.
Plotty will only listen for world data if told to do so (from the
"Monitor Position" option). Plotty can only get world position information
if Guild Wars 2 is running and you are logged in as a character. No world
position information is available from the character selection screen.
In order to make sure you do not have two identical copies of the
application running, when Plotty starts a lock file called 'running.tmp'
is created. This blocks additional copies of the same instance starting to
prevent database conflicts. You can run two copies of Plotty from two
different directories (Extract Plotty to two different folders and run
each one). However; this is NOT what Plotty was designed for. Running two
instances may cause issues. Do so at your own risk!
[RM7] Usage
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"Monitor Position" makes Plotty listen for world position from the
Guild Wars 2 game. Data will be captured to Plotty's internal database.
"Record to Server" sends your position data in real-time to the mapping
server. Instead of sending in real-time you can send in bulk from the
History window later.
"History" opens the history window to let you browse your locally-stored
Plotty data. This data will live on your PC for up to 3 days (can be
configured from the Settings window). After 3 days, the data is deleted.
From the History window you can "Export" the tracking data to a local map,
send to the mapping server or export as a CSV file.
"Settings" lets you change application settings.
"Check for Update" checks to see if a new version of Plotty is out.
"Exit" quits Plotty.
"Save Tag" (under Server Settings) - The Save Tag is the grouping tag for
data on the server. Either leave it as your username (default value) or
change it to your guild name or some other shared name with your team.
This name is not unique - if two separate groups share the same tag data
will become mixed up.
Group examples:
- Veterans Of Lions Arch
- rddt Monday Raid
- FSP Nightly
- Aurora Glade TEA
Filtering of users in the tag data will come in a later version of Plotty.
[RM8] Current Known Issues
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- For Map generation you need at least 2 points of data (as Plotty
generates line coordinates not points). If you really want to plot just
a single point of data you will need to wait for a future update :)
[RM9] Version History
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2017.5
===========================================================================
NOTE: 2017.5 does a rebuild of the history table to add and update
columns. If you have a big history table, it may take a while for the
update to complete. Plotty may appear to hang at the Loading Screen
because of this, but it is processing in the background.
- Fixed a bug with the Mists. in the past 1-2 months, Mists maps are now
returning WorldID's that are bigger than int32 data types. It was
causing Plotty to silently error whilst pulling the data from the
MumbleLinkAPI and default to the last valid map called. So you'd be in
the Mists but Plotty would record you as being in Tyria.
Also added better error handling around the MumbleLinkAPI code so that
it won't cause such an error in future.
- Added logic to try and handle unclean-shutdowns of the application
caused by users shutting down/logging off without closing Plotty.
- Replaced the lock file mechanism for a more modern mutex lock.
This means no more messing around with lock files! :)
- Fixed a bug with the MumbleLinkAPI Memory map remaining in memory after
GuildWars2 closes. This was causing Plotty to continue recording the
player position until Plotty was closed, creating useless noise in the
database.
- Enabled capture of the Server IP field. Plotty had been pulling this
for a while but not recording it to the DB.
- Added the new Server IP field as a GET data parameter sent to mapping
servers.
- Replaced the .NET WebBrowser control with Mozilla Gecko v33.0.9.0
This makes the mapping feature work a lot better in the application,
but increases Application size by almost 70MB. :(
- Updated LeafletJS and the Web page generation logic to make the web
pages neater.
- Added Save Tag display to the Plotty System Tray menu. This makes it
easier to distinguish between multiple open instances of Plotty.
- Fixed a bug where if you open the AboutBox twice, Plotty crashed.
2017.4
===========================================================================
- Added a new feature to allow a player to flag a location in the world
as a favourite location. This favourites list can be used as a filter
in Plotty's History Browser.
- Added an extra Export menu under 'Data' in the History Browser.
- Added JSON export data type (you can customise the JSON format using
the templates in the Plotty directory).
2017.3
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- Centralised GW2 API calls to a single class, making it easier to
work with the API.
- Added a data Import option to the History browser.
- Improved the Automatic Database Update process, as it was a bit buggy.
2017.2
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- Added some extra information to the readme.txt.
- Fixed a bug in the Settings window that erased your player name for
your API key when saving.
- Enabled the settings.ini file for bootstrapping the database. This
allows other map server owners to redistribute Plotty with their own
server settings pre-defined. Ability to customise server queries will
follow in a later update.
2017.1
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- Added 'Loading...' to the splash window. It was confusing people what
the window was for. :)
- Updated the application to default to the new GW2Maps.com server.
2016.5
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- Revamped the Enter Username window and the tutorial window into a
single welcome window to simplify initial startup.
- Fixed a bug in the collection of account username in the local db.
2016.4
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- Added a more detailed 'Welcome to Plotty' informational window for
first time use to explain basic features.
- Added an opt-in anonymous statistics feature (from a developer's
perspective this is really helpful to get an idea of what kinds of
computer Plotty runs on).
- Added player account name capture to the database (for those users who
have more than one account and use Plotty).
- Fixed a bug with CSV file generation. Put in some ground work for
additional export types (not yet complete).
2016.3
===========================================================================
- Fixed a bug with real-time server mapping (actually a bug with the
server, but a client fix works just as well).
- Added database upgrade support. Any future database changes will be
implemented automatically on first-time start up after a client update.
- Fixed a bug with the Mumble interface when extracting Character and
Commander states from memory. It seems that the dedicated chunk of
memory for json information isn't flushed when rewritten by GW2/Mumble,
so the memory chunk can contain old data. If the new data is smaller
than the older data you can end up with invalid json.
- Threaded the Send To Server and Map Generation processes to improve
performance.
- Added a warning window when trying to run two copies of Plotty from the
same directory.
2016.2
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- Improved the Welcome message for first time use.
- Added a notify pop-up to let users know where Plotty is hiding (can be
toggled in Settings).
- Improved the History window search controls.
- Added a context menu to the History search grid.
- Added map layer support to Web Browser mode maps (the basic WebBrowser
control in .NET uses IE7 as the rendering engine which doesn't handle
stuff so well and thus doesn't support the layer control).
- Added CDN tile support to the Web Browser mode maps (results in faster
map tile loading).
2016.1
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- First launch of Plotty!
[RM10] Credits
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Some material in Plotty comes from third parties. Here's what you need to
know:
Map Tiles, Guild Wars 2 / ArenaNet
JSON Data http://www.guildwars2.com
Fugue Icons Yusuke Kamiyamane
http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com
Led Icons Led24
http://led24.de
Silk Icons Mark James
http://www.famfamfam.com
[RM11] More Information
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You can find more information on-line from:
Web: http://www.gw2maps.com
Twitter: @TheProperDave
Want to show your appreciation for Plotty?
Buy me a coffee via PayPal by sending �3/$3/3kr to [email protected]