User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Price checks

This is a ...

Cool page. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gungraave (talk • contribs) at 17:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC).

Thanks. I hope it was useful, too. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:33, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Question about the Kamadan recent trade thing

I've got a question about the Kamadan recent trades tool:

How did you do the data grabbing? I would like to know because I would like to write a tool for my son. My son has Down Syndrome, and so operates with the mental abilities of a child of maybe 5-7. Importantly for this discussion, he can't read well enough to follow game logic.

However, he understands speech fairly well, so I want to try to get him a tool that would read the text off the screen, and then read it aloud to him. That way, he could make intelligent choices.

I have the ability to create the voice-generation tool, I think, but I don't know how to grab the text out of the game and put it unto a usable format.

I asked GW support, and they forwarded it to Gaile, but she didn't know of anything, and said even if she did, they couldn't recommend it because they don't vet 3rd-party tools. So, I think I'm stuck writing my own tool(s) for this, but I figured I would ask you how you did it, so maybe that would get me cranking in the right direction.

Thanks!

P.S. if you would rather not talk about it openly, but are willing to talk, I'll give you my email address. Daddicus 20:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey! I didn't write the recent trade tool. (More on that below.) I know a lot about bad programming (and, fortunately, how to test and evaluate good software), but you really don't want me involved in any serious coding efforts. You might try contacting the folks at Argos Soft directly, but I don't think anyone has had much luck. I suspect what the guy did was to reverse engineer all chat (perhaps by parking in a district with no other players, typing in all chat, and comparing packets). It can't be that easy or lots of people would have done this; it can't be that hard, otherwise, ANet would have probably nerfed it already.

If I had been involved with the Estimator, there are at least 4-5 features you would have seen: no character names, fewer spammed adverts, ability to sort, ability to filter current results, a privacy policy, and it would be open-source. The guy behind it seems to have a good knack for putting together simple-to-use tools for high-demand features, but I don't trust him to have my back. (I am not one of those who believe all software should be open source, but I do believe that if the manufacturer cannot be sued, then they have no vested interest in protecting other people's interests. Open source gets around that by ensuring that someone is always watching.)

Also, if that was me, I'd be more than happy to share with you.

You might try contacting Dr Ishmael at Guild Wiki. He's a fiendishly clever coder and has done some awesome things with gw.dat. I don't think he's interested in price checks, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's interested in your specific goal of text→speech for someone who has difficulty with text.

Finally, I have no idea what it's like to raise a child with Down's... so I can only offer you my respect and sympathize with the challenges (and joys) I imagine it to be. I think it's a clever idea to join him for an MMO. (You might also consider Diablo, which you can multi-play and in which dialogue/text plays less of a role...and I still have fun with Diablo I.) (There's also Baldur's Gate running with TuTu, a modification tool that allows you to customize a lot of the game, e.g. to make BG1 and BG2 use the same ruleset. There's a lot of the game that includes voice-overs for the story...and you might be able to manage additional things by linking with a text→speech toolset.) – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:08, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought someone credited you with it at one time.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll check into some of those and see what pops up. Daddicus 06:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

How much are War Supplies worth

you forgot another use of these witch bumps the price up alot witch makes the price quite logical: the consumable bit of it +1hp regen and +5 armor witch can be a life saver for beginning speedclearers and for record runs. naloj 15:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not forgotten so much as it's implied in the value of direct sales. I find that players that speed clear or attempt record runs frequently offer to pay more than asking price. However, there are far more players interested in O-weapons and Royal Gifts...so it's hard these days to get much more than 260. The main reason people have been willing to overpay for supplies (relative to RGs or O-weapons) is that people value time over money: if you have 240 supplies, you're willing to pay extra to get the last 10 and be done with it.

In my experience, at least nine of every ten sales of supplies are small amounts (less than 100) for O-weapons. And at least four of every five large-amount sales are from people who talk about medals of honor/HoM.

Still, you're right that I haven't discussed the specific PvE-use, which is, as you note, very important to some players. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 13:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)