[Utility] Collection Analysis

PS: I was just scanning the forum for anything interesting and discovered the seven years old thread about another CH fan project that - unfortunately - is also called Card Hunter Utils. But what I learnt over there is that the resource files I rely on for the tools to work apparently aren't updated anymore with the browser versions gone for good. That changes a lot as it would mean that I would have to reinvent this one wheel completely. Or at least find a replacement URL to pull the resource files from (does Steam do compressed game downloads only or can I directly access single files?).

I can just use and include my local Steam files, but until this issue is solved, the utils will never be as up-to-date as they used to be in the times when Stexe's hosting works flawlessly (hey, no attack, just a matter of fact that we had some strange bugs with the hosted version).

Perhaps we can find some knowledgeable folks that showed some interest in the tools before and that can shed some light on this issue: (nudge) @Flaxative (nudge) is there any possible solution for this issue regarding the online resource files?

Otherwise, (combined with all the things I said in the last post a few minutes before) I feel like the utils are beyond their "Best before" date, sadly.

 

Is there a bug with the hosting? I didn't know. I can update it to whatever is needed if you think it will fix it.

Hope everyone is doing well all things considered.

 

I didn't want to imply any bug with the hosting. Honestly, It would have been months at least since I last checked the hosted tools. If I need the tools, I run them locally because hosting a php-site locally on Linux is faster than accessing a remote server somewhere on the internet anyways. So, for all I know, the hosted tools could be totally fine or broken beyond repair. I was just refering to times where - without both of us being able to figure out why - no scripts would run or similar occasions. And without having CH open in parallel - which, as I said, I have fairly infrequently these days - I honestly couldn't judge the hosted tools' status. So, if you haven't heard any complains, I would assume the tools work just fine.

To elaborate further on my last PS:
The utils from the get-go were designed to be run as a web-site. So, it was always quite fundamental that the tools were fairly independent from a runnable game. With the absence of up-to-date resource files freely accessible on the internet, maintaining an updated web-site would mean that either someone had to actively (and probably manually) check and if necessary update the resource files on a frequent schedule (ideally daily), or that the web-site would also have a runnable game installation it could draw from that would be kept up-to-date as well. Both aren't viable for the tools to be hosted somewhere remote. Because most web-hosts wouldn't really like if you installed Steam on the machine. And - at least if this really was manual - no-one would want to check for updates daily. The forum thread for the Daily Deal was automated at some point for the exact same reasons.

Now, if I can't have free access to the resource files, the tools might just as well be a local executable of some sort that would link itself to the installed CH Steam resource files. But I definitely wouldn't rewrite the whole project again! I haven't really checked myself, but if I can't find the resource files somewhere where I can eaily pull them from whenever I want, I wouldn't see much reason to update the utils, frankly. At this point the tools would become a chore to keep relevant. Especially, if I don't play CH as much as I used to. The Knights promised more frequent updates and hopefully we reliably see the seasonal events when they should be held, then that means that there would be several times per year that the utils needed a (timely) update just to keep the resources updated. That is bad practice! I have spent probably months to bring back the automated updating tools that we had from neoncat (after I had ripped it out for my own sanity, because I only could multi-task up to some point when rewriting the files). Just for it to break again without my knowledge and involvement.

So, if the devs want to tolerate and support efforts by the community to make the game more fun for everyone, then the community needs to see actions taken that prove those claims. If we can't have stuff like the resource files (or only by manually launching an external piece of software), this is a huge hindrance for any community efforts. If this was a political question, I'd ask you all to mail your local senator or representative. But the same could apply here. Let your local Knight know that the community relies on information they (apparently) no longer provide.

 

I'll share the info with them on Discord.

 

Have we reached the situation were the devs of some game don't read their own forum anymore??? Great!

 

I think @Sir Civil does.

 

Yes, I know, I could have @-ed some of the officials as well (or send a dm) to get a quick response, but usually I tend to not do a @all-type of thing to avoid bothering a bunch of people who don't really care or have better things to do, so thanks @Sir Veza for doing that for me. That's why I tried Flaxative as he participated in some discussions earlier on. (And I wasn't yet really able to invest time into the utils, so no need to rush this.)

Assuming this fix from the Knights doesn't take too long, I will probably prepare the new version in the next week, but for now not publish until the fix is rolled out. I have to work out some administrative/technical details on my side, but that shouldn't take long (thanks Microsoft for killing Atom, so I plan to switch editors before this even becomes reality, but this switch could cause some minor changes in my process; I never really liked Atom, but for the time, it was my best option). In case this fix can't happen in a timely manner I will check back with myself and probably this thread, how to handle the situation, but let's hope that all goes well.

Either way, I appreciate that the files are still supposed to be kept up-to-date despite the death of Flash.

 

Okay, end of month and here's an update:

I'm pretty confident that I have a new version ready that should work well with the new items, cards, and adventures. I would like it to be more adaptable to newer sets (for now it's still a bunch of places where you have to do manual edits of several kinds), but I haven't figured out a nice way to implement this and new sets shouldn't be that frequent, or will they? When I change this eventually, I want to do this the right way, and not the hacky way I already have today!

While testing several aspects I encountered and already fixed some bugs that no-one so far noticed. The non-dev version (and perhaps the dev-version also under certain circumstances) was never able to open the info pages from the collection-analysis page (the "i"-buttons at the end of each line). I changed the behavior to populate the newly opened info page after a tenth of a second. That should always work. If anyone encounters a problem with this, please let me know. Javascript/browsers aren't capable enough to implement a more robust way of populating the info pages (as far as I know), so, we have to live with this workaround. And I fixed some other errors that I somewhat randomly got from the utils that I don't even know anymore where they happened exactly.

All I'm waiting for at this point is the updated resource files. I figured out that I could migrate from the production resource files to the testing resource files because they are more recent currently, but (a) they could suffer the same issues that the production resource files suffer from today, they could be out of date because if the Knights can forget to update the production files they could forget the testing files as well, and (b) Sir Civil promised me that the production files will be kept up-to-date assuming not too many developers are on summer break at the same time (I hope I was allowed to disclose this part of our counversation). And I don't want to include testing files now that will immediately be overwritten if you try to update the resource files (because the update will still pull the production files).

Another "problem" with the utils is that the wiki isn't up-to-date either. That's not an inherent problem for the utils - they work just fine and don't really care about the wiki - but for its users. The utils will be able to offer you links to wiki-pages of the new items and cards, but the wiki will just tell you "this page doesn't exist". But, to be frank with you, I won't also spend time updating the wiki. That's other players' business.

PS: I have a fairly good understanding of Card Hunter and what goes into items and such. So can someone please explain to me what's up with Ancient Seal, Grinding Raiment, Ikari's Gauntlet, Pazu's Profane Pledge, Sweltering Lantern, Transcendent Asceticism, and Trusty Tetsubo? All these items don't have the rarity they should have. And, to be honest, an item's rarity and level was one of the aspects that was always pretty straight forward. If we now start with arbirary item properties, then what meaning is left for a card's level and rarity?

 

So, still no news on the resource files as far as I know, but I was active the last days. Because the new feature in Card Hunter is nice, but cumbersome to use. In case you haven't figured out, I'm speaking of the crafting.

My problems with the in-game crafting:

• if an item needs multiple copies of the same card, the game tells you that the item is craftable, even if you only ever have one copy of this card in your collection
  
• it an item needs several cards, that would all be sourced from the same item instance, the game tells you that the item is craftable, even if you can't use the same item twice
• the game tells you that items are craftable that you already maxed out on, thanks, but seriously, who needs this info?
• the game uses every collected item to determine if some item is craftable, but what if I want to keep some items?
• Selecting one of the cards to filter your collection doesn't reset all the other filter criteria, so finding excess items can be a lot of manual work

Hence, I added a tool to the utils that will solve all of these problems. Currently, some details aren't fully ironed out, but the tool so far seems functional and working correctly.

• First, you paste your collection
• then you select how many copies you want to keep (in the common fashion: keep none (aka the in-game option), keep one copy, keep one character worth, keep balanced team, keep full team)
• then you select how many copies you target for the crafting (craft any item you don't have, craft until one character, until balanced team, until full team)
• then you have the option to limit the use of items with rare cards (*)
  
• then you click the button and get a list of every single possible crafting with the above criteria applied.

The tool won't try to max out your crafting options, aka if you craft any of the displayed items, all others MIGHT not be possible anymore. So pick your first item-to-craft wisely. And the tool will list the items you have to sacrifize for each card. Currently, the list might/will contain dublicates. So if two cards can both be sourced from the same two items, the tool might suggest to sacrifize item A for card 1 and item B for card 2, and at the same time suggest to use item B for card 1 and item A for card 2. I don't know whether I can / want to "solve" that.

(*) Prior to the latest update (see the PS in my last post) cards "caused" the rarity of the items. So, if an item contained a rare card, the item was at least rare. But rarer items are harder to collect. So, using a common card from an epic item is a waste of this item for me. So, there is an option to either allow the tool to consider any card, or to only consider rare cards if the item in question contains any rare cards, or to always only consider the cards of the highest rarity. Common and Uncommon cards don't make much of a difference, so using a common card from an item without rares but with uncommons is not as bad, hence the second option. But you can always use the first option to reduce the crafting cost. Because the tool will not check/optimize how expensive crafting will be and using rarer items as material will decrease the price to pay.

But, as I said before, I'm wating for the updated resource files for now, so unless you urgently want to try this new tool, I would like to wait for the knights to fix their problem first.

Have a great weekend!

 

Any updates?

 

Okay, then I won't wait for the next patch but release soon at the risk of causing failing resource updates for some incautious users. But not today as I have some things to do right now. But this weekend, I hope. See you then...

 

Well, there are two problems left in regards to the resource files, but here is the new release. I haven't done one of these in apparently one year, so please inform me if anything with the archives is off. The process is fully automated at that point, but it's the first time with my new development environment and on this particular system, so you never know...

The mentioned problems:

• You CANNOT operate the utils in their "fully automated update" version currently. In theory you can delete the resource files locally to force the tools to fetch the most recent versions from the game server, but this obviously isn't working for as long as the Knights haven't pushed out another update. Similarly, attempting to update the resource files will "fail" aka pull outdated files. But the update script won't notice and just replace the included resources. So, if you have any scheduled processes updating your resource files in place, disable them (at least) until the Knights did their next game patch.
• Second, the Figures-resource file that I pulled from my local installation contains information that isn't up to date either. (Edit: well, they are up to date - I took them yesterday - but they contain informationt hat suggest that they can't be up to date) If you open the "Color Schemes of CH Figures" you will find placeholders for images that aren't available on the server. That should not be possible for live game data. So, I can't ultimately promise you that the resource files are the most recent because with recent files, no such things should occur. Alternatively, you can always replace these four files with your own local game installation resource files.

Other than that, grab the non-dev archive for local testing (just open the index.html in your browser and keep in mind that some (but very few) features won't work in this version), or the dev version for any server-deployments (or local testing if you know how to set up a php environment).

And, please, tell me where I messed up! Especially the crafting guide tool is brand new and I suspect that there are still errors in it.

Have a great weekend!

 

So, there apparently is some bug in the new crafting guide already that I just found myself. The Rarity Limiter should exclude more and more possible crafts the futher down the list you go with your selection. But if you select a less restrictive option, you should always see the same (and more) than when selecting a more restrictive one. But I just had the case that on "only highest rarity" I had one suggestion and on any of the other two settings, I had a completely different one. But with the lowerst restriction, I should have had both.

And I'm pretty sure that the tool was in a stage where, if you could craft a three-card-item with three different items, you should always see six lines for this item with all permutations. But I don't see that and I don't recall that I actually spend any time in improving this to the point where you only get one line. So, something's still not completely working.

If you find other problems, tell me, I will try to fix them soon, but no promises currently. So far, I would say that the guide won't show you crafts that aren't possible, but better check manually before actually clicking the "Craft"-button. And ideally attach your collection dump in a txt file when reporting a bug here so I have (more) data to test on.

 

It may be a while before I get the time to try this, but thanks.

 

Okay, the issue I had was a really hilarious but idiotic one. You had to be really lucky for the last version to even find a single craftable item! Now, the crafting guide should work better (hopefully correct, but you never know).

BUT, a few words of warning:

• Set the "Copies kept" to your actual target limit or higher! If you set it lower, then the guide will try to "use up" a lot more items, and can easily generate millions of crafting suggestions and that will take a lot of time, If for example, you only generally keep one copy of each item, except for some selected ones you have more of, then setting it to "one copy" should still be fine. If you hoard everything, probably use "full team" (at first).
  
• Only de-select the output limiter if you really know that only a finite set of suggestions will be generated. If you disable the limiter, all generated suggestions will be actually displayed, which can actually crash your browser! On one of my test inputs, the tool generated thousands if not millions of combinations for a single item-to-craft.
  
• Ideally, slowly approach your intended settings and "test the waters". Especially, if you run the tool the first time. Set everything to the most extreme (keep a whole team, only target one copy and only use rarest cards) and see what the tool outputs. Afterwards you can always be more permissive. If you run the tool regularly, you will probably be able to start with more "sane"/normal defaults. But in the current version, it really generates all possible combinations of items that you could use for crafting.
• And - as I said before - after you have crafted one item, you should either transfer your collection dump from the game anew or at least keep in mind which items you used up to determine if a different suggestion is even possible anymore.

At some point I will try to remove duplicates from the output, but it is hard to determine what exactly a duplicate is in general in this context. And the tool is meant to be used frequently, not after you collected a ton of new items. So, limiting the output shouldn't be really urgent. If, in contrast, you want to craft a specific item, you would use other resources than this crafting guide. For example the wiki, if it were up-to-date.

Have a great time, playing around with the new tool.

 

Quick notice: I know that the Collection Badge tool is (somewhat) "broken", as it will not draw enough bars to represent all levels of items. So, higher levels will be cut if the selection spans more than - I think - 21 different levels of items. But to me that isn't a show-stopper, especially compared to the non-functioning crafting guide I had before. So, I will patch this either at some point (Stexe updating his hosted version would come to mind, which usually don't happen right away) or together with other stuff that gets reported (and fixed), but not right away. It is a single number in a single file after all, so... Still, I might want to create a "guide" on what to change in face of a new set of items/adventures eventually, in order to prevent this from happening again. Or we would need more (frequent) updates to the game, such that I have a routine for adding new sets. Is that a deal, TKOU?

 

I can update the hosted version whenever. I was migrating some stuff on my server the last few days but it should be finished by now. So whenever a new stable version is up let me know and I can put it up. Just don't want to update it more than once a month-ish. So whenever you have a build that you think is good enough to host for a month or two I'll do it.

 

As long as I find new minor issues every now and then, I wouldn't exactly call it stable. Ideally, I would love for others to test the tools as well, because the issues I can find are pretty much limited to the few things I use the tools for. For example, I very rarely use the badge tools, so the fact that I found a bug there at all was pure luck. But as soon as we have a stable version, it can last for a long while. I think the previous stable version was useful for about a year or so.

Given that we have a new tool and a new set (of items and adventures), I would be totally fine with just putting SOME version out there, even if it might still have some bugs. And unless these potential bugs are real show-stoppers, having this version hosted for about a month or longer shouldn't be a problem. If you agree, I can provide a new version, otherwise we can wait a bit longer.

PS: I recently discovered that the info-buttons on the collection analysis still don't work with every browser (although I haven't yet spent any time with figuring out which browsers/systems are affected). But at this point i'm about to give up. If anyone can tell me how I can solve this problem once and for all, I can change the implementaiton once again, but I feel like the browser vendors all the time come up with new ideas (usually to block ads and popups of some kind) that block me from using the available functions for a useful feature. And I'm already in the fourth or fifth iteration of the info-buttons, so, yeah, I'm both out of ideas and motivation to find a new way that will either not work with every browser or only work for a short time. Why are there HTML- and JS-standards if no-one adheres to them!