Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2012 3:34 pm**

READ ME wrote:
AI Trading Assistant OXP ver. 2.8.1
Date: March 8th, 2013
Author: Wildeblood
Inspired by: Capt. Murphy

Installation:

Place the AI Trading Assistant OXP into your "AddOns" folder. Head to a planet of technical level 9, or above, where you can purchase the Trading Assistant from the ship outfitters for 2012 credits. Trading Assistant will not be offered in the ship outfitters in communist systems. Being an artificial intelligence, and not heavy equipment, Trading Assistant is portable between ships, and will stay with you if you buy a new ship in the shipyard.

Version 2 will work only with Oolite 1.77 or later - it will not work in Oolite 1.76.1. With this version I have promoted Capt. Murphy to emeritus author, since it has been completely re-written and no longer contains any of his original code.

From version 2.1 as soon as you place the AI Trading Assistant OXP into your "AddOns" folder it will begin keeping a permanent, long-run account of all your trading. It will do this immediately, before you buy the equipment in game. If the equipment is damaged, record-keeping will silently continue.

Features:

Once purchased, the Trading Assistant will:-

1) Monitor your cargo trades in real time, and give an immediate warning if you are paying unusually high prices, or selling for low prices that are likely to result in unprofitable trading.

2) Record the prices you pay for cargo, and display a list of the average prices paid for each cargo type.

3) Offer recommendations of which commodities to buy and sell, based on current market prices.

4) Remind you about cargo that has been aboard too long, taking up valuable space.

5) Show information screens revealing which commodities you have traded most profitably over time, and which stations you have recently visited.

6) AI Trading Assistant OXP now includes Autotrade ATS, the original and genuine Automatic Trading System.

Autotrade ATS:

By default Autotrade is off, to enable it go to the trading assistant screen (from the F4 interfaces screen) and select either fast or slow trading mode. Twenty-two seconds after you view the commodity market screen Autotrade will begin trading on your behalf, fully automatically. Make a nice cup of tea, sit back and watch as Autotrade takes the effort out of trading. Why press buttons yourself when Autotrade can do it for you? (You can, of course, continue to trade normally yourself while Autotrade is trading.)

From the trading assistant screen you can also set a reserve space for Autotrade to allow when buying cargo. That will leave empty space in your cargo hold for from 1 to 5 cargo pods or equivalent - useful if you like to do some mining along the way.

Autotrade does not normally discriminate illegal goods when purchasing, it is concerned solely with finding the best discounts. If you wish to prevent Autotrade from recommending or buying illegal goods, you can download a tiny additional OXP to modify its behaviour:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/AI_Tra ... t#Download

Fallback Datalogger:

Sometimes, you might wish to disable or remove AI Trading Assistant OXP temporarily while you experiment, or just for fun, remembering trading the old-fashioned way. Will that mean a gap in your accounts?

No. Included in the download you should find an OXP called "AI Trading Fallback Datalogger". That OXP will normally be inactive and do nothing, however if you remove the AI Trading Assistant OXP the fallback datalogger will automatically take over record-keeping functions. There will be no sign of Trading Assistant within the game, but:-
(1) record-keeping will silently continue and be up-to-date when you replace the AI Trading Assistant OXP, and:
(2) you will not have to re-purchase the equipment in the game.

You can place the AI Trading Fallback Datalogger OXP into your "AddOns" folder right away and forget about it; it will cause no performace loss and is completely inert while the main AI Trading Assistant OXP is present.

Recent changes:

2.8.1 (March 8th, 2013) Increased variety of messages at rock hermits and OXP stations.

2.8 (March 7th, 2013) New, chattier AI.

Discussion of version 2.12 begins on page 10. The discussion below relates to versions 1.4 to 1.9, for Oolite 1.76, which are no longer available. Discussion of version 2.x, for Oolite 1.77, begins on page 5.

Here is the latest version, 1.9, of AI Trading Assistant that can warn the player if they're paying too much, selling for too low a price, or getting a good deal when buying or selling cargo. In this version I've changed the HUD files to display handy reminders of which key presses can be used for buying and selling. It seems many people are unaware that when you already have some of a particular commodity you can use [shift] [>] to buy more, and were pressing [enter] [enter] to sell their current holding then immediately buy it back again, thus preventing Trading Assistant from keeping a proper record of their purchases.

READ ME wrote:
AI Trading Assistant OXP ver. 1.9
Date: September 20th, 2012
Authors: Capt. Murphy, Wildeblood

Installation and use:

Place the Trading Assistant OXP into your "AddOns" folder. Head to a planet of technical level 9, or above, where you can purchase the Trading Assistant from the ship outfitters for 2012 credits. Trading Assistant will not be offered in the ship outfitters in communist systems.

Once purchased, the Trading Assistant will monitor your cargo trades in real time, and give an immediate warning if you are paying unusually high prices, or selling for low prices that are likely to result in unprofitable trading. It will also record the prices you pay for cargo, and later remind you when you sell. Being an artificial intelligence, and not heavy equipment, Trading Assistant is portable between ships, and will stay with you if you buy a new ship in the shipyard.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:34 am**

I've just bought one of these equipment upgrades having downloaded the OXP the other day. On trading all looks good, however in flight, it has altered the place that messages come up, they come up under my HUD and I can't now read them.

I've removed the OXP and now all is OK again.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:23 pm**

JazHaz wrote:
On trading all looks good, however in flight, it has altered the place that messages come up, they come up under my HUD and I can't now read them.

That means your flight HUD is missing a definition for the message interface, so once it's changed on the market screen, it stays changed. I must admit here that MilHUD 4000 is one HUD that also lacks such a definition, and suffers this problem. I've been meaning to update it for weeks.

Would I be right in thinking you use MilHUD 4.0, JazHaz? If so, IIRC there's a file called hud.plist inside it that contains just the message_gui and comms_gui definitions and is otherwise blank. Copying them from there into the other HUD plists will solve the problem.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:39 pm**

Hiya,

I was using "Market Aide" before, but after seeing your product, I decided to try it, as it has a really good idea about telling you if you're trading shrewdly - or not.

Everything seems to work fine, and this is where I see a down side for someone who has large cargo capacity (which incidentally, would be the type of player who would try to use this oxp):

You see, that when you already have a certain type of commodity on board - and would want to buy more - it is so much easier to just sell everything you currently have, and then buy everything that is for sale. just two clicks, or confirmations are required, instead of depressing the arrow key many times to buy (or sell) just one at a time. Plus the game has this annoying bell ringing all the time, when you do (reason it is annoying, is because it is so loud).

So to avoid all that, (as I said) I will simply sell everything, and then buy everything. But in doing so, your program tells me that I am losing money, which is of course true, and then tells me the last time that I bought or sold this commodity, how much I either made or lost, which is also true and accurate. But I don't need to know that, because I just did so just to avoid having to click or press a key many times. Then when I arrive at the next station and start dealing, the same thing happens.

So this telling me of each immediate (short cut) transaction is now defeating the purpose, because it isn't really helping me. What helps the most is the extra column in the screen which gives the average price for the commodities. But Market Aide already has that, and also the minimum and maximum price range.

I don't want to bring you down, as it looks like I am complaining - in fact it is quite the opposite.
I'm trying to bring to your attention how someone like me uses your oxp, and how I conduct my trading in the F8 screen.
And with this information, maybe you could figure on some way to improve it - or alternately - tell me what I am doing wrong.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:42 pm**

Wildeblood wrote:
JazHaz wrote:
On trading all looks good, however in flight, it has altered the place that messages come up, they come up under my HUD and I can't now read them.
That means your flight HUD is missing a definition for the message interface, so once it's changed on the market screen, it stays changed. I must admit here that MilHUD 4000 is one HUD that also lacks such a definition, and suffers this problem. I've been meaning to update it for weeks.

Would I be right in thinking you use MilHUD 4.0, JazHaz? If so, IIRC there's a file called hud.plist inside it that contains just the message_gui and comms_gui definitions and is otherwise blank. Copying them from there into the other HUD plists will solve the problem.

I do use MilHUD 4.0 (not the MilHUD 4000 as that's different), however I had already set up the message and comms definitions before I got the AI TA OXP, so that's not the solution.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:46 pm**

DeathKnyte wrote:
You see, that when you already have a certain type of commodity on board - and would want to buy more - it is so much easier to just sell everything you currently have, and then buy everything that is for sale.

Try holding down Shift while pressing the "buy" arrow key.

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:43 pm**

DeathKnyte wrote:
it is so much easier to just sell everything you currently have, and then buy everything that is for sale. just two clicks, or confirmations are required, instead of depressing the arrow key many times to buy (or sell) just one at a time. Plus the game has this annoying bell ringing all the time, when you do (reason it is annoying, is because it is so loud).

The sheer loudness of this annoying bell ringing is a bug to me. I have to play Oolite at a relatively quiet level just to avoid causing my ears pain when buying/selling.

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:02 am**

JazHaz wrote:
Wildeblood wrote:
JazHaz wrote:
On trading all looks good, however in flight, it has altered the place that messages come up, they come up under my HUD and I can't now read them.
That means your flight HUD is missing a definition for the message interface, so once it's changed on the market screen, it stays changed... Would I be right in thinking you use MilHUD 4.0, JazHaz? If so, IIRC there's a file called hud.plist inside it that contains just the message_gui and comms_gui definitions and is otherwise blank. Copying them from there into the other HUD plists will solve the problem.
I do use MilHUD 4.0... however I had already set up the message and comms definitions before I got the AI TA OXP, so that's not the solution.

Yes, it is, James. I'm very familiar with this problem, because it also affects the photo-record feature of Explorers' Club: the saved photos should have the name of the planet neatly printed at the bottom centre of the image, but will actually have it where-ever your usual HUD puts messages because the photo-HUD contains no message GUI definition. (If you're using MilHUD 4.0 - or any other switching HUD that uses Thargoid's script - you've probably never seen the photo-HUD at all, but that's a separate problem.)

Look for a file called just hud.plist, that is the completely blank one only shown at start-up. Copy the message_gui key from there to milhud-blank.plist which is the almost blank HUD used when docked. If you want to be thorough, also copy it to milhud-yellow.plist, the one that will be switched to when you launch.

Addenda:

A question for people using HUDs that switch between an in-flight and a docked version: if you launch directly from the market screen with Trading Assistant running, do you get your correct in-flight HUD displayed, or your docked HUD instead?

Switeck wrote:
DeathKnyte wrote:
Plus the game has this annoying bell ringing all the time, when you do (reason it is annoying, is because it is so loud).
The sheer loudness of this annoying bell ringing is a bug to me.

+1 I'm another who thinks the warning bell is either too loud compared to other sound effects, or not the appropriate effect for buying and selling.

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:58 am**

Wildeblood wrote:
Switeck wrote:
DeathKnyte wrote:
Plus the game has this annoying bell ringing all the time, when you do (reason it is annoying, is because it is so loud).
The sheer loudness of this annoying bell ringing is a bug to me.
+1 I'm another who thinks the warning bell is either too loud compared to other sound effects, or not the appropriate effect for buying and selling.

You could get another buy/sell .ogg from somewhere. Personally, I think the core 'bell' is fine - it's the sound of making money!

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 5:00 pm**

cim wrote:
DeathKnyte wrote:
You see, that when you already have a certain type of commodity on board - and would want to buy more - it is so much easier to just sell everything you currently have, and then buy everything that is for sale.
Try holding down Shift while pressing the "buy" arrow key.

Okay.... That just about solves that. Thank you, cim.

Perhaps; you guys could maybe add this control function in the Oolite Readme (Instruction Manual), which comes with the game, under the Commodity Market, in the In Dock Commands section.

Switeck, Wildeblood, El Viejo:

There is a control in the F2 screen to lower volume, but it lowers the volume of everything at once. So if you lower it so the (money) bell is at a comfortable level - you can no longer hear what the on board computer voice is saying.

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 5:07 pm**

DeathKnyte wrote:
... if you lower it so the (money) bell is at a comfortable level - you can no longer hear what the on board computer voice is saying.

Curious... I don't find the money-bell to be over-loud when compared to the other sound effects at all.
That may be because I use the [wiki]BGS[/wiki] OXP with all its own sound effects (except for the money-bell, which I swapped-in from core Oolite).

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 5:41 pm**

DeathKnyte wrote:
Perhaps; you guys could maybe add this control function in the Oolite Readme (Instruction Manual), which comes with the game, under the Commodity Market, in the In Dock Commands section.

Yes, good point. I'll make sure that's in the next time the PDF's updated.

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:12 pm**

El Viejo wrote:
DeathKnyte wrote:
... if you lower it so the (money) bell is at a comfortable level - you can no longer hear what the on board computer voice is saying.
Curious... I don't find the money-bell to be over-loud when compared to the other sound effects at all.
That may be because I use the [wiki]BGS[/wiki] OXP with all its own sound effects (except for the money-bell, which I swapped-in from core Oolite).

I'm only using the vanilla sound effects, and I don't find that the money-bell stands out particularly.

Posted: **Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:39 pm**

It's interesting is this bell. On my PC's monitor's speakers it is about what you'd expect. However when routed through my Audio system it is extremely loud in comparison to most of the other sounds.

Posted: **Sat Sep 15, 2012 5:33 am**

Righto, how does this arrangement of reminders look?

I think it messy, inelegant and anaesthetic*, and remind you that you apparently got by without such reminders before. But if it meets with your approval, it will become the new ~~1.7~~ 1.8 some time later this week. You might be surprised how much fiddling about is involved in a small change like this.

So, an idea I had for ~~1.7~~ 1.8, which I suppose will now be ~~1.8~~ 1.9, was to prevent buying of illegal goods at GalCop main stations, by instantly reversing such trades. What do youse think? ~~(Is player.ship.dockedStation.isMainStation a real property - it looks familiar?)~~

* Spell-checker insisted.

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