The Ravenblack Grimoire

Sightings.biz came about for a number of reasons. Mainly, I needed a means for finding my way around Ravenblack's vampire game, as I rarely use Windows and won't use DA:IM. But it was also very rewarding to use the skills gained in a decade and a half as a coporate whore of the highest calibre for something fun for a change.

I would love for it to be the tool of choice for connoisseurs of the game, but if no one uses it but me, it was worth it because it was fun to make.

Happy hunting,
-- Madeye

Available to Registered Users who have Sightings enabled by their Administrator.

Within the Ravenblack game, there are two kinds of buildings that are always moving: shops and guilds. The Report a Sighting menu option allows you to tell Sightings.biz where these are when you find one.

It doens't matter whether you have found the location by chatting to the bartender of a local pub, wandering past in person or by cribbing from the Freedom Trade Alliance: this menu option allows you to report a sighting. As soon as the sighting is made, the building will appear on maps, find nearest and be available for getting directions.

Available to Everyone

The Show Recent menu option lists all of the current sightings of shops and guilds. As shops and guilds move around often, this page is handy for checking if Sightings.biz knows the current whereabouts of somewhere you may be trying to get to.

This page displays the name of the person who made the sighting and the time at which the sighting was made. This hopefully ensures that people check carefully before making a sighting as their name will be up there in lights.

Sightings.biz also makes an estimate of the time at which the shop or guild will move next. If you have set your settings right, these times will be displayed in your local timezone.

The Sightings Places menu lives in the left-hand menu and provides access to the areas of the site that allow the sightings of movable buildings (guilds and shops) to be viewed and reported.

The Andron's Map left-hand menu item links to the final version of Andronicus' map of the whole Ravenblack game. Every bank and pub is on it. Although it does not show where guilds and shops are located (they move around), it has to be considered a timeless classic.

The Show Map feature of Sightings.biz is similar to the Find Nearest feature except instead of telling you what is nearest it draws a map. After entering your current location (just like Find Nearest, see here for more information), press the Show Map button and the map is displayed. The map drawn shows every building within a 15* square radius of your current position.

* if it looks like there are less than 15 squares in any direction it is probably because you are near to the edge of the map

Available to Registered Users who are logged in

The Directions feature of Sightings.biz gives you detailed directions from your current location to any other place within the game. This can be really useful for finding your way to guilds or to pubs on a Celerity quest.

To get Directions, click on the link of the same name on the left-hand menu bar. The first thing you will be asked is what type of place you are trying to get directions to. This can either be a well known place such as a pub, a transient place such as a shop/guild, or some random location (any old square on the map).

The major outstanding bug in Sightings.biz is a database connection pooling problem that causes the following message to be displayed:

javax.servlet.ServletException: Communication link failure: java.io.IOException, underlying cause: Unexpected end of input stream

** BEGIN NESTED EXCEPTION **

java.io.IOException
MESSAGE: Unexpected end of input stream

STACKTRACE:

java.io.IOException: Unexpected end of input stream
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:1405)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:1775)
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:1020)
 

Simple example of coordinates

More advanced example of coordinates

The Ravenblack vampire game is played on a large grid. For a basic understanding of how this grid works, please read this description by the late Andronicus.

In order for Sightings.biz to know where you are so it can draw maps for you, we need a way to explain exactly which square you are in. The basics of this are very similar to describing where you are in pretty much any American city: you give the name of the East/West street you are on together with the name of the North/South street.

So, in the example below, Madeye would be on Hessite & 97th.

Available to Registered Users who are logged in.

The Find Nearest function is probably one of the handiest bits of Sightings.biz. It allows you to find the nearest pub, guild etc. to your current location. This can be really useful, if, say, you've just robbed 2000 coins off some poor pire and you need to find the nearest bank quick.

The first thing to do is work out your current location (read this description if you are unsure). This information should then be entered into the three drop down boxes at the top of the page that appears when you click the Find Nearest link.

Available to Everyone

The Lists option can be used to show, well, lists of all the places in the game. If you are a registered user, it can also be used to find the nearest bank, pub etc. to a particular place and to show maps of the local area.

To use Lists, click on the menu link and select the kind of place (Pub, Owned Building etc) you wish to list. Clicking the Go button will produce an alphabetically sorted list of all the locations of that particular type that Sightings.biz knows about and it's last known position on the map.

In addition, registered users will be presented with additional links for Find Nearest and Show Map. Clicking these links give the same result as using the Find Nearest or Show Map function centred on the location of the shop, bank, guild etc.

The Ravenblack Places menu lives in the left-hand menu and provides access to the areas of the site that provide navigation aids to players.

Available to Administrators

This menu option allows administrators to create new users. The name of the user must be specified, together with a password. The password must be typed identically in each of the password entry boxes.

The affiliation of the new user will be the same as that of the administrator who created him or her.

The administrator may also choose whether the new user is allowed to report sightings of shops and guilds etc. It is recommended that only trustworthy people be allowed to report sightings

The system also makes a note of which administrator

Available to Registered Users who are logged in.

The Change Settings option allows users of Sightings.biz to alter their personal preferences. Currently, there are two user-configurable options, but more may be added in due course.

• Timezone: This option allows you to set Sightings.biz to your timezone. This will cause all times on the site to appear in your local timezone, making it much easier to know when the shops and guilds are next due to move.
• Results for Find Nearest: The Find Nearest function allows you to find the nearest banks, pubs etc. to any location in the game. This option allows you to specify what kind of results you wish to see. The Vanilla option shows one of each, while the kinky alternative, Refractomatic*, shows loads of banks. The Combat 1 setting shows the nearest targets to the specified location in the military version of Sightings.

Available to Registered Users who are logged in.

This menu option allows you to change your password. Selecting it gives you three password entry boxes on the screen. You must type your old password in the first one. Your new password must then be entered identically into the following two boxes. Once you are happy the information has been correctly entered, press the Change Password button to change the password.

If the old password is wrong, or the two new passwords don't match, the site will refuse to change your password and will give you a message explaining what has been

Available to Registered Users who are logged in.

This link allows you to log out of Sightings.biz. Additionally, there is a duplicate link at the bottom of the left-hand menu for your convenience.

If you are inactive on the site for more than 5 minutes, the system will automatically log you out.

The User Menu lives on the right hand side of the page and contains all links for setting options to related to users including creating new users, changing preference settings, changing your password and logging out.

When you first arrive at the site, the right hand section of the page is occupied with username and password entry boxes. In order to log into Sightings.biz, please enter your supplied user name and password into the entry boxes and press the Go button.

The User Menu should now appear, in addition to new optio

This section explains in detail how to use the range of navigation features that Sightings.biz provides. It covers all the core navigation features of the site as well as discussing administrative tasks such as creating new users.

Sightings.biz is 100% Pure Java. It is built with J2EE and the best in open source technology from Apache. The database layer was generated in no time at all using Torque, the front-end uses the highly acclaimed Struts and the RSS feed is generated using Velocity.

The following people contributed to the making of Sightings.biz:

While Sightings.biz is open to all, there is no automatic registration process. This is mainly because the management like to know all members personally, but also because potential users are a small, select group, so there is no need.

If you do want to sign up you can:

• register with Ravenblack Grimoire and post a comment on this very page

OR

• drop an email to matt at madeye dot com

Either way, please state your desired username and clan affiliation, if any. If your reputation preceeds you, the chances are you will get an administrator's account giving you the ability to create other users.

Sightings.biz is the sister site to Ravenblack Grimoire. It is a mapping and navigation site for the Ravenblack vampire game allowing users to find their way around.

While there are other programs around, such as Dark Alleyways Interactive Map (DA:IM), we feel that Sightings.biz fills a niche: where DA:IM can be thought of as a big Cadillac automatic wallowing around on cruise control, Sightings.biz is more of a tight stick-shift Ferrari. You have to work that little bit harder to get around, but it is so much more rewarding.