Chat Log Viewing Tool

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backlands
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Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by backlands » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:45 pm

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a little tool to make my own life a little easier when reading some past chat logs and I thought I would share it with the server since I have found it very useful. The tool takes the straight output from NWN's and then parses and displays it trying to replicate the look of the game chat log. The links are below and I am open to ideas from the community for what might be useful, since this is all parsing straight from the NWN's log there are limits to what is achievable!

Also, just want to note that I am not in any way affiliated to the server, this is just something I wanted to work on and decided to share with everyone else that plays on Arelith! The viewer is not finished but it is at a point where it works well enough to share so without further delay, here are the links!

Link: NWN Chat Viewer
Source: GitHub

The tool works best with your settings for logging set to either of the following:

Image

Image

Current features:
  • Full client side parsing (no files sending to server)
  • Language extraction (shown with the dialog)
  • Message type based colouring
  • Splitting of "Chat Log" and "Gameplay Log"
  • Encoding toggle (between NWN vs. Windows)
  • Open source on GitHub
  • Filtering of messages by character/player name(s)
  • Full text search of chat messages
  • Toggles for message types (tells/system)
  • Toggles for showing/hiding elements (lanugages/portraits/colors)
  • Export to PDF
Possible features:
  • Extraction of inline colors (such as in message board posts)
  • Using browser storage to save important logs locally
  • Other export formats / print styling
  • Support for smaller devices
Known bugs:
  • Weird characters from color tokens (such as - <câÛÂ>)
  • Parsing large chat logs can cause browser lag while processing (finishes eventually)
  • Display issues on smaller monitors (planning changes to address)
Mods, feel free to move this if it belongs somewhere else on the forum, was not sure!
Last edited by backlands on Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:04 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Morgy
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by Morgy » Sun Oct 24, 2021 6:56 pm

Thanks so much for sharing this!

LivelyParticle
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by LivelyParticle » Sun Oct 24, 2021 7:22 pm

Morgy wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 6:56 pm
Thanks so much for sharing this!
I wholeheartedly agree and I'm surprised at the lack of reaction to this! I love this tool and I'm using the hell out of it. Thanks so much backlands for the time and effort put into it. I love now I can see the combat log with it too, so awesome. Great, great work.

Thank you!

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triaddraykin
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by triaddraykin » Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:17 pm

Seems like it's having a bit of trouble with mine. What are the recommended chat log settings?

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backlands
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by backlands » Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:30 pm

triaddraykin wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:17 pm
Seems like it's having a bit of trouble with mine. What are the recommended chat log settings?
That is very unusual. It seems like your messages might be merging incorrectly and I will need to look into why. I have an idea about it but might need a chat log from you to confirm. Is it possible for you to message me on Discord (backlands#4577)?

Thanks for the support Morgy and LivelyParticle!

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Drowble Oh Seven
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by Drowble Oh Seven » Mon Oct 25, 2021 12:43 am

This is wonderful and helpful and wonderful. Thank you!

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backlands
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by backlands » Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:23 am

After some review of a few additional chat logs I wanted to let people know that this tool works best with either of the following logging settings in the game:

Image

Image

I am working on changes to the parser to more easily support the setting "Game Log Chat All" but it is tricky because of the difference in what is output with that setting compared to "Game Log Chat Text". It is ideal to have "Game Log Chat Text" enabled when using NWN Chat Viewer.
Last edited by backlands on Sat Jan 01, 2022 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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backlands
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by backlands » Sat Jan 01, 2022 8:14 pm

Added some new features to the tool, it now supports filtering by character or player names as well as full text search of the chat messages. I also added a basic export to PDF function that exports the currently visible messages in either the Chat log or the Gameplay log (depending what you select).

I wanted to update that the recommended game settings for the tool to work best is either "Game Log Chat Text" and "Game Log Chat Emotes", or just "Game Log Chat Text". Currently there are some known issues if you have "Game Log Chat All" enabled. Future plans are to fix these issues but will require some time.


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backlands
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Re: Chat Log Viewing Tool

Post by backlands » Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:03 am

I worked on this a bit further with some free time tonight and added the following options to the app: hiding tells, hiding system messages, hiding portraits, and hiding language tags. My next thing is probably going to be working on mobile styling but that will probably not be for a couple weeks!

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