I've been enjoying the excellent scripts from Bale, dj_d, Zarqon, aquaelectrix and more and feeling the need to contribute back to the community.
I think I have a modest contribution that meets a need that comes out once in a while in Item Handling scripts like EatDrink, PriceAdvisor, etc: the actual price of an item in KoLmafia. Even with the new "share mall prices" capabilities I'm finding that the fleet of KoLmafia scripts are often hampered only by the quality of the mall pricing. Not only is it sometimes outdated but there is an opportunity for better pricing resolution besides "the fifth entry in the mall". Hint: I don't think "the first entry in the mall" cuts it, either.
I know the philosophy regarding mall pricing vs mallbots and so before releasing the utility I wanted to get the ok of the community at large. Let me put down first a teaser of what TrueMall is and isn't:
Keypoints:
1. Tweaks mallprices.txt with a true pricing of an item. Not just the fifth entry in the mall or the first entry in the mall.
2. Limited to being run at *most* once a day. I hope this removes the mallbot suspicions. This is a hard limitation, and cannot easily be subverted, I promise. If there are other ways to alleviate these suspicions please let me know.
3. Is not a KoLmafia script. Works outside of KoLmafia and needs a simple command-line program and preferably a bash (not ash!) script. For the Windows folks this may present a slight learning curve. Another way to look at it: there may be an opportunity for a hosted gateway to do this automatically if anyone actually is interested in this.
4. Is not a KoLmafia script. Is meant to play nice with KoLmafia but can and will break as KoLmafia evolves. I'm not even sure it is possible to tweak and spoof mallprices.txt with current builds so it may not even work out of the gate. Work-In-Progress.
Hopefully it puts to rest the occasional query about doing an "Economics Project" (yeah: the economics project entitled Making Me Meat!) and needing better mall price resolution, in a non-destructive way. I've been very interested lately to see how efficient the Kol market is. It's surprisingly VERY efficient.
My questions to you are:
a. Would this be an offensive utility to the KoLmafia philosophy?
b. Would you find this useful?
Even if it doesn't see the light of day, thank you to all the KoLmafia developers and script writers for producing such a fine product!
hroth
I think I have a modest contribution that meets a need that comes out once in a while in Item Handling scripts like EatDrink, PriceAdvisor, etc: the actual price of an item in KoLmafia. Even with the new "share mall prices" capabilities I'm finding that the fleet of KoLmafia scripts are often hampered only by the quality of the mall pricing. Not only is it sometimes outdated but there is an opportunity for better pricing resolution besides "the fifth entry in the mall". Hint: I don't think "the first entry in the mall" cuts it, either.
I know the philosophy regarding mall pricing vs mallbots and so before releasing the utility I wanted to get the ok of the community at large. Let me put down first a teaser of what TrueMall is and isn't:
Keypoints:
1. Tweaks mallprices.txt with a true pricing of an item. Not just the fifth entry in the mall or the first entry in the mall.
2. Limited to being run at *most* once a day. I hope this removes the mallbot suspicions. This is a hard limitation, and cannot easily be subverted, I promise. If there are other ways to alleviate these suspicions please let me know.
3. Is not a KoLmafia script. Works outside of KoLmafia and needs a simple command-line program and preferably a bash (not ash!) script. For the Windows folks this may present a slight learning curve. Another way to look at it: there may be an opportunity for a hosted gateway to do this automatically if anyone actually is interested in this.
4. Is not a KoLmafia script. Is meant to play nice with KoLmafia but can and will break as KoLmafia evolves. I'm not even sure it is possible to tweak and spoof mallprices.txt with current builds so it may not even work out of the gate. Work-In-Progress.
Hopefully it puts to rest the occasional query about doing an "Economics Project" (yeah: the economics project entitled Making Me Meat!) and needing better mall price resolution, in a non-destructive way. I've been very interested lately to see how efficient the Kol market is. It's surprisingly VERY efficient.
My questions to you are:
a. Would this be an offensive utility to the KoLmafia philosophy?
b. Would you find this useful?
Even if it doesn't see the light of day, thank you to all the KoLmafia developers and script writers for producing such a fine product!
hroth