Get quest data in another locale than the client's

Triiz · 07-12-14, 05:30 AM

Hi everyone,

I have just started coding WoW addon. The reason is that I would like to use my gaming habit to learn new languages. One of the first thing I would like to achieve is be able to see side by side quest text in both the client's language and also in another user set language.

I have managed to get the data of quest in the current client's language using the standard API (GetQuestText()). I was wondering if any of you had found a way to trick this into having the result sent back in another language. I would like to avoid using a local addon DB (as I don't want to maintain the file everytime a change is made).

I have also thought about (but haven't looked it up yet) using wowhead. Has someone any idea if it would be possible to interogate their quest DB?

Oh, I also need to mention that I am assuming that data is server side. I have been through the mpq files and it doesn't seem that quest text is anywhere there.

Thanks for the help!

Lombra · 07-12-14, 05:47 AM

Hi,
all data is in the client, and you'll have to install (and use) a different language if you want to have quest texts in that language.

You can't access the outside world [wide web] from within WoW, so unless you want to use a different language, a local addon database is the only option.

Triiz · 07-12-14, 06:19 AM

Thanks for the reply. I have installed other language and looked through those MPQs (I have French, English, Spanish and German installed). I couldn't find the quest texts (title, description and objectives) there, which is why I assumed that they are stored server side. I am very happy if someone tells me otherwise and where to look!

Lombra · 07-12-14, 09:47 AM

Actually I'm not sure they are in the client. I had a look myself and couldn't find them. I just assumed! Things like speech is in the client, at least. Still, no way to get other languages without constructing a database of your own. If it's on the server you'll probably have to resort to Wowhead or the likes.

Nimhfree · 07-12-14, 12:24 PM

The quest information is stored in questcache.wdb* which will be stored in a subdirectory based on the current client language. The descriptions are now encrypted where in previous releases they could be read without decryption. Unless you break the new WDB encryption, the easiest way to see the information about a quest is to use APIs within the game. As you see quests in the game, the cache is updated to include the new ones you have seen.

If you want to be able to show quest text in a language the client is not running, you will have needed to create your own database of that information and saved it in your addon before it can be used by a client.

*Note that this may have very well changed for WoD so all bets are off.

Triiz · 07-12-14, 03:17 PM

Thanks for the pointers! So it seems I will have to investigate setting up my own DB. I'll check if I can do something with WoWhead. I don't see myself running from quest giver to quest giver to gather the information! Seems my little project will be harder than I thought

Nimhfree · 07-13-14, 07:01 AM

You can automate it to some extent. Basically you can iterate through every quest in the game, and populate the GameTooltip with the quest link. This will get you some information that you can scrape from the tooltip. You would have to logon to each client language to get that language's data. Using the PTR should allow access to all of them (including Simplified Chinese more recently). This only give you the name of the quest and the short summary, but it should be helpful. It will be a lot of data if you get all the languages. My addon Grail stores all the localized quest titles, but not the summaries, and that is quite large. Of course I only load the localized quest titles for the user's current language.