MobMap development blog

Okay, so I'm sorry for throwing out so many updates right now, but I just had a flash of inspiration concerning the problematic situation described in the last posting.

The problem: The updater cannot update anything when started without admin rights in that particular situation. It also cannot change its access level after it has been started (requesting admin rights is only possible when a new process is being created, not while it is running).

The solution: Why not start another instance of the updater and force Windows to request admin privileges for this new instance? The new instance will then have admin rights, and the old one is immediately terminated. If you don't know what's actually happening, this looks like the updater requesting admin rights during startup - and it only requests those if the problematic situation requires them!

The newest version 1.84 does exactly that. Thus it will look like the old 1.81 on any machine where admin rights are required to update addons, but it won't request them on any machine where they are not required. If this works out without any bugs now, it's the perfect solution!

That UAC stuff on Vista is definitely inconvenient for us developers...

But I think the MobMapUpdater is now fully ready to be run without administrative rights on Vista with activated UAC functionalities. The self-update process will now correctly request administrative rights if there is a self-update to perform.

If you were unfortunate enough to get the 1.82 version with the self-update bug during the few minutes that it was online, the self-update to 1.83 might not work if UAC is enabled. In this case, you can manually start "selfupdate.exe" to get the new version.


Please note that - as an inconvenient, but inevitable side-effect - the MobMapUpdater might sort of "break" in some installations now. If...

- The WoW directory is located within the "Program Files" folder...
- Vista with UAC enabled is used...
- ...and the MobMapUpdater is being run without administrative rights (which is the default now)

then the MobMapUpdater won't be able to update anything - neither your MobMap installation nor your database, as both of them reside in the WoW directory which is protected by UAC in this case. The updater is designed to detect such a situation, flash a warning on-screen that explains what the problem is and then terminate itself, since it can't do anything useful anyway. In that case you have two options:

- You could move your WoW installation out of the "Program Files" folder. If it is moved anywhere else, UAC won't stop the MobMapUpdater from updating MobMap or its database. Only the "Program Files" folder (and the "Windows" folder, but no one in their right mind would put WoW into that one) is protected.
- Or you could manually enable "run as administrator" in the parameters of the MobMapUpdater.exe executable. That will force Windows to always start the updater with full administrative rights (of course that will bring back the UAC confirmation request at every program startup), which also enables the tool to actually update MobMap.

With the Lich King approaching quickly, I have just released another MobMap version. This version fixes some of the bugs I could reproduce here (I still know about a few reports of MobMap creating enormous lag on some machines, but I haven't been able to reproduce this problem, and without that it's virtually impossible to 'fix' anything - but luckily this seems to affect very few people only) and it introduces some final improvements to the data gathering part of MobMap before WotLK goes live.

This is especially important since as soon as WotLK is released, there's a whole bunch of new data to integrate into the database. And to answer a fairly popular question once and for all: no, I don't collect any quest or mob position data from the WotLK beta (which has just ended anyway, AFAIK). This has two reasons: first of all, beta data is just what the name says: it's "beta", that is: unfinished and in a state of constant change. Anyone who has seriously worked with large amounts of automatically-gathered data knows that it is fairly easy to add new data, but extremely hard to sort out data that was valid at some time, but isn't valid anymore, without accidentially sorting out data which may be old, but still valid. This fact suggests to treat beta data with a lot of extra care, which brings me to the second reason: totally mixing beta and live data is a baaad idea! And once you have to separate them in a clean way, implementing beta data gathering gets quite complicated - which results in way too much work for that one day that may be gained if the data from the beta was already in MobMap. My experiences from the past suggest that it'll take maybe one day or so (if everything works out as planned) until the starting areas should be covered rather well, and the more higher-level areas will be covered as well when the big masses of players reach them. So after evaluating all the pros and cons I figured that the time required to implement a clean beta/live parallel data gathering would probably be better spent in getting additional mirrors up and running for the database downloads - and of course in getting out MobMap v3.03 before WotLK hits!

Oh, and before I forget it: There's now TomTom support in MobMap! That is, if you click one of the dots on the map, you can create a TomTom waypoint at that position, just like you can if you have Cartographer installed. And speaking of the map: I have generally redesigned the MobMap UI elements on the world map slightly, so they now take up less space which should improve their ability to coexist with other world map UI additions from addons like TomTom or Mapster.

And then there's been an update to the MobMapUpdater as well. The update doesn't add any new features, but it finally allows you to run the tool without having to give it administrative privileges in Vista with UAC enabled :o) Administrative privileges are now only required if the MobMapUpdater needs to update itself - in this case, a UAC confirmation window will show up and request elevated privileges for "selfupdate.exe", which is the program that performs the update process.

Last but not least I have taken some time to clean up the MobMap database from lots of crappy private server data that has somehow slipped through my filters.

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changelog MobMap v3.03:
- fixed: the quest event position display now actually displays positions again
- fixed: the newbie tooltip integration does now work as expected (tooltips only show if newbie tips are enabled; otherwise they don't show at all)
- fixed: displaying multiple quest givers at once on a map does now work correctly
- changed: the MobMap button and other stuff on the world map has been resized and slightly redesigned to better coexist with elements from other addons (i.e. Mapster, TomTom)
- added: TomTom support! You can now click on a dot on the world map to create a TomTom waypoint if you have TomTom installed (just like with Cartographer)
- changed: some of the data gathering routines have been improved in anticipation of WotLK