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MOVED TO STANDLONE REPO. THIS FORK WILL BE USED IN THE FUTURE TO SHIP COMPLETE DATABASE UPDATES TO WINDOWER, IF ACCEPTED.

NEW REPO IS AT (to be added).

Welcome to what will hopefully be a long term home for the InfoBar Database Monster Improvement Program for Final Fantasy XI.

The purpose behind this program is to provide for long term support for the database that is used as part of InfoBar.

History

InfoBar was originally programmed and created as a plugin many years ago, of which it had become abandoned some time around 2012 or so. The idea behind InfoBar was to give the user information of what a target monster in the game has, things such as their expected level range, resistances, immunities, drops, and more. This led to the plugin still being used for many years, despite that neither the plugin nor the database was being maintained. The source code, to the best of my knowledge, had never been released by the original author.

After some time had passed, KenshiDRK created a LUA-based version of the same InfoBar plugin, allowing for InfoBar to live on in a new format. However, the database was still lacking some entries. Kenshi had done an amazing job of adding in some of the monsters and content that had been implemented since the last major revision of the database. Despite it all, there are still a variety of monsters that have either been added due to new content over the years, adjustments made to existing monsters and much more that have gone unnoticed.

Today and onward

It brings us to today. I started the initiative, even with my very limited time in FFXI (even after attempting to give XI a go almost 20 years ago now!), because I do appreciate the work of having data available to one self. While throwing yourself head first into a situation can help with the learning experience, sometimes having a quick snippet of information made available to you can the difference in making an informed decision before you go head-first into the jaws of death.

I do not know what KenshiDRK's plans are regarding ongoing development or maintenance of the Windower 4 variety of InfoBar as a LUA addon. I also do not know if there is any intention to bring InfoBar over to Windower 5. But what I do know is that there are others like myself that still use InfoBar today and want to make a change in a good direction.

Current

We need to figure out what fields in the database we want to keep. Most of it is perfectly fine and doesn't need to change much. But a few extra fields that aren't utilized probably need to go. Issue #2 is gonna cover that.

We need to figure out if we want JSON or .SQL for assisting with visible tracking, since binaries can't exactly be compared side to side. Issue #4 for that.

Once we've got the groundwork setup, we can move forward with the daunting task of updating/adding monster info. Time consuming, but a work that will be noticed by users and appreciated for, none the less.

Due to this being a fork of the Windower LUA script repo, the location of the database is under addons/Infobar. I have to do some homework on whether or not everything else in the fork is necessary, though I do believe that it is the case.