Curse

Murkrow · Feb 15, 2008, 06:27 PM // 18:27

Update 2008-08-31: First batch is out! Click to go to post #33 with the download

[email protected] Starting today, I'm also watching rare materials and dyes. No screens are available (yet) and I still need buyback price research. I will try to get the site up in the following week.
Also, all pictures at this date are pretty much temporary. Graphs will be awesomed up, a calculator for material and gold usage, etc. But not just yet. Read my other posts for more info.

-----
OP:

I've been thinking of doing this a long time before I actually started. I was in dilemma how to get updates as often as possible and as accurate as possible. Thinking of getting 2 updates per day in 12 hour delays was bit too much (as I get up at like 5:15 in the morning at weekdays), not to mention the extreme 4 times a day in 6 hour offset.

And so, I am doing daily updates to the graph since 26th of December, 2007 between 14:30 to 15:00 CET, sometimes later in the day due to my absence (There are entires before that date, but those had 5-2 day gaps). I've decided that I will (for start) focus on CM market and expand to rares and dyes later (non-npc market will never ever be tracked (unless an auction house flies in suddenly)). First day I experimented with price comparisons of using artisans vs. buying, but that took too much space for that time. It's gonna be revived... Once.

Either way, my... "work" so far:

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE GRAPH (changed to link because it was kinda annoying to read the thread.)

- Buy/Sell difference is 100g, while minimum buyback price at trader is 30-40g. You can see how could one get super rich by buying and selling on right days
- See that massive blue spike? Canthan new year.

Facts:
- As I know next to nothing about Gw.dat, I have been limited to collecting data once a day, manually, walking to material trader every time and wearing off my keypad.
- Sadly, due to aforementioned reason, I was not able to closely record the price movements. For example, on one day I recorded 320 at the usual time, but in the evening it was at 390g.
- Wood planks, Bones and now even Chitin fragments: booring.
- Right now the graph is extremely confusing, except for materials with higher values. I know. It's temporary.

Aims:
- Somehow construct a giant terminator machine that will collect data each hour, every day. This could be either done by a constantly running machine doing checks (which is TECHNICALLY against the Eula) or public input.
- Create an online site with live data. Think Yahoo! Finance, except a lot worse.
- Maybe an analysis of effects of days in week/special events to the market.
- Alert something that will notify the user if a material gains on value enough to profit from it.

Suggestions, help, gold, Alaska, hosting (maybe later) are all welcome.

Mini Update1: Currently 59 days of data.

Murkrow · Feb 20, 2008, 03:24 PM // 15:24

Since it took me some time to finally contact mods to review the thread and approve it, its age made it fall down half a page.
I don't usually double post, but for the sake of visibility I'll make an exception.

Also, I would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of "getting prices out of the dat file".

61 days of data. I'll have the site (and more neatly visible data) ready before I reach 3 months.

schaapie · Feb 20, 2008, 05:27 PM // 17:27

You can not get it out of the dat file, maybe youc an get it out your memmory but i dont know how that works.

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 05:37 PM // 17:37

LOL

Man I had just the same Idea but I was a bit lazy to start counting them hehe.

I would have done it in excel... lol.

This looks like Wall Street graphs :P. Maybe its a bit confusing as you say but u can also see how the in-game events or news change the market value as the Cantha New Year event (see Piles of Dust value increasing).

I dunno why feathers are going so expensive compared to other comm. materials. Maybe caused by Essence of celerity consumables... ^^

Nice Job!

PD: Maybe we can announce something great / important to make the market's values just change like rumors about yahoo / google / Msoft do in real world :P.

Mohnzh · Feb 20, 2008, 06:00 PM // 18:00

I think feathers have stayed up in price for a few years now due to the high demand for certain monk armors and the low rate of salvage. Really the only place I have ever gotten feathers were straight drops from Avicara.

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 06:06 PM // 18:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohnzh

low rate of salvage. Really the only place I have ever gotten feathers were straight drops from Avicara.

I think that they drop a lot... but you have to farm the avicaras of course. Nahpui it's told to be the "perfect" place... huh?

Anyway... offer & demmand will put them in their correct value.
Hope there's a noobish zone where ectos drop, lol. They will lower then their actual value.

Murkrow · Feb 20, 2008, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnagard

LOL

Man I had just the same Idea but I was a bit lazy to start counting them hehe.

I would have done it in excel... lol.

This looks like Wall Street graphs :P. Maybe its a bit confusing as you say but u can also see how the in-game events or news change the market value as the Cantha New Year event (see Piles of Dust value increasing).

I dunno why feathers are going so expensive compared to other comm. materials. Maybe caused by Essence of celerity consumables... ^^

Nice Job!

PD: Maybe we can announce something great / important to make the market's values just change like rumors about yahoo / google / Msoft do in real world :P.

I was lazy too, but I said "The sooner I start the better".

I'm actually doing it in excel.

I'm logging huge events that may affect market prices. CNY is the only thing in there right now.

Feathers, I don't know about feathers. I just hope they don't turn out as boring as bones are... yawn.

As for the announcement... That wouldn't really work. Google is google, and gwguru is, imho, a small site, even when comparing to actual amount of Gw players. The only thing that would catch enough attention would be "WE WILL PAY A THOUSAND DOLLARS TO EVERY MEMBER IF BONE PRICES REACH 300g IN THE NEXT 5 DAYS!"

As for how do I do it:

In those lines, you can see entries, and CNY notice few lines lower.

In the ugly-cutted-out bright yellow thing, you can see how was I originally doing materials research and how could a calculator work (like, would it be cheaper to craft the material from material bought by trader or artistan or buy the thing at the material man in the first place.)

Also, if someone is wondering, yes, I will do dyes and rare materials aswell... when collecting data gets easier.

schaapie: I'll see what I can find about memory stalking applications.

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 06:32 PM // 18:32

Yeah I know, but i have still so much fun farming feathers till they drop to 30g per 10 feathers as a trade.

Not like an ecto, better than green farming nowadays.

BTW, you can check a fact that I tell ya. Sometimes in almost everyday, ectos and some rare materials drop their normal price (5'5k) to a lowest value (4'8k) and then get their normal price again. It happens every night, i think. At 1am GMT+1. Maybe American ppl is getting up. ^^

Good luck with mem addresses. I tried

. They change anytime you entered a new instance / town, so ... you will have to be searching when ya change map or have a permanent logged on char :P

Murkrow · Feb 20, 2008, 06:43 PM // 18:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnagard

BTW, you can check a fact that I tell ya. Sometimes in almost everyday, ectos and some rare materials drop their normal price (5'5k) to a lowest value (4'8k) and then get their normal price again. It happens every night, i think. At 1am GMT+1. Maybe American ppl is getting up. ^^

It's like that every time with every thing. I've seen feathers jump up for 120g in just 7 hours. It's most probably that. Or koreans playing their last hours. I have no idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnagard

Good luck with mem addresses. I tried

. They change anytime you entered a new instance / town, so ... you will have to be searching when ya change map or have a permanent logged on char :P

My dreams, crushed before they started... Most probably.
Another option would be to get some kinda scanner that would automatically parse numbers from an image. Or something. I better focus on .dat and memory for now.

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 07:00 PM // 19:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Murkrow

My dreams, crushed before they started... Most probably.
Another option would be to get some kinda scanner that would automatically parse numbers from an image. Or something. I better focus on .dat and memory for now.

Sorry about that

. What you'r asking for is called OCR and i think i read it in this same forum (gwg) or... well i wont tell what my sources are :P.

Maybe you can try about using an OCR program with a screenie

. Or have a "good" program that search at any boot in memory for these values. I dunno if its legit to do any or both things. just curiosity.

Nemo the Capitalist · Feb 20, 2008, 07:32 PM // 19:32

Thank you so much for Thread

PRO JOb love GRAPH

Murkrow · Feb 20, 2008, 07:46 PM // 19:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnagard

Sorry about that

. What you'r asking for is called OCR and i think i read it in this same forum (gwg) or... well i wont tell what my sources are :P.

Maybe you can try about using an OCR program with a screenie

. Or have a "good" program that search at any boot in memory for these values. I dunno if its legit to do any or both things. just curiosity.

That.
I've done a quick search and found a program called SimpleOCR. It's got a sdk, and with some tweaking, it will be super duper easy to get the data out. Theoretically.

And then, code a bot* to do this by himself continuously and I win.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo the Capitalist

Thank you so much for Thread

PRO JOb love GRAPH

The graph is made from a template shamelessly stolen from Microsoft.

*About that: Gaile has, I believe, stated things that technically break the eula (okay, that sounds a bit stupid written like that, but still), but doesn't give an advantage to player using it, the player won't be banned or terminated. A super duper automatic bot that does everything by himself probably won't be made (and very probably not from me), so I'll try to come up with something else. Community input sounds pretty good, and ability to send in images to be parsed by the server/me/waiter rather than typing everything by yourself would also be probably welcome - of course, if people willed to participate.

Nemo the Capitalist · Feb 20, 2008, 07:47 PM // 19:47

*Tricked me thought u did all the work ..shoulda known better

*

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 08:08 PM // 20:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Murkrow

That.
I've done a quick search and found a program called SimpleOCR. It's got a sdk, and with some tweaking, it will be super duper easy to get the data out. Theoretically.

And then, code a bot* to do this by himself continuously and I win.

*About that: Gaile has, I believe, stated things that technically break the eula (okay, that sounds a bit stupid written like that, but still), but doesn't give an advantage to player using it, the player won't be banned or terminated. A super duper automatic bot that does everything by himself probably won't be made (and very probably not from me), so I'll try to come up with something else. Community input sounds pretty good, and ability to send in images to be parsed by the server/me/waiter rather than typing everything by yourself would also be probably welcome - of course, if people willed to participate.

Yeah, i like to give answer to tech questions. I am like an oracle, rofl.

And BTW, what you'r thinking about "Getting screene -> OCR -> get prices" is not a bot in any form. It doesnt give you any advangate and is more like a disadvantage, it will let u have less Hd space :P !(lol). Technically you'r taking screenies only. Should us be banned for all our 1k photos(on average)? :P

Good to hear that u can get a easier way to do this

.

Murkrow · Feb 20, 2008, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnagard

Yeah, i like to give answer to tech questions. I am like an oracle, rofl.

And BTW, what you'r thinking about "Getting screene -> OCR -> get prices" is not a bot in any form. It doesnt give you any advangate and is more like a disadvantage, it will let u have less Hd space :P !(lol). Technically you'r taking screenies only. Should us be banned for all our 1k photos(on average)? :P

Good to hear that u can get a easier way to do this

.

No, not really.

In order to get the latest price information, you have to reopen the trader window. Therefore, total automation without using bots would be impossible - especially not if rare materials and dyes were (or rather, "as they will be") included.

Even though that would be a bot, sending automated commands to the game client, it wouldn't give you an advantage ingame. Only exception would be material and dye stockbrokers. But still, when I come to that, I'll ask the right people.

Also, I'll probably start with rare materials and dyes on saturday, maybe friday.

ragnagard · Feb 20, 2008, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Just as easy as select him and press Space, Print Scr.

To update the prices: Esc, Space, Print Scr.

The way you do that.... is at yours :P.

Probably it will be easier to do this in your GH if yours have the NPC's needed for testing purposes.

Murkrow · Feb 21, 2008, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Another day, another update.

Also, I'm gonna need some help. As I don't have all the rare materials and dyes, I'll need someone to check sell prices for those. That way, I can calculate trader's sell and buyback prices. This isn't as important as collecting data, since the difference doesn't change on its own spontaneously.

(In unrelated news, I stole a crown from myself)

MMSDome · Feb 21, 2008, 11:49 PM // 23:49

Very Nice idea as i like to buy and sell common materials.

Did have a problem telling some of the colors apart however, maybe add different boldness' to some more of them like you did for iron or just make the lines fatter so we can tell the colors apart.

Murkrow · Feb 22, 2008, 01:08 PM // 13:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by MMSDome

Very Nice idea as i like to buy and sell common materials.

Did have a problem telling some of the colors apart however, maybe add different boldness' to some more of them like you did for iron or just make the lines fatter so we can tell the colors apart.

That's just a placeholder. It's kind of a "hey guys, see what I was secretly working on for the past 2 months (muahaha)" and "I've got and idea and I already started executing it rather than waiting for help to arrive sometime."

(possibly even next week) I'll make a simple site with everything visible one by one.

Also, I've found an awesome Google Finance graph clone. I'll start coding (the site) pretty soon.

Murkrow · Feb 22, 2008, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Also, starting today, I'm also watching Rare materials and Dye market.