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Forums » List all forums » Forum: Tips & Tricks, Questions & Answers » Thread: Pirate Commodity Trader... with Bleach! A new 3rd party tool |
Thread Status: Normal Total posts in this thread: 759
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
Pirate Commodity Trader with Bleach (PCTB) is a tool for collecting and analyzing commodity data, intended primarily for commodity traders but also useful for shop owners. Anyone familiar with Pirate Commodity Trader knows that the tool is overdue for maintanence. Unfortunately its maintainer Bemis has apparently gone on to other games and is rarely heard from. The database and tool source are solely under his control so others can not make needed changes for him. I've created my own implementation and dubbed it Pirate Commodity Trader with Bleach. Available at pctb.crabdance.com, the application consists of two components: - The PPAOCR (Puzzle Pirates Automated OCR) tool, which requires Windows, is responsible for collecting and uploading data. - The PCTB website, which requires a recent browser, dynamically analyzes and displays the data. To use PCTB, get the OCR/upload client, and use it to upload market data. (Help is on that page.) Then surf to the PCTB website, which includes help for all pages. It is my intention to eventually move all current PCT users to PCTB. With the current situation with PCT in mind, PCTB is designed to be more flexible and not require developer intervention: New oceans and new islands are added when data for them is uploaded. Newly uploaded data is verified against YPPedia. This requires data in YPPedia to be correct, up to date, and in the correct format. (If YPPedia changes its format, adding new islands/oceans will break, and some developer will need to remedy the situation.) I've released the current code for PCTB and PPAOCR so that the code will be available if I become similarly unresponsive. Improvements are also very welcome. Unfortunately, German isn't supported at this time. I will be doing more maintanence on the code in the New Year, suggestions for new features are very welcome. I have my own list and would welcome user suggestions. Warnings: PCTB is new and probably contains bugs. Please report new bugs here. Known bugs are: - In Opera, help pages don't display correctly. - Truncated shop names (ex "This Here Sho...") aren't dealt with in an intelligent manner. Truncated stall names are handled well, however. PCTB is hosted on a free server, hence the ads. The server is known to kick users off for various reasons. Free servers are also known to go bankrupt. I don't expect this to happen, but it could. I may delete the database. In that case, all oceans will need to be created again, all data re-uploaded. I hope to not do this. PCTB has two sets of ads displayed. Hopefully that will change soon. Finally, I'd like to give my sincere thanks and apologies to Bemis, and to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
I will check this client out in just a bit. Out of curiosity, why do you call it with Bleach? On a side note, on my personal webservice, I do have some free databases, if you wish to move it to a more... secure location? As it stands, I can handle MySQL Server, PgSQL, and MSSQL, so I can also import an existing database. Just letting you know. ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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yummyyumm
Joined: Apr 2, 2006 Posts: 533 Status: Offline |
Hmm, seems to be a good idea. Can't get it to work though, I will blaim my work connection for that now (have to check when I get home). The only bug (if you want to call it that) that I won't blaim my connection for is that when I have Internet Explorer in window mode, some of the buttons are jumbled around. I am assuming you will eventually get all oceans up on this? |
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
That is a good question, isn't it.
Imperfect as it is, I figure I'll stay with my current provider for a while (unless I get kicked off, of course). Thanks for the offer. If I were to move to another server, I'd need: PHP 4 (prefer: 5) MySQL 4.1 (I'm thinking of moving the app to PgSQL) A fair bit of CPU power I'd want the webserver and database server to be on the same network. I could also try Rusty Cutlass, although their site looks to be short on processing power. ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
/me winces. What exactly doesn't work? Is your work connection known to arbitrarily not work?
You mean, the 'Summary', 'Route', etc? Yeah, the window has to be opened pretty big, I should've mentioned that. I made the fonts smaller.
Adding oceans is part of the upload process. Upload data from a new ocean, when it asks which island its from type in the name of the new ocean. Except Opal won't work. ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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Jacada
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 1032 Status: Offline |
This is great! Thanks for creating it. ---------------------------------------- Go away phool Brenon said:
Active once again! |
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CKShinrai
Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Posts: 3926 Status: Offline |
Aren't you going to...tell us? ----------------------------------------
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
I'll contact you via PM's about the server requirements. However, on another topic, I'm having problems with the upload client: I get the error "This application has failed to start because rtl100.bpl was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." Suggestions? ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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WolfpackNC
Joined: Nov 20, 2006 Posts: 113 Status: Offline |
Just thought I would post and said that it worked well for me. Thanks for this great contribution to the community. =) ---------------------------------------- -Wolfpack (Hunter) Shipsofsnow tells you, "Ellipses make the man, good sir" |
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Gothmog1065
Joined: Apr 12, 2004 Posts: 11593 Status: Offline |
Did you download the other zip file on the download page? You need to download it and extract the files to the same folder as the main program. ----------------------------------------
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
...no. Figure it out yourself. ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
Hehe, suppose I should have read it all, eh? Anyway, working quite nicely now, and I'm starting to see the database with all Midnight data, seeing as I have alts everywhere. ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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CKShinrai
Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Posts: 3926 Status: Offline |
All I can think is that it's possibly a thinly veiled commentary on commercialist society (and particularly every cleaning product in the world having some variety of bleach in it lately). What that has to do with commodities, well I dunno <3 ----------------------------------------
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Spelunk
Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 268 Status: Offline |
Maybe ... a comon household cleaner from Palmolive-Colgate might be a clue :) It comes in both liquid and powdered formats... |
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
So, while seeding Midnight, here's some bugs I noticed:
While trying to collect data for Endurence Island, Opal Arch, Midnight
While trying to upload all info for Waterberry (Opal arch, Midnight), which has buy-only, no sells.
When copying text I use in other places (like the forums) with no link back to the "Upload commodities" page easily (restart client or right-click, back). Just more annoying than anything, really. On the actual web page, I did an "Whole Ocean > Whole Ocean" query, just to look at it all (after I finished seeding the Midnight database), and noticed: ROI's with an amount over 100 (non inclusive) don't have a trailing decimal, amounts 100 and under do. However, having the 100 with a trailing decimal (of 0, marked as 100.0) seem to throw off the alignment ever so slightly. Just... yeah, letting you know. I do love how same-island trades are higlighted in green, to make them more visible. Would it be possible (a la the original PCT) to figure in a [ship type]/[number of runs] type number, where you select the ship, it says how many trips it would make to hold the entire mass/volume of the trade? I always did like that feature, and only regretted that I could only see it on the overall summery page. ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
Yes! Bug reports! Thanks! Yeay! (I've been in software quality assurance far, far too long.) Seriously, nice detailed bug reports like these are what I need to make PCTB better. I have an error log that shows me some things, but not everything. I was looking through the error log and the system was not letting people upload harvest bid data for some islands on Midnight. I was disappointed that whoever got these errors didn't report them. See the page, I fixed all 3 bugs, plus the nitpicky '100.0' thing. I welcome reporting of nitpicky annoyances like that. (Tell me if it doesn't work, I don't have any resources on Midnight to test with.) On the 'number of trips' feature: Oh, somebody likes that? I don't find it very useful. Perhaps if I had an option of displaying mass and volume as something like "1.5 Sloop", then you could see how many trips you'd need - if mass = 1.5 sloop and volume = 2.1 sloop, it would take 3 trips. I would think that would be a useful way to display mass/volume statistics and show you the same thing. You're saying you'd like to see this somewhere else? Where? ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
Those error reports may have all been me. I tried quite a few times before I realized there were errors. Plus, there was also a short while (before I posted) that the database seemed to be down... no data could be retreived, and on uploads it gave a 404 Page not Found error. Bid data, I havn't tried at all yet, however, I may get to that later tonight while I'm watching the season finale of Dr. Who. I do like that number of trips thing. Since I only sail a sloop (and cutters for foraging fruit, but that's another matter), it helps me seperate those VERY large hauls, like the ones in Jet that do like 50000 hemp from island A to B. If I knew that it wouldn't take 50 trips, I wouldn't bother looking at the details therein. I'm thinking another dropdown box: You select the ship type, and (if one is selected), a column is added on the far right that gives the information. A simple (the greater of [total mass]/[ship max mass] or [total volume]/[ship max volume], no need for rounding to whole numbers on this, though you could if you wanted) for each route on the summery (ocean>ocean or arc>arc) page would be helpful enough for me. ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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KingOfZeal
Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1152 Status: Offline |
Some more things: I did notice this last time I was processing the data. Occassionally, I get this error: Encountered Errors:Non-shop <dl> skipped: <dump><dd><i> "Waterberry" redirects here. For other uses, see <a href="/Waterberry_%28disambiguation%29" title="Waterberry (disambiguation)">Waterberry (disambiguation)</a>.</i> </dd></dump> I get this after the "Based on this, I am accepting this data for that island.", before it says "Your data has been integrated into the database.", and it generally only appears when a new island is added. This looks like a page from the wiki, not sure what it's doing there... Umm... thanks for the props on the bug fixes... On the bid data thing, since I did that today (which, by the way, makes Midnight completly seeded for data, both bid market and commodity market), I've found it slightly annoying seeing the compilation data that you have collected (see also: this image). Would it be possible to get it to clear the screen before displaying the next bit of data? Next up: Website. Bid section. I selected an arch (whole arch, in this case emerald on Midnight), All Commodities, and tried to "Find Island Bids", at which point I got this error (I'm too lazy to type it all out right now). Also, I find the Bid section.. limited, unless I'm just doing it wrong. If I'm figuring how this works correctly, it will display all bid information from the entire ocean to whatever arch/island, correct? It just seems that the (original) PCT has more options: Same Arch, Arch to Arch, or whole ocean to whole ocean. Though, having a commodity filter does help, the shopkeep in me likes it. ---------------------------------------- Yamorg, Captain and Navigator Founder, Privately Funded Pirates Association© Midnight Ocean
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bonjella
Joined: Jan 15, 2004 Posts: 213 Status: Offline |
Firstly - woo :-) This is great stuff, thanks :-) I'm having trouble uploading the market data for Labyrinth Moors on Virid, it's saying... OCR Client Compiled: Dec 22 2006 12:32:32 Client window found at (192, 241) size 802 x 602 Screen resolution 1280 x 960 Capture started... Found table: Left = 16, Top = 84, Width = 600, Height = 401 Capcount: 0 We waited too long to get a new capture. This may be because we scrolled to the bottom, but couldn't tell that we reach the bottom (30 captures, -1 rows rejects, 750 rows parsed successfully) When I started this capture I was switch to the ypp screen and the market data scrolled down to the bottom. it then sat there for a while (oo, 30 seconds?) before the 'We waited too long' message came up after the other stuff). Ditto Tigerleaf anbd Dragon's Nest. Am I doing something silly? Let me know if you want me to anything test-wise this end :-) Suggestion - I used the old PCT for checking my stall's prices, the page where you could select your island and your stall-type of useful :-) Amykate ---------------------------------------- Ex-SO of Moonlitwake, member of the flag Moonlighting on Midnight Ex-Captain of Dragon's Horde and Ex-Queen of the RiddleMakers on Viridian Minister of Technology for RiddleMakers Gov of Labby www.RiddleMakers.org |
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Gothmog1065
Joined: Apr 12, 2004 Posts: 11593 Status: Offline |
Also, are there plans to have the database view put into the PCT client itself? That would make things a lot smoother. Otherwise the information is really nice and stuff, though I'd rather be able to upload, and in the client switch and possibly have the information you just uploaded kept in some sort of local temporary cache, and pull the information you don't need (AKA, if your cache time stamp is >= your cache, it doesn't pull it from the server. ----------------------------------------
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
Yeay! I like to be appreciated :) Esp by someone I've heard of before.
Okay, I figured this out the other day; I've put out Release 3 of the client, which fixes the problem. PM me if you really want the gory details. Note to anyone else with bugs: Amykate did the right thing by copying the error message. I wouldn't have been able to diagnose/fix the problem without it. Really, it's a small miracle that more people haven't had problems. The client is very, very brittle.
Okay. I'd lowered the priority for making that page becuase it would involve drudgework, specifying which shops use which commods. I'll see if I can get to it since you asked nicely :) Oh, I'll get to other bugfixes/changes, but it's Christmas, I'm not going to code today! Merry Christmas all! ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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BehindCurtai
Joined: May 25, 2004 Posts: 12589 Status: Offline |
Possible reason for "With Bleach": cleaning all the old data out, and starting blank. ---------------------------------------- "We're trying to find the error bars on that number"
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CKShinrai
Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Posts: 3926 Status: Offline |
I'm still curious. JUST TELL US. ^^;;; ----------------------------------------
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TomPaine
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 297 Status: Offline |
Thank you for the app! I'd love to see a DB dumb or price charting to see changes over time... Also.. I have great interest in the OCR tools, specifally reading Stall Labor Reports/lists of workers for a rainy day project.. Lastly I saw you actually had documention... would you mind if users updated the yppedia entry with documentation/bug reports... or would you pefer them in the forums? Thanks again for your work! Tompaine ---------------------------------------- Tompaine on most oceans |
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
Gorondo tries to put on Zen Master look Gorondo folds legs in Lotus position Gorondo winces in pain Gorondo regains composure... My student, I see you are attached to right and wrong answers. Many answers have been given; none are more right than others. Just because I had one meaning for 'With Bleach' in mind, it doesn't mean that it is a more correct meaning. I will thus not fuel your attachment to right answers by telling you what I was thinking when I added 'With Bleach'. I'm trying to enlighten you. Yeah. It's not because I'm nasty and childish and like keeping secrets. Uh huh. Ooooommmm...... ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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ghap
Joined: Sep 14, 2006 Posts: 33 Status: Offline |
You're welcome! It's good to be appreciated! I love coding and I love having my code put to good use. Since you asked nicely, data charts are on The List. Be warned that The PCTB List is kinda like The YPP List: I'm prolly not actually going to get to it. Note that uploaded data for an island is automatically dumped when new data is sent; the database (now 2.5 MB) would quickly go over my limit (50MB) if I didn't dump it. I would have to store the best offers in a separate table, and then graph that. Lastly I saw you actually had documention... Amazing, eh. would you mind if users updated the yppedia entry with documentation/bug reports... or would you pefer them in the forums? Yppedia is a good place to write documentation. (I reserve the right to copy it onto the site if I feel it's appropriate.) You could announce on the forum if you make a big change. Bug reports go on the forum. ---------------------------------------- Gorondo on Viridian Pic: The Cap'n from Bonobo Conspiracy |
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RatedArrrrr
Joined: Nov 27, 2005 Posts: 28 Status: Offline |
/me thinks it's a bit obvious. It's a fun way of noting the new shinyness. As in when Tide offered it's new product Tide with Bleach. (and for all ye young 'ens No Tide hasn't always had that as a product. Back in the day you had 1 option) |
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CKShinrai
Joined: Sep 7, 2003 Posts: 3926 Status: Offline |
Like I said, I figured this was why but...uhm...frankly I think this would be a stupid reason. XD ----------------------------------------
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bitmap
Joined: Sep 15, 2005 Posts: 11 Status: Offline |
I like showing the mass/vol as compared to a user selectable ship as well, and for the same reasons. If i want to make a solo run, I'm only interested in data that would be profitable for one or two trips with a sloop or cutter, but if I'm getting the whole crew involved then i'd want to see how big a ship i'd need to maximize the ROI, without having to pull out a calculator and lists of ship capacity. ---------------------------------------- RcklsNdngrmt on Cerulean Former Captain of Dastardly Beasties, Rising Phoenix on Midnight After crew mergers, flag mergers, and ocean mergers, I don't even know where I am. |
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Ruddigore
Joined: Jul 11, 2005 Posts: 683 Status: Offline |
Minor notes and queries: ---------------------------------------- Ruthven, FO Yarr Talk, Cerulean Despard, SO Fer Crown and Fortune, Emerald |
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