[Request] Research tracker for other characters

[Xanderificus]

Like a lot of people, I have one character that blacksmiths, another that enchants and so on. As I play, I pick up materials to benefit the others and bank them and, when on each character, withdraw their specific stuff.

So.... my enchanter picks up armour for the blacksmith. It would be FANTASTIC if I could tell with that character whether or not the other one needs it. That way, my enchanter could know what stuff he could simply sell off rather than banking everything (and clogging the bank).

Ideally, I would imagine it like a couple of existing research trackers that show icons in the inventory - this would just show it based on a different character's abilities.


This addon keeps track of each character's inventory.
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info251-MobileBank.html
...maybe something can be done with research?

[ingeniousclown]

Originally Posted by Xanderificus Like a lot of people, I have one character that blacksmiths, another that enchants and so on. As I play, I pick up materials to benefit the others and bank them and, when on each character, withdraw their specific stuff. So.... my enchanter picks up armour for the blacksmith. It would be FANTASTIC if I could tell with that character whether or not the other one needs it. That way, my enchanter could know what stuff he could simply sell off rather than banking everything (and clogging the bank). Ideally, I would imagine it like a couple of existing research trackers that show icons in the inventory - this would just show it based on a different character's abilities. This addon keeps track of each character's inventory. http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info251-MobileBank.html ...maybe something can be done with research?

Sorry man, but this is currently impossible, otherwise I would have done this a week ago with my Research Assistant addon.

The problem is that the absolutely ONLY way that it is possible to figure out which research line an item belongs to is to exhaustively check which research line it belongs to. The reason for this is that there is no way to definitively figure out what WeaponType or ArmorType an item is. There are a couple of hacks around that can figure out those types by parsing its icon, but that doesn't work for 100% of items and does not differentiate between the four types of staves and therefor is NOT good enough for this because it would be unreliable to the user.

[Bl4ckSh33p]

Maybe Research Grid can do it? It has support for multiple chars now and shows what was alrady researched: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2...earchGrid.html

[Stormknight]

I have an idea.

I'll need to have a chat with ingeniousclown about it, but in essence:

• The information needed to be able to display this information is held within Research Grid.
• Research grid does not (nor shall it) extend scope to modifying the inventory UI.
• Research Assistant does modify the inventory UI, but does not store all the information about your other characters in the way Research Grid does.

How about if I create a callable function in Research Grid, that will return the information that Research Assistant would need?

The Research Assistant addon can then check whether the user has Research Grid loaded and if so, call the function.

This will allow both myself and ingeniousclown to keep our addon scope under control, whilst delivering additional useful information to users.


There's technical & set-up stuff such as me needing to properly document the function and return values, as well as getting the users of Research Grid to specify for each character which professions they actually care about researching on a specific character (though I can do some guesswork based on which ones they have actually done some research on).

Thoughts?

[ingeniousclown]

The problem lies in the fact that there is only ONE way to figure out exactly what research line any item belongs to, and it is by exhaustively checking research lines to see if that item is researchable. If that trait is already researched for that research line, then you suddenly have no way of knowing in which research line an item belongs. It sucks, but that's the truth of it.

With that in mind, I was thinking about this in more detail this morning and came up with a new idea that would make this work in an incomplete and limited, yet functional way. It WOULD be possible to add this, but the functionality MUST operate under this assumption:
You track Blacksmithing on Character A.
Character B never ever EVER researches any trait for Blacksmithing.

If you have a single Blacksmithing trait researched on character B for whatever reason, then the icon made for that trait may not be correct for character A. I can easily shout in huge bold letters that this is a requirement for reliability, but that won't stop people from shouting to the world that my add-on is unreliable. As such, if I do this it will be as a separate plug-in for Research Assistant and not as an extra feature.

Again, the problem lies not in knowing what traits are researched or not. That's the easy part. The problem lies solely in the lack of exposed WeaponType and ArmorType for items.

As for creating the dependency with Research Grid, I appreciate the offer but saving each character's research status is simple enough for it to not be necessary to create a dependency on RG. At the same time, though, it would lighten up the amount of work I would need to do (even if only a little bit) and give us some good cross-exposure for our add-ons. I don't think you need to worry about making users specify which professions they care about, though. That's for me to worry about, all I would have to do is ask your add-on if (craftskill, researchlineindex, traitindex) is researched or not, assuming the above requirements are met to allow me to extract the researchlineindex from an item.

[Stormknight]

This might sound crazy, but what about

GetItemTrait(integer bagId, integer slotIndex)

I just tried this on a few weapons and it successfully returned the trait to me, even on traits I know how to craft. Am I just missing something?

[ingeniousclown]

Originally Posted by Stormknight This might sound crazy, but what about GetItemTrait(integer bagId, integer slotIndex) I just tried this on a few weapons and it successfully returned the trait to me, even on traits I know how to craft. Am I just missing something?

That's good and find and dandy, but tell me, how would you propose we retrieve the ResearchLineIndex? I feel like you didn't read my post thoroughly, I kinda went in depth about that.

Traits are not unique per item type. "Reinforced" is the same number whether it is a cloth robe or a 2h axe or a bow.

[Stormknight]

Originally Posted by ingeniousclown That's good and find and dandy, but tell me, how would you propose we retrieve the ResearchLineIndex? I feel like you didn't read my post thoroughly, I kinda went in depth about that.

/facepalm

I get the issue now.

I blame a long day of work....

Hmmm, yeah, I don't see any direct ways around that.

[Xanderificus]

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2...earchGrid.html