[Rarz]

I've been working on and off on a tool to do the tallying of materials for crafting for the last two weeks. Originally just to help the guild and myself so we can easily figure out what and how much to mail around to get items made.

It's been polished up considerably since then and gone through several iterations of tweaking. So here I present for your enjoyment a crafting calculator. It is standalone, and does not require a webconnection to function. It does require dotNet 2.0 to be installed, but that should be installed on most pcs these days anyway.

Official TCH page can be found here: Tesla's Crafting Helper

The short and gritty, TCH can do for you:

• List all possible products and ingredients of all recipies ingame
• List all available recipies ingame
• Sort through all recipes by (partial) name, rarity, craft, levelrange, race or any combination of these
• Sort through all items by (partial) name, rarity or class. (Though most items are either for both races or for Elyos)
• For every recipe show the stats of the product item(s) it takes
• Calculate the totals of every necessary ingredient including prices (including using your side's price and tax ratio)
• Calculate the server base tax (the bit of the price you don't see). This is not precise and the final price of items might be off by a few kinah.
• Alter the amount of each product and sub-component on the fly as you craft
• Lock down subcomponents when you are done with them and consequently unlock them when you have to go for another try
• TCH saves all entered settings and filters automatically as well as the windowsize
• Presents the total tally of everything in basic text, so you can paste it to a forum or chatprogram

It's still a work in progress, so suggestions are welcome.

There's currently some doubles in the recipes list -- not my fault, the recipes source is nyerked. Will be fixed. :)

Direct link to the download: Tesla's Crafting Helper V1.1

Enjoy the program, and if you happen to play on Perento, Elyos side, send me a whisper! ^_^

[Rashy]

Looks great.

Just a quick glance, I didn't notice a "search" feature. Would come in handy instead of just filtering, since you could still end up with a ton of recipes to scroll through.

[Rarz]

Rash said:

Looks great.

Just a quick glance, I didn't notice a "search" feature. Would come in handy instead of just filtering, since you could still end up with a ton of recipes to scroll through.

Thanks for trying it out.

You can search using the 'Must contain' box -- just make sure you don't have the other filter options so strict you have nothing left to search through. Tick everything and start typing. It'll filter as you type. :)

[Bellas]

Rarz said:

Thanks for trying it out.

You can search using the 'Must contain' box -- just make sure you don't have the other filter options so strict you have nothing left to search through. Tick everything and start typing. It'll filter as you type. :)

Is there a way to put in the price of raw materials, like "Gold Ore" or "Raw Starturtle Meat" for example?

[Rashy]

Oh, didn't quite notice that, seems like it's tucked away in a corner. I think it'll look better above the list of recipes, personally (the first place I checked for a search box). Thanks though :)

[Rarz]

Bellas said:

Is there a way to put in the price of raw materials, like "Gold Ore" or "Raw Starturtle Meat" for example?

All the prices of all the items and ingredients are already in there (directly from the XML files in the game itself). You can see what materials cost on the 'totals' tab and influence those prices by setting your Ratio Price, Ratio Tax (you can find these in the game client next to your Flight Indicator) and Base Tax settings (which you can calculate using the previous two values and a high prices merchant item of your choice).

There is nothing you have to put in because it already knows everything it needs to. Using the the +/- controls next to ingredients that are also products, you can change the amount of those you want/need.

Mind, it does assume that your craft all work. It doesn't keep track of failed attempts with chance of lost materials. That would be very tricky seeing as you can lose any or all of the materials. Or none, if you fail. :)

Unless I completely missed your question there, in which case I need more explanation! ;D

-------------------------

Rash said:

Oh, didn't quite notice that, seems like it's tucked away in a corner. I think it'll look better above the list of recipes, personally (the first place I checked for a search box). Thanks though :)

Good point. It does make more sense above the list. I'll move it there. :)

This post has been edited by Rarz: 23 October 2009 - 12:16 PM
Reason for edit: Automerged Double-Post.

[Bellas]

I am talking about setting a price for a raw gatherable material, like ores, fruits, leather, etc and items like Flux's which can not be bought from an NPC but have to be gathered, looted or bought from the Auction House. These items may not 'cost' anything if gather them yourself in which you can keep it at 0 but I like to include the auction house value of these items when I make an item to give the final product a better worth value instead of pure ingredient cost.

[Rashy]

I think he means price of raw materials as in AH prices, which can change, and not just the vendor materials you buy (which are only based off of the influence ratio and taxes).

I also noticed the cost is calculated assuming you purchase only vendor items and collect everything else, correct? It basically ignores the price of the other materials, which can be "free" if you collect it yourself (quotes are intended because it's technically not free), or cost a lot (especially flux's) when bought from the AH.

Upon further use, a few more suggestions:
- Order the recipes according to their level requirement, and not alphabetical. This makes it easier if you're looking for a certain level recipe.
- The Totals tab would be better off integrated right into the actual roadmap tab (right next to the item name itself), instead of having it separate. Makes it easier for the user to see the price as is instead of switching tabs.

That's all for now. ^^

[Phoenix Pinion]

All I can say is good work on this. This is a big help for me. The only changes I would see making is allow us to edit the prices for all mats, since some of that stuff can come from the AH. The last change I would do is have an option to select multiple items you are going to craft. Often times when I craft an entire suit for people I tell them 5 times the amount thats really needed that way they have a higher chance of at least get 1 noble out of it. Its kind of hard to do this with one item at a time.

[Rarz]

Phoenix Pinion said:

All I can say is good work on this. This is a big help for me. The only changes I would see making is allow us to edit the prices for all mats, since some of that stuff can come from the AH. The last change I would do is have an option to select multiple items you are going to craft. Often times when I craft an entire suit for people I tell them 5 times the amount thats really needed that way they have a higher chance of at least get 1 noble out of it. Its kind of hard to do this with one item at a time.

Entering prices for non-merchant materials will go in with the next version. It'll store the entered value so the next recipe that contains that ingredient will automatically re-use it.

You -can- create multiple items, but I haven't stated that specifically. The controls for doing so appear underneath the name of the product and underneath the name of any item that is a subingredient.

I've included a screenshot of the thing I'm talking about. See the + and the - boxes? Click em to increase or decrease the amount of that item (and all underlying ingredients should change immediately). When you're done, you can 'lock' the ingredient down by checking it's lock box. Changing the count of an higher up the recipe won't change the count anymore now. You can, of course, remove the lock again if you need to.

I hope I'm making myself clear. I found the input method pretty easy to use while crafting.

Attached File(s)

•  details plus-minus-lock.png (26.18K)
  Number of downloads: 109

[degini]

Very impressive. From a developer's perspective, I have a question. How long would something like this take to develop? Would be a pretty excellent idea for a project.

[Rarz]

degini said:

Very impressive. From a developer's perspective, I have a question. How long would something like this take to develop? Would be a pretty excellent idea for a project.

It was written in C# over a period of two-three weeks. Time spend so far is something like 60-70hrs, including several rewrites of specific parts to improve performance. Untangling layers of WTF code (I don't plan very far ahead, so sometimes have to backtrack a little when running into a wall).

The time spend does include the several data-to-Custom Collection converters that takes the gathered data and converts it to custom collections, to improve responsiveness for the user. Both the Items and the Recipes collections are both Inherited BaseCollections in case you are curious. It is much nicer to work against collections than trawling through flat data files as I had opted for in the first incarnation.

I'm not currently using LINQ (which needs dotNet 3.5), but I would recommend diving into that if you ever want to sort through data fast. Writing LINQ code is very similar to how Yoda speaks English, so it takes some getting used to.

This post has been edited by Rarz: 24 October 2009 - 03:06 PM

[enigma8833]

Just wanted you to feel appreciated. This is an awesome resource, Thank you!
Only thing I wish it currently had was the ability to set prices for things you don't gather or farm yourself.

[Rarz]

Version 1.2 is out; Here's a list of the things I changed:

- Added an optional window to display the stats of an item when you move the mouse over it's name. You can turn this on or off in the settings.
- Added the option to group the results by level. It will automatically sort the items and recipies within a level group alphabetically.
- Fixed a bug in the totals window where it did not round up the ingredients before adding them, potentially showing too few ingredients in the totals listing of morphing recipies
- Widened the list a little so even items with stupid long names display properly.
- Added the possibility to input cost of non-merchant ingredients, which carry over into the final tally (shown/hiden with the checkbox 'exclude')
- Reduced the amount of doubles showing up in the items view. The items that are still showing up double are usually level 1 items that are used in both Elyos and Asmodian recipes.
- Smoothed rendering of the recipes. Redrawing the recipe area should be flicker-free now.
- Removed a bug preventing Physical Defence from being anything other than 0
- Added tooltips to the filteroptions
- Fixed a bug where the mouse pointer would get stuck in the IBeam shape

You can download it here: www.meepmeepvroom.com - /tch/downloads/

Enjoy. :)

[Llyweln]

Rarz? Only thing that came out of me when I d/l and installed........simple and to the point

OMG Thank you =)

[Bellas]

Bug in the custom materials cost calculation.

I selected an item "Noble Koa Bow" for example, entered 500 in the cost for Aether Crystal, 1000 in the cost of Weapon Flux, 500 in the cost for Koa Log. When I go to the totals page it lists the total materials required below.

Total materials required:
6x Weapon Flux (1000)
20x Sandpaper (20x1420 = 28400)
40x Koa Log (500)
16x Aether Crystal (500)

Merchant material cost : 28400 kinah
Custom material cost : 2000 kinah
Total cost : 30400 kinah

The Merchant material cost is right, 20x1420, but the custom costs shoudl be 6x1000, 40x500 and 16x500 but instead they are just listing 1000, 500 and 500 so instead of 34000 in custom material costs it is showing 2000.

Also as a feature request for a future build, can you implement a way for the user to put in a cost for a raw material and have it save it, allow it to be edited of course in case you want to change it but having it save it so you dont have to enter it every time would be nice. Great utility, I have been using it the last few days and love it.

[Rarz]

Not so much a bug as a difference in expectation. ;)

The values entered as custom value are copied as they are to the total sheet. Ie. it doesn't multiply anything for you (but it does add them if you happen to have the same ingredient multiple times). You enter the total price of the 16x Aether Crystal (16000), instead of entering 1000 and expecting it to multiply it by 16.

If you had 10x Aether for 1000 and 15x Aether for 1200 in the same recipe, it would add them totalling to 25x Aether (2200) on the total tab.

I considered adding a store of entered values, but decided against it for now, as the variable components will be varying in cost all the time as you get them from the auction house or wherever. Still, if more people want it to remember what you entered the last time, that's no problem to add. You'll end up having to edit it all the time, though.

Let me know what you want. :)

[Bellas]

Storing the values is a big plus. Most crafters buy so many materials they need to keep a notepad or spreadsheet of what they paid for things. I dont remember what I paid for many of my components so I have to check my spreadsheet when I am looking at the broker to see what I paid last to find out if what is on the broker is a good deal or not. If you store the values in your utility we would no longer have to keep a separate record. I don't think most people are going to use this to get an exact value of what it costs to make something but a general idea.

Also I think a good feature would be to put in a tab to enter the merchant sell value of an item and have it stored. After this you could take the cost field and subtact the vendor buyback value and come up with a total loss to make an item. I know I keep a spreadsheet with this value as well but if your tool could do this no outside tracking will be necessary. Keep up the good work, this is a great tool to have everything from all crafts across the board.

[foozlesprite]

Amazing, excellent, bravo! Now if only NCSoft would give the in-game crafting window filters and a search box...go be a dev now, please ;)

[loftel]

Wow this is excellent. I can now put away my calculator!