Post by karoo on Aug 16, 2016 6:21:13 GMT 1
Hi, since I already quit the game and I am quitting the forums tomorrow, I thought I should leave a guide to keep the wiki up to date in future updates.
part 1: how to datamine the game
they encrypt the files since an update a while back, so our only option as far as I know is to datamine from the apk file. you can download it from your phone if you have the right file explorer, or get it from a site like apk4fun.com or something. rename the .apk file to a .zip and extract it. there are a few folders and files in here that you might need:
\assets\res\common\png\* contains most of the the images used in the game, upload these if you want original quality stuff. they used some shitty compression algorithm that makes the files way larger than they need to be, so if you want open them in an image editor and save again to reduce the file sizes.
any .pvr.ccz file is a spritesheet generated with resource packer. you can access these images by downloading resource packer and using the 30 day free trial repeatedly.
\assets\res\en-US\data\heroes.db is the database with most of the game data. you need 2 programs: the first one is a sqlite database browser, I use sqlitebrowser3. the second one is a database comparison tool to quickly see what was changed. I use sqlitecompare by levi. every time the game updates, this is the first thing you should look at: compare the previous and newest databases and see what was changed, and then update that stuff as necessary.
part 2: what and how to update
use the source editor on wikia. there is the visual editor, which I believe is the default, but you should edit the source code instead. there is some button to switch while editing a page.
usually you need to update the following wiki pages: Heroes, Max_Stats, Soulstone, Version_History, any hero pages that were affected, any tag pages that were affected, and upload new hero/skill images.
updating pages like equipment, new heroes, or max stats are a lot of work. so I wrote some python scripts to automate those. I will post them in comments below. you need to install python and run them somehow where you can copy paste the output. to use them, I first use sqlitebrowser3, go to file>export>table as csv file. use that with the default settings on the following tables: mercenary, mercenary_grade, mercenary_star, mercenary_equipment, skill, tag, equipment, enhance, enhance_attribute. put all the csv files in the same folder as the python script, run the script, and it should spit out the data for the page. for the individual hero script, type in the id of the hero you want and then it will give you that.
I hope someone knows how to update these in case they change how the game works or increase the banner cap for max stats.
also: you don't need to limit yourself to updating what I have in-place. if you want to improve the look of the wiki, make it work on mobile, or add info like item pages or an item section to hero pages, go ahead. (I chose not to because elhana's site covers it.) you should know that wikia uses templates to handle repeated design across pages, so you can update those or make new ones too.
part 1: how to datamine the game
they encrypt the files since an update a while back, so our only option as far as I know is to datamine from the apk file. you can download it from your phone if you have the right file explorer, or get it from a site like apk4fun.com or something. rename the .apk file to a .zip and extract it. there are a few folders and files in here that you might need:
\assets\res\common\png\* contains most of the the images used in the game, upload these if you want original quality stuff. they used some shitty compression algorithm that makes the files way larger than they need to be, so if you want open them in an image editor and save again to reduce the file sizes.
any .pvr.ccz file is a spritesheet generated with resource packer. you can access these images by downloading resource packer and using the 30 day free trial repeatedly.
\assets\res\en-US\data\heroes.db is the database with most of the game data. you need 2 programs: the first one is a sqlite database browser, I use sqlitebrowser3. the second one is a database comparison tool to quickly see what was changed. I use sqlitecompare by levi. every time the game updates, this is the first thing you should look at: compare the previous and newest databases and see what was changed, and then update that stuff as necessary.
part 2: what and how to update
use the source editor on wikia. there is the visual editor, which I believe is the default, but you should edit the source code instead. there is some button to switch while editing a page.
usually you need to update the following wiki pages: Heroes, Max_Stats, Soulstone, Version_History, any hero pages that were affected, any tag pages that were affected, and upload new hero/skill images.
updating pages like equipment, new heroes, or max stats are a lot of work. so I wrote some python scripts to automate those. I will post them in comments below. you need to install python and run them somehow where you can copy paste the output. to use them, I first use sqlitebrowser3, go to file>export>table as csv file. use that with the default settings on the following tables: mercenary, mercenary_grade, mercenary_star, mercenary_equipment, skill, tag, equipment, enhance, enhance_attribute. put all the csv files in the same folder as the python script, run the script, and it should spit out the data for the page. for the individual hero script, type in the id of the hero you want and then it will give you that.
I hope someone knows how to update these in case they change how the game works or increase the banner cap for max stats.
also: you don't need to limit yourself to updating what I have in-place. if you want to improve the look of the wiki, make it work on mobile, or add info like item pages or an item section to hero pages, go ahead. (I chose not to because elhana's site covers it.) you should know that wikia uses templates to handle repeated design across pages, so you can update those or make new ones too.