TSM Works with 4.3

As I've talked about previously, there were some pretty major changes this patch. I was almost successful in fixing all the bugs before the servers came back up, but alas I missed a few things which caused various errors as well as introduced a brand new error with an unrelated change I had made.

After all the "chaos" that is patch day, I'm pretty confident that any bugs introduced with patch 4.3 have now been fixed. If you are still experiencing issues, see the following thread.

http://consortium.stormspire.net/official-trade-skill-master-development-forum/4297-official-patch-4-3-issues-post-having-issues-read.html

Thanks for your patience. Happy patch day.

-Sapu

PS: Fun fact, the main TradeSkillMaster module by itself had over 15k downloads today as of me writing this.

Known Issues with TSM on PTR

So, it has been brought to my intention that Blizzard thought it would be fun to make diving by zero throw an error in 4.3. Now, you might be wondering why anybody would divide by zero in the first place. It turns out, there are many situations in which dividing by zero is useful.

Some of the situations are easy enough to fix (just use math.huge instead of 1/0), but others are not so easy. For example, everywhere I have 1/X where X is some variable, I now have to make sure X is not zero. Previously, if X were 0 I would catch later on that 1/X was too high a number, but in 4.3, this would cause an error and crash the addon so I'll have to be a lot more paranoid when doing division.

So, going through the dozens of code files to find and fix all these situations will take a while but I will try my best to have it done before 4.3. There will likely be ones that I miss so please check for updates when 4.3 goes live and let me know if you encounter any divide by zero errors (or any other errors for that matter).

Happy Birthday TSM!

It's true, one year ago today, the TradeSkillMaster project was created on curse (proof). If I may, let's take a quick look back at all that has happened over the past year (and slightly before).


January 31st, 2010 - I start my addon programming days with an addon called Slippy. This addon is inspired by Quick Auctions 3 and fills in the missing capability of QA3 as far as creating enchanting scrolls.

April 8th, 2010 - Slippy gets a new name, Scroll Master.

October 11th, 2010 - I create Auction Profit Master, a continuation of the now discontinued QA3 addon which was abandoned due to the new hardware requirements on posting and canceling of auctions.

October 15th, 2010 - With brainstorming help from Cente, I decide that I want to combine the auction posting / canceling features of Auction Profit Master with the crafting features of Scroll Master and make one all-inclusive gold making addon. TradeSkillMaster is born.


November 27th, 2010 - At this point, all major gold bloggers have been informed about this new TradeSkillMaster addon that's in early development. The addon is featured in this JMTC post by Marcko. This same day, we begin inviting people (initially focusing on bloggers) to become alpha testers. The initial alpha version contains the AuctionDB, Auctioning, Crafting, Mailing, and Shopping modules.

December 5th, 2010 - First alpha version of the Gathering module released. This is the last new module before TSM is released as Beta.

December 7th, 2010 - Cataclysm is released. This date was the original (very optimistic) target beta release date.

January 15th, 2011 - TradeSkillMaster finally released to general public as beta! Over the next few weeks, literally hundreds of bugs are fixed as tens of thousands of people start using the addon. The addon is also featured on many key gold blogs.

January 22nd, 2011 - TradeSkillMaster gets an official, dedicated forum at The Consortium.


May 5th, 2011 - At this point, TradeSkillMaster is relatively stable and has earned it's spot in the gold making community. The 8th module (including the main one), Accounting is released for some early testing. Accounting was released as beta 2 weeks later.

May 23rd, 2011 - The 9th (and currently most recent) module, Destroying, created by Geemoney, is ready for alpha testing and is released as beta 5 days later.

June 1st, 2011 - At this point, TradeSkillMaster is very stable and countless new features have been added since it was first released as beta four and a half months earlier. Work now begins on one of the biggest new features planned for the release version of TSM, the new auction house tab. Work on the release version of TSM (including this new tab) continues to this day!


While I don't have accurate numbers as to how many people use TradeSkillMaster, I do have data as to how many people use each of my addons relative to each other that I thought I'd share. From highest to lowest: TradeSkillMaster, TSM_Crafting, TSM_Auctioning, TSM_AuctionDB, TSM_Shopping, TSM_Gathering, TSM_Mailing, TSM_Accounting, TSM_Destroying.

Without sounding too sentimental, I really enjoy working on this addon. Watching it grow from a far-fetched idea into what it is today has truly been rewarding. There have been hundreds of people who have helped along the way that I'd personally like to thank. This includes everybody from the initial alpha testers to the bloggers to the people who have contributed code to everybody over at The Consortium to people who stopped by the forum or IRC to provide feedback.

Here's to another successful year :)

Releases Slowing Down - Not Progress

So lately, there have been very few new releases of TSM or any of its modules including alpha versions. However, rest assured that the work on the addon has done anything but slow down. I (and some periodic helpers), have been working hard on some big new features for the past few months and the work will likely continue for many weeks to come.

None of these new features will be made publicly available during the current beta phase of TSM. All these features are targeted for the release phase of TSM (which, perhaps not surprisingly, happens after the beta phase). There is a ton of work left to do before TSM goes into its release phase so it's not going to be anytime soon. We are talking about a few months, not a few weeks.

However, as it currently stands, TSM is mostly stable and bug-free which is why I made the decision to slow down the release of beta versions and instead focus on the things that need to be done for the release phase (v1.0). Of course, if a patch comes along and breaks something, I'll fix it asap in the beta versions, but otherwise, I don't plan on releasing any new beta versions.

The way I see it, the beta phase of TSM was a time for me to try a bunch of different things out, get a ton of feedback, and generally figure out a direction for the addon. I have certainly tried a ton of different things out; some of which worked and some which didn't. The feedback (both positive and negative) has been motivating and inspiring, and I now have a good grasp of the direction I want to take TSM which has guided my decisions around the new features I'm working on.

There will be a "private" testing phase before TSM (v1.0) is officially released similar to how the alpha phase worked. This has already started with one of the big new features which is in a usable state. I will make it clear when there's a chance / need for a broader audience of testers to get involved.

So, bear with me over the weeks to come and don't be too sad when you see no new version of TSM since June/July; it'll be worth the wait once v1.0 comes around!

Never Scan the Auction House Again!

So, I had an idea for an something that would use the new blizzard auction house APIs to update your AuctionDB market value / min buyout in game. The way the blizzard APIs work is there is a file that contains details on every auction currently on the auction house. Blizzard updates this file roughly once every hour.

So, I finally finished the application. You can read more about it and download it here: http://consortium.stormspire.net/official-trade-skill-master-development-forum/3525-update-auctiondb-data-automatically-without-scanning.html

This application will automatically download the auction data when blizzard updates it, do some processing on it, and stick it into an lua file for AuctionDB to use. If you are logged into the game, you just have to reload your UI to load the new data into the game. AuctionDB will detect that the data has been updated and treat it as if you just ran a scan.

There is a lot more that can be done with this data that I have planned. Right now it doesn't do any more than just treat the data as a regular scan of the auction house. I could do things like: in-game notifications of things that are below your dealfinding prices, put info about the market value of the other faction into the tooltip for easy cross-faction arbitrage, and have it keep a historical record of the data and show TUJ-style graphs in game.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

Upcoming Changes to Anti-Bot Check

Disclaimer: By "upcoming changes" I mean I coded them today but they are in code that is at least a month from being finished and released.

So, since TSM was first created, there has been anti-bot code in some form or another. There are two things that are more obvious than the others.

The first is that only buttons for repetitive actions are named. This includes the "Craft Next", "Post Auction', "Cancel Auctions", etc buttons but not buttons like the auto-mail button or the button to start a post / cancel scan. This is a pretty simple but effective way to prevent complete automation while still allowing legitimate users the convenience of not having to break their mice while posting auctions.

The second obvious anti-bot measure is the anti-bot check that occasionally pops up when you start a scan with the Auctioning module. This requires the user to enter a random number to continue with the scan. This has also been very effective.

 I had to break up the wall of text somehow :)

These new changes are a lot more subtle and also a lot more effective. The random-number popup in Auctioning will be going away but trust me when I say I wouldn't take it out unless it was being replaced by something better, which it is. The random-number popup will be replaced by a "test" which is much simpler and less annoying. This test will also appear far less often. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if legitimate users never saw it at all. I had a hard time triggering it myself in testing :).

Just wanted to give you guys a heads-up so when the random-number popup does get removed you're not surprised or worried that I'm taking it easy on botters. Botters, like thieves (yes, I went there), are looking for the easiest way to automate things and I will continue to ensure that TSM is not used for performing illegitimate actions in WOW.

I am aware there are some bots which currently use older versions of TSM or even APM. There isn't much I can do about this except for take comfort in the fact that eventually blizzard will change something to break those versions and they aren't getting any of the awesome new features that are being added.

Don't Hide Lua Errors...please?

So I haven't posted here in a while because my time to work on TSM has been pretty low lately. There has been some work getting done though. There was a new version of the Crafting module released just last week for example. Anyways, that's not the topic of this post. The topic on this post is why you should almost always check that "Display lua errors" option (Game Menu -> Interface -> Help).

First a bit of background info. All wow addons are coded in a language called lua (and no it's not an acryonym - it's pronounced "loo-a") and they run completely contained within wow (rather than running side-by-side wow). This is so that for the most part, if there is an error in an addon and it crashes, it doesn't effect the game itself. The game will report the error to the user as a "lua error" (or if you aren't displaying errors it won't display it to the user - but everything else it does, described below, still happens).

That's not all that happens when an error pops up though. Wow will remove the piece of code that caused the error from the addon for the duration of the session (until you reload / re-log). This means that if you got an error when you tried to open some window, if you tried to open the window again, either nothing at all would happen or you'd get another error because the function to open the window is suddenly gone and whatever you did to try to open the window won't be able to find said function causing an error.

If you didn't have lua errors enabled, you'd have no clue why some window is blank or some button didn't do anything or all an addon's features suddenly disappeared and if you went to the author saying "the addon is randomly disappearing", that would be give the author nothing to go on to try and help you fix it. Alternatively, if you went to the author and posted the lua error, that error usually contains everything the author needs to fix the problem (although often a bit of explanation as to what you were doing when you got the error / how to reproduce it is necessary). The error contains info on exactly what went wrong and the specific line of code that caused the error.

Essentially, error messages are the best tool developers can use to fix errors. I'd say 90% of bug reports that don't include lua errors don't end up in any action being taken. So, (and I'm not just speaking for TSM in this post) check to make sure you are displaying lua errors and next time you see one, take 2 minutes to report the error to the addon author. Is 2 minutes of your time too much to ask for the hundreds of hours of the developer's time that went into making the addon?

PS: I would say not displaying lua errors during raids / arenas would be reasonable (don't want something randomly covering any part of your screen during a boss fight).

Happy 4.2 - TSM Works Fine

Just wanted to let everybody know that to the best of my knowledge TSM works fine with 4.2 as expected. I will be releasing some new beta versions tonight with updated TOC files so it won't show up as out of date and some of the lingering changes that are in alpha versions will be pushed to beta.

One tip: If you're not seeing any new recipes in Crafting (ie new pvp gear), type '/tsm', click on the appropriate profession icon, and it will scan that profession and update the recipes. You can also click on the "Force Rescan of Profession" button if you want to make sure it does a scan.

I'm Still Alive! ...sort of

So, for these past few weeks I've been working on a big new feature that'll affect half of the current modules. Stay tuned for more info on this when it's closer to being complete, but it'll probably take me another few weeks. This time requirement is further extended by the fact that I just started a full-time job (I work on accounting software - go figure) so really don't have much time or will power to do much work on TSM during the week.

I'm still looking for more developers to help pickup the slack and even increase the speed at which new features are being added to TSM. I'd also be thrilled to see people who know how to code and have ideas for TSM to talk to me about their ideas and / or submit code for them. Of course you'd get credit for anything you do and for those people who stay on as "permanent" developers, your work will be rewarded ;)

Looking for More Developers

See this thread.

A Million and One Bug Fixes

I just released a new major beta version (0.3) of Auctioning that doesn't have any big new features as most new major versions (0.x versions) do but there were so many bug fixes and small changes that it was fitting. One of the big new things is that when you do a post or cancel scan, before the scanning starts, Auctioning will check to make sure all your groups are valid. Mainly, if you are using a % of something as a threshold / fallback, that all the items in the group evaluate to the exact same amount (ie if you are using % of crafting cost, all the items have the same mats or if you are using % of auctiondb market value, there is only one item per group). If it finds invalid groups, it'll offer to fix them for you automatically. What it will do is just convert the group into a category...and create enough groups inside that category so that they are all valid.

For a full list of changes see the changelog.

Explanation of Destroying Buttons and Modes

See this thread for the context of this post.

Hopefully I can help explain the method behind the madness of the 2 clicks and what the different modes do. I have talked about this a bit in the past (will update with link once I find the thread...). But, here goes a complete explanation using milling as an example (it's the exact same with prospecting and even disenchanting).

There is two parts to milling a set of herbs (by set I mean 5 of an herb - 1 mill's worth). First you have to cast the spell (/cast Milling), and then you have to "use" the item (/use Whiptail). The traditional macro and every addon I've seen works the same way. They do both steps in the same instant. This is definitely the most reliable and easy way to do milling but is definitely not the fastest.

There are a few things to note that effect milling. You can't do the /cast while the loot window is open. However, you can do the /cast before the loot window opens and the highlighted cursor which is waiting for you to /use some herbs won't go away when the loot window does open.

You can do the /use step while the loot window is open. What will happen is that IMMEDIATELY after the looting is complete, the next cast will begin. With the macro, there is some delay after the looting is complete before the next cast will begin. I'm not 100% sure myself what is causing this delay although I have a few theories but either way, it's there. So, this is what normal mode does. The button will enable for the /cast step once Milling is off cd and then once the loot window opens, the button will enable itself again for the /use step. This will give you a definite increase in overall milling speed and will work very consistently.

The "Faster" mode takes advantage of a very short window in which you can do the /cast and it will start casting while the loot window is open rather than just being delayed until the immediately after the loot window closes as normal mode does. This window is a few tenths of a second before the loot window opens. If you are too late, you get the same effect as with normal mode. If you are too early, the spell will get interrupted when the loot window opens. Just right and you will cut a very significant chuck of time off your milling. The button will enable for the /cast step when the cooldown is up just like normal mode. But. it will enable for the /use a arbitrary amount of time after the cast finishes. This amount of time is essentially just a guess on my part and will almost certainly be too early. However, if you can figure out a rhythm where you can get the /use right in that time window, you can train yourself to have a good sense of when to hit it.

In conclusion, I'd recommend using normal mode if you just want to spam the button while watching TV and get through with your milling / prospecting. I'd recommend using "Faster" mode if you'd like to get through the milling as fast as possible even if it takes some practice and requires more of your attention to pull off. Also, I would agree that having a mode that just does the typical old-fashioned macro approach might be a good idea for those who don't want to have to spam their buttons as much and don't care about speed.

New TSM Module Released - Accounting

The newest TSM module, Accounting, just got approved as beta by curse and is now officially released. Accounting tracks auctions you have purchased and sold from the auction house and displays this data in a variety of formats. Accounting is sort of like MySales but MySales only tracked auctions you sold and last time I checked, couldn't track how many items were in an auction. So, go check it out and let me know what you think!

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tradeskillmaster_accounting.aspx

Take the Good with the Bad

So I've been fairly busy over the last week and the time I have had to spend on TSM I've been spending on the new Accounting module. If you haven't already, read the first post in that thread and check it out. This module is the sort of coding I love. It takes one set of data that contains info on what you've sold / purchased recently and shows it in multiple different ways. I have big plans for this module such as being able to track how quickly you sell an item as well as other things. Eventually, Crafting will be able to use this data to allow you (or allow the restock queue) to make a much more informed decision about an item. One other thing is the Destroying module is still progressing towards release.


Now for the "bad". If you use Auctioneer, you may have noticed in the AuctionDB, Shopping, and Auctioning all have a "Block Auctioneer" type setting which basically prevents Auctioneer from doing it's scanning / processing on that module's scans and thus speeding up TSM's scans a ton. This is most important for AuctionDB scans because AuctionDB doesn't care about seller data and Auctioneer does. Seller data takes an extra bit of time to load after all the other data loads for a page of auctions. So, Auctioneer really slows down AuctionDBs scan because of this. Also with GetAll scans, Auctioneer will do its processing after a TSM GetAll scan which will slow down the client for a few min. Now, some people like this because they can do one scan and update both TSM and Auctioneer and that's why this is an option (those people would have the "block auctioneer" option off).

However, in the recent preview version, Auctioneer removed the ability completely for TSM to do queries without it knowing about them. So, after talking a bit with the Auctioneer devs, I found that there is an option in the settings under the "Search" tab of the AH that'll prevent Auctioneer from doing it's processing on non-Auctioneer scans which is a decent solution. The only remaining problem (which will hopefully be addressed by the Auctioneer devs soon), is that this setting doesn't apply to GetAll scans and there's currently no way to stop Auctioneer from doing its processing after a GetAll scan.

So, I have made some changes in the latest alpha versions of Auctioning/Shopping/AuctionDB that, if you have the "Block Auctioneer" option turned on, will turn off Auctioneer's scanning using this option while TSM is scanning and then return the setting to whatever value it was previously set to after the scanning is complete.

So, what does this mean for you? If you don't use Auctioneer or don't use the "block auctioneer" options in TSM, nothing. If you did use this option for AuctionDB to prevent Auctioneer from doing it's processing after TSM's getall scans, that will no longer work. My hope is just to make Auctioneer and TSM work well side by side as I know a lot of people use both.

New Beta Versions of AuctionDB, Crafting, Gathering

So, I moved the code that tracks how many of each item you have on the AH from AuctionDB to Gathering because that just plain makes more sense. Also, this allows Gathering to show auction count info in item tooltips if that option is enabled. So, make sure you update all three asap and at the same time.

AuctionDB v0.3.1Beta
Crafting v0.2.10.1Beta
Gathering v0.2.1.1Beta

Crafting 0.2.9Beta - Undermine Journal Support Added

This is just a quick post to say that I just released a new version of Crafting that includes support for getting price data from the undermine journal addon (http://theunderminejournal.com/addon.php). If you don't already use the undermine journal (and / or the addon), I'd definitely recommend you check it out. Also, this new beta of Crafting fixes a ton of bugs involving crafts not being added correctly or showing up under the wrong profession. I'm 90% sure I got them all but if you still have some crafts not being added correctly or showing up under the wrong profession, let me know.

In other news, I released a new beta version of Auctioning yesterday that fixes a lot of bugs / annoyances with the Auctioning options. For example, especially if you were using %s for your threshold/fallback, the help text above the threshold/fallback settings (and other ones too) were rarely accurate. Also, when you first right-clicked to override an option (or if an option wasn't overriden) in a group, it would show the default value and not the category value (even though it was using the category value correctly when posting / canceling). All of this has been fixed.

One thing to note is that now when you are using a percent of something for a group, the percent only will show in the editbox. The value the percent evaluates to has been moved to the help text.

-Sapu

Heads up...

This is to let you folks know that we are planning a fairly major release coming sometime this summer. As Sapu and I are free of our previous engagements we have quite a bit more time to design and code. I'll personally be looking over all the fan input and choosing the ideas that mesh with our design philosophy the best. No other news as of yet, but hang tight, we'll try to release information as we can.

Patch 4.1 Woes

So, today 4.1 hit here in the US. I was not expecting TSM to break in any way as the only substantial change that blizzard made had to do with addons that use the hidden addon chat channel to communicate between players which TSM doesn't do at all. All I have done as of writing this is cancel my auctions, use the "Open All" from the Mailing module, and then repost my auctions. So far I haven't run into any problems with TSM.

However, I have heard of people having issues with not being able to post. This issue is a problem with Auctioneer. The short explanation of why Auctioneer is making TSM not work is that Auctioneer replaces all the AH functions with their own functions. So, if their functions break, TSM is using those broken functions and that'll cause TSM to not work. The solution here is to simply disable Auctioneer while using the Auctioning module of TSM until the developers of Auctioneer fix the issue.
 
I have also heard of people having issues with not being able to open mail. I could not replicate this issue. However, I don't have any other mailbox addon such as Mail Opener or Postal. If you are using Postal or MailOpener, note that TSM_Mailing will hide its "Open All" button and allow Postal / MailOpener's equivalent button to be shown so if you are having an issue it's likely with Postal / MailOpener.

If you are having any problems at all even with only TSM enabled, please let me know so it can be addressed asap either through IRC or through the official TSM forum.

-Sapu



PS: Make sure you check the "Load out of date addons" checkbox in the addons frame in your character selection screen. In the upcoming days, all TSM modules will be updated so that they no longer show as out of date, but for now don't lose sleep over it saying that TSM is out of date.

AuctionDB - Big New Feature

Do you miss the summary page from QA3/APM/ZA? Well, the craft queue part of it went into the Crafting module, but a lot of people used it for something else as well that has so far been missing from TSM. I'm talking about the ability to quickly lookup the prices of ore / herbs / enchanting mats / raw gems / etc. Well, that functionality is coming to TSM as a part of the AuctionDB module.


What is this new feature?
Let me give you a few screenshots and some comments on how I see this feature being useful.

Well, there it is. A few things to note:

• The items displayed are from the AuctionDB's scan data which is not necessarily what is currently on the AH. You can see how old the data is by looking at the "last scanned" column.
• There is some configuration in the "Options" page which you will just have to see for yourself (pretty simple and straightforward - only a few basic options).
• You can search by name ("glyph" in this example) and / or by item type / subtype (type is "Glyph" in this example and there is no subtype filter set).
• There is a configurable limit to how many are displayed per page (50 by default) simply because loading 10k items on a single page would easily crash your client.
• "Seen Last Scan (Yours)" is a new piece of data that's not really new at all. It's been part of AuctionDB for a long while but has never been easily accessible by the user. As an example, next to the last glyph in the screenshot, "Glyph of Solar Beam", it says "19 (4)" ("(4)" is in gold) which means last time that glyph was scanned (22 minutes ago in this screenshot), there were 19 of that glyph on the AH and 4 of them were owned by you (current toon or one of your alts on the same account).

  

This search is showing all enchanting mats sorted by item level.

This search is showing all "dream emerald" cuts (and the raw gem is also included). This may be useful for figuring out what to design to buy next.

I'm looking forward to seeing how people utilize this feature and that will guide the improvements that are made to it. The above examples are just some things I had in mind while designing it but by no means limit what this feature can do or become.


When is this feature being released?
Soon. More seriously though, this feature is essentially done and working and I may release it as an alpha version by the end of the day. However, it won't be released as beta until after a new beta version of the main TSM addon is released because there is new code in the main TSM addon that this new feature of AuctionDB requires. So, this will be released as soon as possible (we're talking days not weeks).




Let me know what you think and what you're ideas for improving it are!

Lots of New Beta Versions

Just now, I release new beta versions of every module of TSM minus the main TSM addon. See the changelogs for a complete list of changes but I'll list a few things I feel are cool / useful additions.

• Auctioning - "Smart group creation" option - This option can be found in the top "Options" page of the Auctioning options and is enabled by default. When you create a new group with this option enabled, any items in your bags who's names include the name of the group (for example "Scroll of Recall III" includes "Scroll of Recall" in its name) will be automatically added to the group. When you create the group you'll get a message in your chat log telling you that items were added (if they were).
• Crafting - Inscription groups got updated / fixed. From a programming prespective, there were big changes here that included getting rid of the big look-up table for what group inscription crafts go into. This means, if a new glyph is added, it will go into the proper group without the addon having to be updated. Also, from a user perspective, a few new groups were added and rare inks were added to the "inks" group. The "Other" group should now be relatively small.
• Crafting - Added a "Clear Tradeskill Filters" button that will show up when you have a filter set in your profession window (which causes some items to not show up in the craft queue).
• Mailing - Lots of bugs were fixed and the code got a general cleaning.
• Shopping - Disenchanting was implemented for dusts. See my post on this.

There are a lot of new things coming in the next few weeks. If all goes well, this will include a new module (Destroying) which will do milling / prospecting / disenchanting 40% faster than any addon / macro currently can by utilizing a few tricks. The tricks are nothing secret / nefarious but I can't describe them in two sentences so I will make a blog post describing these tricks when this module is released.

Gathering - Big New Feature!

I just released v0.2Beta of Gathering which includes one of what I think is the main features of TSM as a whole and the main feature of the Gathering module. Previously, all Gathering did was datastore replacement functions (keep track of what mats you have on what alts / in what guild banks / etc). However, now Gathering does something much more powerful and useful.

This new feature is "Gathering" mats needed for your craft queue from your bank / guild bank / alts. You can access this new feature through the Gathering icon at the bottom of the main TSM window (it's green). It will create a list of tasks (ie Visit the Guild bank, log onto X, visit the mailbox) and automatically perform the item movement once you open up your mailbox / bank / guildbank. So, what are you waiting for? Go check it out and let me know what you think!

-Sapu

Shopping - Disenchanting - Good News / Bad News

So, the good news is that I finally put the Disenchanting feature into shopping. The bad news is, so far it only works for dusts (not essences, shards, or crystals) because that's all the person who was working on it had sent me the data for. I also realized that I'll probably need to add another dropdown just for disenchanting to select dust/essence/shard/crystal instead of just cramming every single item into the one dropdown.

I also made a few small changes to Auctioning including fixing a few bugs such as soulbound keys showing up in the add/remove window.

-Sapu

General Update

Not a whole lot of news as I've had little free time lately. I've been doing a lot of bug fixing and small changes such as adding tooltip options for Gathering and Crafting. Over the weekend I put some effort into cleaning up Mailing's code however there are still reports of lag issues when mailing a large quantity of items so that's still on my TODO list.

I hope to have a new beta version of Crafting out soon. There are a lot of small things that I've added since the last beta that I think are nice improvements. Also, Gathering is fairly close to going into beta (with the big new feature that will "gather" mats from your bank / gbank / alts). This is definitely one of the key features of TSM as a whole and is something that as far as I can tell nobody has quite done before as completely. Also adding disenchanting to Shopping is on the radar for the next few days.

So, stay tuned and let me know what you like / wish were better.

-Sapu

Looking for Tip Submissions

So, in the latest alpha version of the main TSM addon, I added a feature that will display tips in the status bar whenever it's not being used for any other purpose (such as Auctioning telling you that you entered something incorrectly). I put in a few tips that I could think of but I'd like to get ideas from you all as well.

The general idea for these tips are to point out things in TSM that may not be immediately obvious. For example, the two tips in the alpha version are: "If the Craft Management Window is too big, you can scale it down in the Crafting options." and "Crafting can make Auctioning groups for you! Just click on a profession icon, a category, and then the 'Create Auctioning Groups' button."

Use this form to enter your tips!


In other news, I did do a bit of work on Shopping and Crafting this morning. The big thing added was the ability to change how the queuing section (top left) of the craft management window is sorted. You can simply click on the title (ie "Profit", "Name", etc) to sort by that column (click again to reverse the sort order). I also added a % column along with the profit column that shows the percent profit. You can turn this off in the options if you so desire.

Copy of All Posts from Wiki

March 27

I just released new beta versions of the following modules: TradeSkillMaster (main), AuctionDB, Auctioning, Crafting, Shopping. There are a ton of changes since the previous beta versions of Auctioning / Crafting / Shopping so check them out! I do put effort into the changelogs (which can be viewed either on curse or inside the addon folder on your computer) so check them out for a complete list of changes.

-Sapu

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March 24

So yesterday I put up a guide for the new Auctioning importing / exporting feature. The big new thing today was a solid step forward for the Crafting module. Any tradeskill that previously didn't show up in the Crafting module will now be added to the "Other" group. Now, you should be able to use Crafting for everything EXCEPT tradeskills which don't produce an item (inscription research, profession-specific enchants, etc) as I don't see much value in adding those. Things like darkmoon cards can now be crafted using Crafting but it will always show up as an unknown profit. If there is something missing still (and you're sure it's missing), please let me know asap.

-Sapu

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March 23

It's 1am and I finally got the new importing / exporting feature for Auctioning finished (and working). I'm going to write up a little guide for using it in the morning and I'll release it then. Over the past two days I've worked on moving all the options for shopping (including dealfinding config stuff) to the new shopping options page in the main TSM window. This is available in the latest alpha version and will allow for a lot more to be added (if you have ideas for stuff to add now's the time to let me know!).

I'm very exciting about this importing / exporting feature so be sure to check out my guide when I put it up in the morning. As a teaser... http://pastey.net/147996 is my glyphs group.

-Sapu

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March 20

Over the past few days I've had a ton of time to work on TSM and have implemented a few new features for the Crafting and Auctioning modules. I just got a new phone but if I can resist playing with it too much over the next week, I'll have a lot of time for a bunch more improvements to TSM. There may even be a new module coming out soon...

Auctioning Post/Cancel Frame Updates (r243+):
There are two new buttons here. The "Show Auctions" button will show a summary of all auctions currently posted for the item Auctioning is currently showing in the post frame. The "Change Post Price" button is hopefully self explanatory and will just show up while posting (not canceling). Just remember to hit the "OK" button in the editbox after typing in a new price. The "Save Price" button will be disabled if the price you entered is invalid. You aren't able to post / skip the current item while this window is open.

Crafting Craft Management Window Updates (r337+):
The update here will be pretty obvious when you open the craft management window. Profession icons have been added on the left side for easy switching between professions. Note that you can use the craft management window for a profession even if that character doesn't know that profession (not a new feature but a lesser-known one that could save you a lot of time).

Goals for this Week:
One of the things I've been putting off for a while that is at the top of the TODO list is a reworking of Shopping's Dealfinding feature. I have a ton of ideas on new things to add to this however the current interface is very limiting so a options page for shopping in the main TSM window would be necessary. Something else that I've been trying to push towards beta lately is the gathering part of the Gathering module (gathering mats from alts / banks / gbanks for your craft queue). This is available in the latest alpha versions but is still a bit rough and buggy so needs some attention before it goes into beta. And as I alluded to above, the Destroying is being worked on by a new TSM developer. No ETA on when this will be done but it will be sooner rather than later.

-Sapu