Program: Asheron's Call Traceroute
Latest Version: 2.0.1.0
Date: 1/12/2007
Copyright: (c) 1999-2007 by Todd D. Perlmutter, all rights reserved

2.0.1.0 (1/12/2007)

- Updated map, thanks to new ACDATExplorer.

2.0.0.0 (11/12/2006)

- Completely new version of the program. Many new features.

1.6

- Fixed some entries in the locations.csv file. Deleted some bad entries (some lifestones that didn't exist, or bad portals). Added many new locations as they were emailed to me and as I found them on the web sites. This includes the Frore Quest dungeons, and the new Shadows of the Past dungeons (at least as many as I know of as of this time. I also added in the Meeting Halls (more info below). The total net gain of locations is 69 for a total of 544.

- Changed "Quick" under "Find Route Options" to "Shortest Route Only".

- Added a "List Meeting Halls" button, that functions identically to those buttons which list towns, portals, lifestones and outposts. However, this one lists the new Meeting Halls. They are listed in the form of " Meeting Hall" (e.g., Cragstone Meeting Hall).

- Tight integration with ACMapper (found at http://www.dualbrain.com/). There is a toolbar button that looks like a very fancy compass. This button is a toggle (default is not set, which means integration is off). When depressed, and if a route is shown in the "Results" area of ACRoute, the route will automagically be displayed in ACMapper. This program really rocks btw, so give it a looksie. I also like this kind of integration as it helps to keep the disk and memory (*hint* *hint* ACFastRoute users) footprints of ACRoute quite small in comparison to other programs of similar ilk.

- Added in the ability to show portal exits in the results window when using the "Nearby" and "Within" functions. These take the form of "Exit for
" (e.g., Exit for Holtburg Portal (40.8N, 34.0E) to Rithwic (9.9N, 59.1E)). There is a toggle in the "Nearby/Within" options which controls whether or not the exits are shown (default is not-checked which means the exits are not shown).

- The ability to select your "Tied Lifestone" and "Tied Portal". Then when the "Find Route" functions is used, and the "Use Tied Lifestone" and/or "Use Tied Portal" are selected in the "Find Route Options", pseudo-Portal(s) are created from the selected "Source" Location/Coordinates to the "Tied Lifestone" and/or "Tied Portal". These pseudo-Portal(s) are then used when determining the route(s) from source to destination. If you need to use a recall spell for a route the line in the route will take the form of " to " where is either "Lifestone Recall" or "Portal Recall" (e.g., "Lifestone Recall to Eastham Lifestone (17.6N, 63.3E)").

- Added in Compass Headings. For each leg in a route determined using "Find Routes" or a listing from "Nearby" or "Within", ACRoute will show you the compass heading (i.e. N, S, E, W, NW, NE, SE, SW, NNW, etc.) you need to face your character in order to get to that location. You also get the instant heading from the source in "Destination" area next to "Distance from Source:". This was the primary intent of this update, although the other things kind of crept in as time went on.

- Updated the "Results" window so that you no longer have to select a leg in the Route or a listing item to see its "Restrictions" and "Description", these values are shown for each line in the results window.

- Updated "Print" and "Copy to Clipboard" output to reflect the Headings in the output window.

- Added in icons to represent the different location types. These icons appear in the pulldown lists for "Source", "Destination", "Tied Lifestone", and "Tied Portal". They also appear in the "Results" window.

- Added in the ability to racially differentiate Towns, Outposts, and Meeting Halls. Towns and Outposts will now include the name of the race in their display name (e.g., "Yaraq Gharu'ndim Town"). All three are also denoted by the standard racial icons for towns. The colors (all with a yellow outline) are black, blue, and red respectively.

- Lifestone labelling has been overhauled to meet with some requests from users. Lifestones will only be associated with a town if they are within a certain distance of that town (8 clicks worked nicely for this value). As before if a lifestone is within this distance, it will be labelled in the form of " Lifestone" (e.g., "Yaraq Lifestone") -- all other lifestones will simply be labelled "Lifestone". In all cases the closest town will still be shown in the "Town:" box for Source or Destination. In addition, *all* lifestones now know their closest non-lifestone location. This is shown by prefixing each lifestone description with a sentence as follows "Closest to (, )." (e.g., "Closest to Underground City (3.0, SW)." -- in this case this means to get from the lifestone to the Underground City you need to run 3.0 clicks SouthWest).

- Settings for the following are now stored persistently in the Windows Registry so the settings you choose will remain in effect each time you run the program:

- All items in the "Find Route Options" area.

- All items in the "Nearby/Within Options" area.

- The "Link to ACMapper" button's toggle state.

- "Tied Lifestone"

- "Tied Portal"

1.5

- Added about 10 new locations that were provided by you the users. Thanks!!!

- Changed the output printer font to Courier, to match the needs of ACMonster. Besides its a little easier to read.

- Changed over to new monarcy information (The Verdantine) both on the web page and in the program.

1.4

- Added a minimize button. It's the little things that count (Planned Update 5).

- For those who want speed, I added in a Shortest Path finder in addition to the all paths less than cutoff finder that the program already had. The shortest path finder is now the default since from what I can tell from feedback this is the desired mode of operation, speed over choice. You can switch between the two modes using the "Quick" checkbox under the "Find Route Options". When checked (the default) the shortest only search will be performed. When unchecked the old style search will be performed, but if no paths smaller than the cutoff are found then the shortest search will kick in and provide a path. This is for everyone who complained about looking for paths from Qalaba'r to the Mattekar Cave. I think this just puts the icing on the cake (Planned Update 4).

- Fixed what was probably the most annoying mistake in the Locations.csv file. The Nanto to Yanshi portal had it's destination as North instead of South.

- Added a couple more locations.

1.3

- Placed the "Find Route" function onto a separate program thread (Planned Update 2). This enabled me to be able to:

- Add a progress dialog to the search which shows (as a progress bar) the number of potential paths which have been eliminated thus far in the search. Showing the actual value for this wouldn't be useful since it is too large, and besides visual feedback is much more pleasing.

- Show a current count of how many paths from the source to destination have been found meeting the cutoff distance.

- Provide a button to stop the search.

Overall this is the primary reason for this release. Too many users were complaining about the program "hanging" when they ran it for certain searches. In reality the program was not hanging, but rather taking an extremely long time as explained can happen in the technical information below. Now the user can see how their search is progressing, and stop it if they feel it is taking to long, or if they feel they have already found enough routes. Note: stopping a search does not guarantee that the shortest path has been found (that is shorter than the cutoff distance), only a complete search guarantees that. However, I plan on changing this somewhat for v1.4 (Planned Update 4).

- I also added in a little feature that was requested by a few users who are out there. Basically, in the Destination area there is now a field called "Distance from Source" which immediately calculates the distance from the source to the destinations whether they are locations or coordinates. See the new screenshot.

- Fixed some minor location problems. I had transposed the digits in the coordinates for Sawato, and they moved the Mayoi to South Direlands portal from just outside town to on the top of some mountain nearby -- a nice little practically vertical run up a mountain, I might add. Corrected the Dryreach Lifestone information. And probably a few others that I'm forgetting at this time (I must have added one since the number of locations went up, not down).

- I spent a little time with a "bug" that people had reported to me which ran along the lines of "I set the source to Qalaba'r and the destination to the Mattekar Cave, and it never returns a path shorter than the original distance" or "..., increased the cutoff distance to 100 -- it hangs and never comes back." Well see the first bullet in this section for the latter, but for the former, well try a cutoff of 45. I told you increasing the cutoff makes a huge difference both in time and ability, however I will make a change for v1.4 that should alleviate this somewhat (Planned Update 4).

1.2

- Added in checkboxes so a user may limit the types of locations that are shown when using the Nearby and Within functions (Planned Update 3).

- Rearranged the GUI to organize things a little better with group boxes, and to make space for the new options (see above). Now the GUI is more wide than tall (as opposed to prior versions which were more tall than wide). See the new screenshot.

- Removed a bad Arwic Lifestone (coords probably left over from beta), added the second Arwic to Tou-Tou portal (why are there two???). Ditched the Eastham to Arwic portal since it was in the data twice as the Northeastern Double Portals to Arwic. Also fixed the Arwic to Mountain Shortcut and Mountain Shortcut to Arwic coordinates and labels. Can you tell I've been surveying Arwic?

- Updated About Box to reflect new information sources.

1.1

- Fixed the cyclical problem (Planned Update 1). This seems to make Find Route somewhat faster.

- Added a number of new locations to the locations file (read as: many).

- Removed some bad portals. Added some new ones.