The Ultimate Guide to Creating Checklist Items

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Many have asked how to create their own items for the Checklist. Some need it to daily post to a forum, some for bookmarklets not covered in the list, and some just to use the Checklist as a cheap toolbar.

Now to help you creating your own items, this should be the complete guide to do it.
If you are new to the Checklist, you should read this post first.

Now you should know how to activate and deactivate items, create own items and load items from a code. Let me show you now in detail how to setup your own items.

This is what the dialog looks like when you add a new item.
You can configure the following four settings:

1) Description

The Description is the name that appears in the config dialog and in the Checklist. Do not choose it too long, or it will crush your Checklist layout.


2) Re-occurence

Here you can choose when the item is due next time once you click on it. You have the following options:

a) Specific time span

Specific time span means that after completing a task, you have to wait a specific amount of time until you have to do it again. In the field that pops up, you enter the number of hours to wait. An example would be the 8 hours wait for declaring war, or 4 hours for tournaments.

b) Fixed ZST time

Some events are based on a specific time of the day. This may be different local time for everyone, but the same moment for everybody. To generalize this for everybody, you have to convert your localtime to Zyngatime, which equals PST-8 (UTC-8). For example, the daily skillpoint is always posted at 9am CEST, which translates to 11pm ZST, so you have to enter "23". The daily chance is always due at 5pm CEST, which is 7am ZST, so you enter "7". Got it?

c) Midnight local time

Recently Zynga changed the time for some things from a fixed ZST time to your local midnight, meaning several timers reset at midnight for you. This selection enables this behaviour, no need for an additional input. If you complete your task at 5pm local time, the timer will display 7:00:00 for you.
So this selection means "once per day", at least for normal people who sleep at night.

d) Special

This is only used for The Informant Podcast item now. The task becomes due once a new episode of the podcast was uploaded, otherwise it just exaggerates the time until then. There may be more "Special" numbers added later.

e) Manual selection

For some tasks like "Collect Properties" or "Bagman Mugger" the user of the Checklist can decide, which interval he want, by clicking on the little swirl in the checklist.

You can enter the default value, which is set if not interval has been selected yet.

3) Action
Here you can select what action is executed if you click at the "Do now" button or the little yellow arrow.

a) Spocklet

This action will run a bookmarklet or Spocklet as action. To enable it, you have to copy the filename of the javascript file into the URL field. You can find the filename in the bookmarklet code.

b) Ingame-link

Ingame-links can be used to change to a page inside the game. For example the "daily chance" item opens the page for the daily chance. Figuring out a working ingame link is a matter of luck and skills, and you should really only use this if you know what you are doing.

Copy the link of a button in the game, for example I want to create an ingame url to directly open the Brazil collection to see if I can vault my Precious Collection. Right click on the link, then select "copy link location".

You will receive something like this:

http://facebook.mafiawars.zynga.com/mwfb/remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=collection&xw_action=view&xw_city=7&tmp=bafc9eeadcaf46e2a5d434edd5208eec&cb=0f3b51b0bzee11e08fc234ce0a4812ee&xw_person=95497006&mwcom=1&selected_city=7&filter_col=1

Cut away the parts "http://facebook.mafiawars.zynga.com/mwfb/, the tmp=, the cb=, the xw_person= and the mwcom=
This will leave the following link:

remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=collection&xw_action=view&xw_city=7&selected_city=7&filter_col=1

Put it into your items and see if it works. And yay, it does!

 
c) Ingame-link with travel

 

Ingame links with travel work the same way the normal ingame links work, except that if you add a parameter for xw_city=x, it will travel to the city before opening the link. Examples may be city specific pages, like tournaments or properties. City numbers are 1=NY, 4=Bangkok, 5=Vegas, 6=Italy, 7=Brazil.

d) External website

Enter the URL of a website here and that website will open in a new window when you click it. Examples for this are the email-bonus or the daily skillpoint.

e) Special

The Special actions contain a number of actions that cannot be done by the normal ingame links and therefore require a "magic" action id.
This is a list of the current magic ids. You can use them for your own items, but you cannot add extra actions:
101: Open daily take
102: Open free slots links
103: Go to marketplace -> fightclub
104: Use Energypack (was the old 24h pack)
105: Open ZMC
106: Open The Informant Podcast, latest episode
107: Travel to Brazil and collect all properties
108: Use Energypack (new Energypacks)


f) None

You can also select to have no action, this means no action is defined.

4) Update

The update field can be use to automatically synchronize the time remaining with an ingame timer. You only need to enter the name of the field id.
See for example this timer of the "Collect Parts in" module on the homepage:

Examine the time field with Firebug or Chrome and copy the name of the id="xxx" into your item. Once the time is visible on your screen, you can click the little swirl and set it to the exact remaining time.

With these tools provided, you should be able to create Checklist items for almost every use. Now let me show you some the items I use and explain them to you.

I've created this so we do not ever again forget the Spockholm Add-me post on the Spockholm Mafia Tools website. Of course you can also use this item to not forget to post there. Just set it manually to next saturday the first time you add it.

The code for this item is
eyJuYW1lIjoiU3BvY2tob2xtIEFkZC1tZSBwb3N0IiwidXBkYXRlIjoiIiwibGlua3R5cGUiOjMsInVybCI6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cuZmFjZWJvb2suY29tL21hZmlhdG9vbHMiLCJpbnRlcnZhbCI6MTkyfQ

This is the item for you to look for your precious collection every day. The code is

eyJuYW1lIjoiQ2hlY2sgbXkgUHJlY2lvdXMiLCJ1cGRhdGUiOiIiLCJsaW5rdHlwZSI6NCwidXJsIjoicmVtb3RlL2h0bWxfc2VydmVyLnBocD94d19jb250cm9sbGVyPWNvbGxlY3Rpb24meHdfYWN0aW9uPXZpZXcmeHdfY2l0eT03JnNlbGVjdGVkX2NpdHk9NyZmaWx0ZXJfY29sPTEiLCJpbnRlcnZhbCI6NDh9

 

I use this item whenever a mission is running and I have to wait for something. No matter if it is waiting to declare a war, collect some property or build an item, I manually set it to the time remaining so I know when I can continue the mission. The code is

eyJuYW1lIjoiTmV4dCBtaXNzaW9uIHBhcnQiLCJ1cGRhdGUiOiJtYW51YWwiLCJsaW5rdHlwZSI6MCwiaW50ZXJ2YWwiOjQ4fQ==

Of course I also have the "Saving Reed" item, so I can vote for the Sanfilippo Foundation every day. The code is

eyJuYW1lIjoiU2F2aW5nIFJlZWQhIiwidXBkYXRlIjoiIiwibGlua3R5cGUiOjMsInVybCI6Imh0dHA6Ly9iaXQubHkvdm90ZTRyZWVkIiwiaW50ZXJ2YWwiOjQ4fQ==

 

That's it, have fun with the Checklist and share your best items with your friends!

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Article written by Eike, part of Team Spockholm and co-writer to the MW Loot Lady Blog All material is protected by copyright law