I've been searching for information on a public API, but it looks like it hasn't been posted yet. I'm a developer and one thing I love is to make community sites around the games I love. I'm trying to keep my expectations down to earth, but it's obvious that Pantheon will be the best game ever created, and I'm already looking forward to building applications around Pantheon data, whenever that becomes available. However, I haven't been able to find any information on a public API.
I'm assuming that nothing will be available at launch, but I'm hoping to hear some information if anything like this is being planned for the future. Are there any plans to expose data such as character data, world data, item data, etc? Thanks.
I would wager the most VR would be willing to let through an API would server status, server population, and things in that realm. The devs seem to be pretty set on keeping the world of Terminus secret and mystereous. As such, I do not see them spending time writing an API to access character info, items, POI, quests, factions, mobs, drops, etc.. They will want you to get in the game, travel to the location to kill the mob and hope that item drops so you can see what it is and possibly keep it.. or possibly throw it off the balcony of ToRM.
We have discussed this internally a while ago and the decision is at this stage not to release a public API, for a few reasons, but we plan to review this decision further down the track when it is appropriate. We have to wait and see what information we allow to go through the client first, so this would probably be something we discuss again during testing.
I completely agree with kilsin on why we should not have anything to do with external information or even connecting to the servers.
1. been there with showeq bad bad tool for so early stages in games.
2. exploiting information where drops are, and exposing hidden things, to dum down the game.
3. We need to keep funding in with this small team. We do not need any more emulated stuff.
I shouldnt have mentioned 1, but most of the EQ players out there know this and avoided it with all accounts. The other games has just as many of these tools available and still do. Sadly we need a fair game play.
Plus we are adults here and most already are aware of this.
Kargen said:I would wager the most VR would be willing to let through an API would server status, server population, and things in that realm. The devs seem to be pretty set on keeping the world of Terminus secret and mystereous. As such, I do not see them spending time writing an API to access character info, items, POI, quests, factions, mobs, drops, etc.. They will want you to get in the game, travel to the location to kill the mob and hope that item drops so you can see what it is and possibly keep it.. or possibly throw it off the balcony of ToRM.
Server population should be set to HIGH, MED, LOW for reasons of players getting the wrong ideas and posting that the game is dead etc.. when servers start dropping populations. Steam games, are a problem, when players start linking 30 day parses of how many active players. It will hurt any game and its development status.
API = Application Programming Interface
Essentially, a web service providing the ability to pull specific data for use in applications. It doesn't really have to be limited to web services but that's the bulk of the usage. You could pull data from the client instead of the server, but that's kind of moot anyway because in an MMO all of the important data (such as HP values, etc.) originates from the server anyway.
For instance, they could publish the current population number for each server (not that they would or should), and you can reference that data on a fansite to display it on a sidebar. They could publish the total number of NPCs your character has killed for use in a leaderboard webpage.
The function of an API is pretty much limitless, it just depends on what information the developers want to give you. It has absolutely nothing to do with ShowEQ though, because EQ didn't "volunteer" that information to their players, it was instead just laziness/incompetence/naivette, etc. that allowed players to write programs to intercept data sent to the client from the server that wasn't intended to be seen.
The difference between packet sniffing and an API is that information obtained from packet sniffing is generally not intended to be accessible to players, whereas an API is information voluntarily given for information collection purposes by the playerbase.
In the case of WoW, their addon API allows access to an overwhelming amount of information that lets you easily check if various conditions are met during a fight to instruct you to do things. In a way, it kind of plays the game for you.
A more innocent version of this could be dev-supported parsing, where the information in the chat log can be read from memory instead of from a text file.
It's completely harmless but it sounds scary to those who aren't familiar with it because they logically deduce that if you have access to one portion of information, you must be able to easily get access to other information. In reality, an API only provides specific data provided by the devs. It isn't like unlocking the door to the data house.
Liav said:APIs don't really have anything to do with ShowEQ but yeah, accurate population statistics are bad because silly people will infer incorrect things from them.
NO but the idea of allowing info to be generated to the client can be bad enough right?
We both agree on that i am sure.
Crazzie said:Liav said:APIs don't really have anything to do with ShowEQ but yeah, accurate population statistics are bad because silly people will infer incorrect things from them.
NO but the idea of allowing info to be generated to the client can be bad enough right?
We both agree on that i am sure.
I don't agree, and I'm not just being contrarian, I just legitimately disagree.
Pantheon will already have an internal API available for use by the developers for UI creation purposes. Your UI needs to reference something that the server sends to the client to update the various values displayed to the player in the UI.
If you have a red bar on your screen that represents your current HP, there is an underlying value that is being referenced by the UI from the game memory and converting that value into a graphical bar form. The inclusion or exclusion of an API is largely semantic, but it really comes down to the extent we can manipulate information.
If you take a Current HP / Max HP value and apply basic math to convert it to a percentage which can then be displayed over your red HP bar for accuracy purposes, that's pretty basic. We may not even have to do that if "Current HP %" is an included variable we can reference.
A web API allowing you to reference your character's career PvP kills and deaths for use in a leaderboard on a fansite is something else entirely.
I'm not objected to either, personally.
I would appreciate to have an API to get some information out of the game. You can always argue about what information this should be, but at least some information should be absolutely no danger to be exploited in any way.
An API gives the people that like programming and web development the opportunity to build a cool site and gives them something to do outside of the game. For a page like http://pantheon101.com/ an API for sure would be a big help, if some data could be obtained from it and not all need to be entered by hand (On the other hand people have again something to do entering it :)).
I'm sure the creativity and the ability of some people would be astonishing.
But I understand why VR is not doing it, at least not in the first run. The API needs to be developed and tested and would use resources that can be used in a better way for our gaming experience.
I've got a cool idea for Pantheon Crafters that having an API would certainly help but I can live without it and do it manually instead. But as a programmer I always appreciate having an API available so while I accept that it is way too early to be talking about this feature I'd love it if it was considered in the longer term. People make really cool services for games if there is an API available.