2008-12-11, 05:43 AM
Spaz Wrote:I have a couple ideas for useful programs, but I don't have the time to implement them. So if there are any programmers looking for something for useful to make, here are a few things I'd like to see:
1. An APQ blacklist checker. We have an APQ blacklist and go through the trouble of adding people to it, but how many APQ leaders actually check it? This program would run in the background, listening on some key or key combination. The APQ leader would copy a potential party member's name to the clipboard using the option when you right-click someone and press the key or combination that triggers the program. When it gets triggered, it would get the text currently on the Windows clipboard, scan a blacklist file for that name, and play a different sound depending on if the name was found in the blacklist, not found in the blacklist, or some error occurred (like the blacklist file couldn't be opened). This way, the blacklist could be checked without windowed mode or alt-tabbing and without having a browser open. People who lead APQ's would have to regularly update their blacklist file.
2. A screenshot cropper. My buddy list and guild often say rather amusing things that I screenshot and post to the guild forum. The only important part of the screenshot is the chat. Posting the whole screenshot takes up more more space, both in terms of bytes and screen real estate, but it's time-consuming considering how many screenshots I'd have to do that for. What would be nice is a program that integrates with Windows Explorer, so you can select a bunch of screenshot files, right-click, and choose an option that will crop the image so it has only the chat. The original image would be kept in case you still want it.
3. A general-purpose Maple Story calculator with all known formulas and easy access to the most frequently used ones (eg accuracy needed to hit a monster). And open-source please, so it can be updated after the original author no longer cares about it.
APQ blacklist is rather useless due to a lot of reasons. The most obvious is that not a lot of people would let a program run in background, that you need a server for this, that you need a way to add APQ-people in the blacklist.
Screenshot cropper is useless. We have other tools for that.
Number 3 is found many places. I have however yet to see an open source-version, but that shouldn't be too hard to make (The engine, not the GUI-pomegranate)
tl;dr Number 3 is the only thing worth making.