Author: Lukas Rox

Project Rorqual

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

bait-rorqual-burningIt all started back in November 2012. Marcel [Aideron Robotics CEO] asked Aideron Technologies if we can build him a Rorqual. While AR is in FW and not into heavy duty industry, Rorqual can be made into a mobile jump clone station, not to mention it makes a great bait. I have always wanted a Rorqual as well, but since my other capitals have been collecting dust for a long time, I never came down to buying a Rorq. Building it ourselves makes it quite a bit cheaper, so I have decided to finally get one as well.

Aideron Technologies had no Capital blueprints back then: neither for the parts, nor for any capital ships. We had to change that quickly. We have agreed to buy one or two personal capital part BPOs each, and then let the corp use them. Of course corp would research those personal BPOs for free.

Another thing was finding a rather quiet low sec system with factory, where we could build the ship. After some research we found a perfect candidate. Few days of 23,5/7 scouting has confirmed the system is not very active and meets our expectations. Capital Part copies have been made, and in March 2013 we have built our very first Rorqual.

I have started building parts for my Rorqual in May, but because of other tasks (and my absence from EVE) I was unable to finish the ship back then.

2013.05.23.08.53.18

In the background you can notice how LMeve makes it easier to track progress of production tasks 😉 It took a few more days of June to make all required capital parts.

And then came this day

2013.06.19.14.20.19

In about 12 days I will become a proud owner of a Mobile Cloning Station (got modules already prepeared, shy of small gallente ninja-tower and the fuel for it).

PS. Sorry for my absence

The last couple of weeks was a rough ride in RL, to the extent where I was not even able to log on to EVE for several days. I’m still a bit more busy than usual, but you can expect new posts to arrive at my regular rate of 1-2 a week.

On the development front – LMeve dev blog #1

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Programming , , , , , , , , ,
Industry Tracker - Login Screen

When I first started this project, I knew it will take more than a day to complete. In fact, I have assumed it will take at least a month (1-2 hours a day) to finish basic features. I was wrong: it took one and a half month. The result however, is better and more functional than the original Specification required.

First I would like to say a big thank you to my corp mates, who are testing LMeve restlessly. Beta test has also raised some excellent improvements and ideas, some of which are implemented already, and some have been added to the drawingboard. Thank you guys!

Features developed since the last post

Tasks is a module, which allows planning and tracking industry jobs over the course of one month. Currently the only person with edit rights is the CEO, so he can plan manufacturing, invention and copying for each corp member. Members can view their own task list, which shows the completion state of their tasks.

LMeve task tracking page
LMeve task tracking page

It looks almost exactly like the Task page on Marcel’s aideronrobotics.com (this was one of the specified requirements). Crysis McNally, one of our members has proposed to add a tooltip over Progress and Success bars, which shows how many jobs have been already done. This way corpies know exactly how many more runs are needed to reach 100%. This is one of the features we’ve missed in the original aideronrobotics.com industry tool.

Database is a module mainly used for planning and reference (and since there is no “Kit Builder” yet, it also tells the amount of materials required for production). It’s also the first module to display price data from eve-central.com (data itself has been downloaded for more than a month). We plan to add a drop-down ME field, which will recalculate required materials, and a setting if we want to get (or stop getting) price data from eve-central.com.

Ah, the beauty of Excel in space ;-)
Ah, the beauty of Excel in space 😉

Wallet has been iterated upon, because previously it would display walletTransactions (market sales) and walletJournal (bounties, contracts, taxes, etc.) separately. Market and contracts are now merged, so we know the actual ISK flow (we are buying minerals from corp members using contracts, and the rest of materials from market).

Tips’n’Tricks for Static Data Dump and EVE API

I have already mentioned it in the first post about LMeve, that EVE API can be tricky at times. So does the Static Data Dump.

As it turns out, telling the correct amount of materials required to build an item is not an easy task, because the data is mixed together: skills and “extra materials” are in the ramtyperequirements table, so you have to tell them apart (hint: join invgroups and use categoryID = 16 to separate skills from materials).

Secondly, the invtypematerials table contains the materials you get when reprocessing the item. It should be the same amount as materials required to build an item, right? Well, it only holds true for Tech 1 items. For Tech II, you have to subtract Tech 1 base item materials from the Tech 2 materials (hint: use recycle column in ramtyperequirements table to find the base item). The weirdest thing however is, that for some items it will give the exact results (for example Improved Cloaking Device II), but for some (like Kronos) you will end up with negative values! Of course the only solution is to hide the negative values from output.

Last but not least, EVE API is having hiccups now and then, throwing 1001: cache is invalid error for wallet transactions, wallet journal and message feeds. The main functionality of LMeve does not depend on these feeds (apart from the Wallet module), but for some people, like Somerset Mahm (and his excellent Blink service) it can be quite a pain. Good luck fixing it @CCP!

Story continues

This is not a formal project, so keeping the scope from growing is not much of an issue (the only budget I have here is time), but there is still plenty of features waiting on the drawing board:

  • Industry Goals (similar to Tasks, but at the corp level). Ideally I would like to draw pretty production lines for Tech II and Capital items with all the intermediate products.
  • Inventory (Material Stocks, Buy Calculator for buying minerals from corp members)
  • Market (Monitoring buy/sell orders, Monitoring market prices for materials and products)
  • Settings (Some values are still not editable without phpMyAdmin right now)
  • EVE API monitoring (to gather API statistics and errors over time, currently I only keep the last value)
  • Linking characters to accounts using EVE API (currently admin has to link characters to account manually)

Want to help us test LMeve?

Would you like to join a friendly group of mature players and get paid for cycling corp manufacturing and invention tasks?

Well, now you have a chance! Apply to Aideron Technologies today! Simply contact our recruiter – Razeu – in game.

PS. Please specify AT in the application form, because we still share forum with Aideron Robotics.

Pay twice – train twice

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

The recent dev-blog by CCP Quant almost made me jump! I have been playing EVE for nearly 8 years now, and had two accounts for about 6. Alternate characters are damn useful (especially for industry and cynoing around), so there is never enough of them little buggers. Unfortunately, only one char can train per account, which means that you would have to cut the training time from your main at some point to create another alt. Everyone knows that the main should have as many SP as possible (you know, for show off purposes!). This is what makes most people open a second account: so training alts doesn’t stop the main from training.

Guess what? CCP will allow you to train a second character on the same account

Of course it costs PLEX a month, but it is almost exactly as if you had a second account. You can still log only one character per account, so this change won’t help multiboxers.

This is still a very welcome change, because it allows:

  • to keep training your main character at all times
  • train more useful alts on the main account
  • no need to move characters between accounts in order to train

How to enable it?

Simply right click a PLEX and select “Activate Dual Character Training”. The change will come to Tranquility with Odyssey expansion.

What it will not do?

  • Dual Character Training does not affect the game time on account
    • If your sub runs out, the Dual Character Training pauses until your sub is renewed
  • Once Dual character Training runs out, the character with less SP will stop training
  • Dual Character Training does not allow you to login to game with two characters from the same account
  • Dual Character Training does not auto-renew and cannot be stacked
    • You can pay for another term 7 days before the current one expires

Odyssey now deployed on Singularity

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

In the late evening of May 8th CCP has deployed first true Odyssey build (531040) on the Singularity test server. My Twitter stream has quickly become flooded with screens and videos from Odyssey, so here is a quick summary of which features are already on Singularity, and can be tested by the community. Screenshots included.

  • New EVE Launcher:
    new-singularity-launcher-properly-installed
  • Ship skill tree has been updated, but old Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills still remain in the tree with 0 SP
    • Before logging in old amount of SP was displayed
    • After login skills got updated – about 6 million SP has been added
      odyssey-ship-skills

    Read more

Retribution Point Release brings new V3 shaders

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

As predicted in my Odyssey Status Post, the brand new V3 shaders are coming earlier, than expected:

PS. It often happens that changes visible on Singularity make it earlier to the game than in the big new expansion (for example they could be included in Retribution 1.5 Point Release).

What I didn’t guess is the Point Release number, which is 1.2. Full patch notes can be found here.

Station Interiors, Drones and Capital ship V3

As always, I’m impressed with CCP Art Departament’s work. You will be, too, because the station interiors are fully animated (force fields, lights), and you will see random ships floating in the distance. I only miss the old Gallente station interior with holographic Quafe ad inside 😉
Read more

Mineral composition changes in Odyssey

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

I have run a quick analysis on the numbers posted by CCP Fozzie in his dev-blog about industry changes in Odyssey. While the changes do affect mining for profit to some degree, they make manufacturing in nullsec much easier. When I was in nullsec, the budding industrialists would only mine the most expensive ore, strictly for profit. Mining anything else – like Veld for industry purposes – was considered waste of time. “You can do it in high-sec mate, so why bother?” or so I was told at the time. With the considerable increase in production lines amount at outposts, this mineral composition change will help null industrialists to do more production locally and without the need to import minerals from high sec (which in the end isn’t that hard if you own a jump freighter).

Ok, let’s have a look at the numbers now, shall we?

Ore composition changes in Odyssey
Ore composition changes in Odyssey

Spodumain has received most of the love, which brings it from half Veldspar value to about 130% of Veldspar value. Gneiss will now be worth about 140% of Veldspar value, which is very nice, considering the fact, that low-sec grav sites often contain considerable amounts of it.

Four new EVE Online apps for iOS

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Mobile , , , ,

Last summer I have written a big review of all EVE Online apps available for iOS and Android. The post has been very popular (it’s in the top 3 every month), so I have decided to update it with new apps, which have arrived in App Store since the original post.

While I try to avoid the word “useless”, the usefullness of some of these apps below is well… low. This doesn’t mean however, that they can’t potentially be useful for some players.

EPIc-for-EVEEPIc for EVE

Developer: Adolfo Adorni Price: 1,79 EUR

Description

EPIc for EVE Online is your Planetary Interaction Companion.
With EPIc you can browse Eve Planets and materials you can extract from or build on planets, set up your current warehouse of materials and set up the production goal and study you colony plant settings.

Using EPIc you can share your warehouse whit Eve mates and complete every build target easily!

Review

This is the only app for Planetary Interaction on iOS, it’s also the most expensive one! Since CCP offers no API for PI, the app does not need a key.

Everything is set up in the app itself.

  • First, you need to input your PI related skills on the “Settings” tab – Interplanetary Consolidation and command Center Upgrades.
  • Secondly, switch to the “Planets” tab and set up your colonies. To do this, choose a planet type from the list, press the right arrow sign.
  • Set up colony name and add structures. You will have to enter details such as link lengths as well.

Based on what you have set up, app will determine what you’re producing on the “Recap” screen. It will also let you to set up exportable and importable materials (if you have to move them between planets). IMHO the background on the Recap screen should be less transparent, because the bitmap with the Drakes makes it a bit difficult to read. Otherwise the UI is very clear and intuitive.

Last but not least, you can create a group with other players. Such group will be able to plan goals and import/export commodities between their planets.

IMG_1249 IMG_1248 IMG_1251 IMG_1252 IMG_1250

evemineEVEMine

Developer: Robert Bojor Price: FREE

Description

EVEMine will help EVE Online players, miners especially, to optimize their mining time and in the same time increase the ISK per hour ratio.

The Ore Mining tab will serve for when you’re strip mining those pesky belts. Just input your Mining yeld, Cycle time, Lasers used, Asteroid type and quantity and hit Run Calculation.

The Ice Mining tab works a bit different. Input your Cargo space, Lasers used and Cycle time and it will notify you when your cargo is full. This way you can do your AFK jobs and not switch to the game constantly.

Review

Another really simple app, but can potentially be useful. If you are an Ice Miner and you are not afraid of gankers, this is the perfect timer app for Ice Mining. Simply warp to a belt, start mining and minimize EVE. The app will then sound an alarm when the cargo hold is full, so you know when to alt-tab back to EVE.

Unfortunately the app does not seem to be up-to-date with Mining Barge changes in Inferno 1.2.

20130426-115602.jpg 20130426-115613.jpg 20130426-115622.jpg

eveccEVE Carebear Central

Developer: bbb Price: 0,89 EUR

Description

* Fetching current Jita/Dodixie/Amarr/Oursulaert/Rens mineral/ice prices from server. – It is (buy+sell)/2 atm. Also you can see detailed buy/sell prices in Detail window via detail button.

* Calculating Ore/Ice values at Ore/Ice tab. Listing their refined minerals, also their ISK/volume values so you can see which ore to mine is best at current market prices.

* Character Tab: You can add your characters -click info button at bottom right for info- to see all their minerals worth with current selected data pull with their location. Also main character list shows current wallet + all mineral worth.

Review

The app is quite useful for Tech I manufacturers, because it allows a quick peek at the ice/mineral prices in all major trade hubs (using eve-central as its price source). Unfortunately entering API KEY is a bit complicated compared to other EVE Online apps. First, you need to enter your character name, so the app does a reverse characterID lookup (what for?), then you can copy and paste your API key from EVE Online website. Once you’ve done that, the app will pull the assets API feed and calculate the value of all minerals in posession of your character. It will also display the current amount of ISK in your wallet. The biggest disadvantage however is the fact that the app is a paid one (0,89 EUR or $0,99)

20130426-115828.jpg 20130426-115834.jpg 20130426-115838.jpg

iskiesISKies

Developer: Simeon Mitev Price: FREE

Description

This is the right tool for everyone who’s playing EVE ONLINE and need to convert ETC60 into ISK or convert ISK into playing time.

Iskies will keep you informed about the actual average sell price and average buy price for a single ETC60 of Eve Timecode Bazaar, right on your iPhone.

If you want to convert ISK from within the game just setup your desired SELL price and Iskies will let you know when the right moment has come.

Using EPIc you can share your warehouse whit Eve mates and complete every build target easily!

Review

A very simple and straight-forward app. You can see the graph of the average price of 60-Day ETC on Timecode Bazaar (on EVE Online Forums). When you slide the first graph with sell prices, a second one with buy prices will appear. Again, EVE API isn’t used here at all.

IMG_1258 IMG_1259 20130426-115822.jpg

Warning: may cause severe threadnaughts

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,
Warning: may cause severe threadnaughts

Today CCP Stillman has posted a Dev Blog about a 30 day ban enforced on people who have been using client modifications, namely warp to zero autopilot.

This dev-blog would be nothing out of ordniary, if Stillman didn’t remind the community about Cache Scraping being a bannable offense as well.

Let me remind you what Cache Scraping is. EVE is storing some temporary data on your computer to avoid downloading it from the server every time this data is required. Market prices are a good example: when you visit the in-game market, the game is downloading prices and is storing them in cache. There is several programs, including well known EVEMON, which use this information to feed eve-central.com, one of the biggest unofficial API projects made by EVE players. Data frome eve-central.com is used to feed killboards and other third party apps with current prices.

There is also the excellent Python script by Entity (the famous item collector), which allows to create a static data dump from singularity (or tranquility) client cache data. This allows third party developers to offer their apps with up-to-date databases even before official Static Data Dump is available. I have been using Entity’s script to publish data dumps from Singularity builds as well (these dumps allow players to see what changes are coming to ships and modules in the coming expansion).

With cache scraping banned, all these useful additions would be gone

But here came the excellent EVE Online community. As expected, players have rallied together and created this forum threadnaught to remind CCP, that they are about to ban something, that enriches the game, and fills the gaps left by the developers. EVE API does not allow access to the market data, so players have created a tool for other players. CCP has consulted their lawyers, and CCP Peligro has posted this in the threadnaught which I’ve mentioned:

CCP Peligro wrote:

Thank you for all your comments and concerns regarding cache scraping, we are listening and we truly appreciate your feedback.

After consulting with CCP Legal and Team Security, we are not prepared to amend the EULA at this time to address your concerns. However, your comments are good ones, and we will consider incorporating them with the next scheduled update to the EULA (expected this fall, 2013).

In the meantime, CCP confirms that we will only impose penalties on cache scraping if used in connection with other illegal activities in the game (i.e., botting). We will not take action against cache scraping for other uses.

The day is saved, long live the EVE community!

PS. It’s not Stillman’s fault, that the EVE EULA disallows cache scraping. What happened today however, has a chance to get the EULA ammended in such a way, that players using the data from game cache will not end up being punished for enriching the game for others.

Industry Tracker takes shape

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Programming , , , , , , , ,
Industry Tracker - Login Screen

In a recent post I have introduced you to the LMeve Industry Tracker. It’s a web app, which I’m writing for my corp.

Some time has passed, and despite a hard drive failure, the app is already taking shape. The most important part I have described in the previous post, the API poller, is nearly complete. And it’s been working stable for more than a month, which is additional boon. I have decided not to parse all-and-every available api feed (do we seriously need that medal data?), but instead I have chosen to poll the most often used ones. This way I can start working on the GUI, which at this time is the most important thing for us. Of course there is nothing stopping me from adding all other API calls later on.

The following feeds are currently being parsed and loaded to the database:

  • global: ConquerableStationList.xml
  • global: ErrorList.xml
  • global: RefTypes.xml
  • evecentral: eve-central.com/marketstat.xml
  • corp: AccountBalance.xml
  • corp: APIKeyInfo.xml
  • corp: AssetList.xml
  • corp: ContactList.xml
  • corp: ContainerLog.xml
  • corp: CorporationSheet.xml
  • corp: FacWarStats.xml
  • corp: IndustryJobs.xml
  • corp: KillLog.xml
  • corp: MarketOrders.xml
  • corp: MemberTracking.xml
  • corp: StarbaseList.xml
  • corp: WalletJournal.xml
  • corp: WalletTransactions.xml

Each feed is cached according to the API documentation, and if a permanent error is returned, the poller will not attempt to read that feed again.

Me and TheAhmosis (Aideron Technologies’ CEO) have decided, which modules have to be up-and-running before we can start using the app for the corp:

  • Timesheet – so we know how much money we owe to our employees (yes, Aideron Technologies is paying their members; wanna become a part of the famous Aideron Industry Program and get paid? Apply now!)
  • Wallet – so we know how much ISK we have made (or lost)
  • Tasks – so every employee knows what to make (and when)

I have added one thing on top of that: role based rights management. My old PHP framework is only using two levels of rights currently: admin and user. In this project however, we would like our corp members to be able to register themselves by using their API keys, so we need a more granular security solution. This way we will also be able to match app username to in-game characters, and display the task list only for characters of that corp member.

Pics, or it didn’t happen?

Sure thing:

Timesheet Monthly wallet summaries API Poller statistics Industry overview - by character Industry overview - by item type

Hard drive failure. Bonus: how to repair a bricked Seagate drive

Lukas Rox Hardware, non-eve , , , ,
Seagate ST3500320AS

What the… ?

Last sunday I got hit by an unexpected hard drive failure (are hard drive failures ever expected?). Good thing is I had most of the data backed up. The worst part is, it was the system drive, so the PC was effectively shut down.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, also known as ST3500320AS. I have been using the PC normally the day before, I have even managed to take some screenshots of the new V3 Capital Ship shaders on EVE test server. The disk was working as it has been for the past 4 years: smooth and silent. Unfortunately, the next day my gaming rig greeted me with

“NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR

Not good. I have rebooted this time closely watching the BIOS messages:

SATA Port P0: Port reset error!

Okay, so the BIOS can’t access the disk. It must be the cabling! I have opened the case and carefully pushed all the plugs on all hard disks and dvd-rom drive.

No go. Still the same error.

Okay, let’s switch the cables. I have plugged the affected disk to a different port on the motherboard. Error message changed a little bit:

SATA Port P3: Port reset error!

Right, the disk has failed. Damn! Let’s see what uncle Google has to say about this. I entered the disk model number… and… surprise! It’s a known firmware bug.

What happened?

The disk I have is running firmware version SD15. As it turns out, Seagate had a “black series” of 7200.11 Barracudas, which had a firmware bug. The bug usually surfaced much earlier for other owners of the disk (one month up to a few months max). Mine worked for four years, but it eventually got hit by the bug as well.

It is worth noting that these Seagate drives store most of their internal calibration and configuration data on the platters, rather than in NVRAM, so replacing the PCB (which was my immediate idea) wouldn’t work. It seems that the bug is somehow related to this service data: when the drive is powered, it conducts some tests and then attempts to read the configuration information. And it hangs. Hence the bug is also known as “stuck in BSY” or simply BUSY bug.

But can it be fixed?

ST3500320AS connected to a diagnostic cableThe answer is yes, it can be fixed. You will need a special serial console cable (Nokia CA-42 cable can be adapted for this purpose), which will allow running diagnostic commands on the drive itself. An external USB-to-SATA interface with own power supply will be handy as well. You also need a Torx T-6 size screwdriver, because you will need to separate the PCB from the drive for a while.

The detailed instruction is here: Fixing a Seagate 7200.11 drive.

As expected, the drive hangs with an error message shortly after it spins up. Of course the console is inaccesible.

LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051

Untitled-1

but after running all the commands in the solution I linked above, all is fine:

Untitled-2 Untitled-3 Untitled-4 Untitled-5

 

The disk has been put back into the PC and is working just like before, with all the data intact.

Do you still trust Seagate?

Seagate ST3290A, still in working order

Yes I still do. I have many reasons to do that. First of all, I had many hard drives of different vendors, and they all break down roughly the same. Each of those vendors had some “black series” of drives which broke down more often than others. I also do realize that every hard drive will give up eventually. That’s why you can expect hard drives in server disk arrays to fail. That’s why they are so easy to replace. That’s what RAID disk arrays are for. Hard disks are a sort of long life consumables.

But the most important reason is a nearly 20 year old hard drive from my first PC. Guess what? It is still in working order. Although the capacity is orders of magnitude less than the current hard drives, and it is extremely slow and rather noisy, it still works. I need no further proofs that Seagate makes decent hard drives 😉