Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/17/2015
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Delicious friends!
I have a confession to make. I'm a compulsive clicker.
After briefly looking at the results of an action, I tend to click away from it faster than I can read the description, immediately regretting this. Or the fact that I did not echo it to my journal.
As an experienced extensionsmith, I thought it logical to draft and assemble an automaton to keep a short log of last actions my character took. A sort of black box for Fallen London.. Or a secretary that keeps track of your affairs. It looks something like this:
Clicking the added sidebar button opens this interface, which is a scrollable log of the last few (aiming for 30-50) events/storylets/conclusions you've experienced.
Green arrows mark clickable points that will bring up the echo-to-journal interface for the corresponding event.
Some caveats:
- This extension is in very rough prototype stage. I'm not making it public at this point.
- This extension parses FL interface as best as it can. Nevertheless, there are always corner cases that it will not understand.
- For the same reason, it is very prone to breaking if/when Failbetter makes changes to Fallen London.
What is the purpose of this thread?
- To assess public interest in such an extension, in view of caveats above. Please share your feedback on this.
- To request some sort of assessment by Failbetter - whether this extension has a right to live or must not be made public.
With respect to that last point:
- The extension tries to uphold the spirit of "no automation" rule - it does not allow to automate any actions. Echoing still requires an explicit action and goes through the normal form.
- Ability to echo content that is already navigated away is equivalent to the player opening a new tab and then continuing to play from there, eventually clicking "Record this to my Journal" in the original tab - it works.
- It does not allow to echo/see content that was not seen by the player.
- It does not try to build a database of content - all records are ephemeral and only last in memory while FL is open, with a set limit on how far the history goes.
Judge away, fellow Londoners.
edited by Alistair Cray on 7/18/2015
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
7/17/2015
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Neat! I've definitely regretted clicking away too fast, and have missed reading some things like rare success descriptions as a result.
Any reason (perhaps logistical/technical) you removed the progress bars that show the amount of gain/loss of a quality, and the levels the quality is between? That's some of the most useful information to keep track of, IMO, since CP progress isn't displayed anywhere but in storylet results (except for Menaces and Attributes). If dealing with the animated bars is a pain, it might even be more useful to just display the CP numbers, which can be calculated pretty easily from the numbers that create the bar.
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Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/17/2015
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metasynthie wrote:
Any reason (perhaps logistical/technical) you removed the progress bars that show the amount of gain/loss of a quality, and the levels the quality is between? That's some of the most useful information to keep track of, IMO, since CP progress isn't displayed anywhere but in storylet results (except for Menaces and Attributes). If dealing with the animated bars is a pain, it might even be more useful to just display the CP numbers, which can be calculated pretty easily from the numbers that create the bar.
It's quite rough at the moment, like I said. Some things are not parsed, like the quality progress.
Do note: it's impossible to calculate how many CP you received if you jumped up or down a level. FL simply does not tell the initial and final fractional result, only the levels.
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
7/17/2015
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I think it still gives the initial percentage (it's the beginning of the animation, the % the bar is set to initially) but yeah, it doesn't give you the final amount, so it's impossible to tell exactly how much CP was earned.
However -- and here's the interesting thing about your Secretary -- if you change that quality in a subsequent action, the player could see the initial CP level of the second action, which is the final CP level of the previous change. Having multiple results tallied by the secretary would certainly help with that kind of record-keeping. I'd love to have a decent estimate of how beneficial saving souls and contracts as a Shephred really is, for instance. 
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Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/17/2015
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metasynthie wrote:
I think it still gives the initial percentage (it's the beginning of the animation, the % the bar is set to initially) but yeah, it doesn't give you the final amount, so it's impossible to tell exactly how much CP was earned. I don't think so. If I recall correctly, it always goes from 0% to 100% in this case.
metasynthie wrote:
However -- and here's the interesting thing about your Secretary -- if you change that quality in a subsequent action, the player could see the initial CP level of the second action, which is the final CP level of the previous change. Having multiple results tallied by the secretary would certainly help with that kind of record-keeping. I'd love to have a decent estimate of how beneficial saving souls and contracts as a Shephred really is, for instance. That kind of state tracking, while possible, is beyond the scope of this idea. Also, it's bound to be inaccurate if the Secretary does not see all gameplay (e.g. you played on your phone for a bit, then continued on the desktop).
Don't get me wrong, I was initially thinking of precisely that - collecting reward statistics. But that's quite murky from the point of view of "no automation" rule.
edited by Alistair Cray on 7/17/2015
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
7/17/2015
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Just checked on a couple different qualities -- it does start at the correct initial percentage and then animate to 100%, at least when raising qualities to a new level.
I definitely think you're right not to expand your scope to have the extension keep track of more than what the game is reporting! To clarify, I was just thinking it'd be useful (for human-performed non-automated tracking) if the CP % given by the game were recorded by the Secretary, for humans to do what they will with. (Write them down, put them on a wiki, forget that you were trying to keep track of it and go off to play on your phone, etc.)
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Erika
Posts: 528
7/18/2015
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For reference: I would be quite interested in a thing like this, even more so if it could state the amount of CPs I had at various points in time. I wouldn't need it to track the difference between actions either, that could be manually recorded with ease.
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Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/18/2015
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metasynthie wrote:
I think it still gives the initial percentage (it's the beginning of the animation, the % the bar is set to initially) but yeah, it doesn't give you the final amount, so it's impossible to tell exactly how much CP was earned. Unfortunately, this does not seem to contain exact information about the CP level "before", or is bugged. I tested it with +3CP increases from 60+49CP, 60+48CP, 60+47CP, and all corresponded to animating from 98% to 100%.
It would actually be easier to learn the final CP than the initial CP, now that I look at it closely.
Still, I think it's way too much (guess)work for the scope of this extension.
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
7/18/2015
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Oh, how annoying! I tested it with an 3 CP increase from 58+49 CP and got the same 98%, but figured it was correct in that case. Also tested it with a 3 CP increase from 6+5 CP and it went properly from 71% to 100%, so perhaps it's something buggy about certain increases. I can definitely see what you mean about the guesswork. Sorry to be a bother!
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Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/19/2015
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New screenshots. Extension now recognizes quality changes, challenges and special card borders.
When a quality goes over the level, it will show an estimate of CPs required:
Next up: timestamps and parsing requirements.
I'm still waiting on some kind of comment from Failbetter: whether I should scrap this or is it okay to make this public.
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OleanderPale
Posts: 6
7/19/2015
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Count me in as very interested. What the prior actions used or caused us to 'lose' would be interesting, too, but I don't know how feasible that is. Just spitballing.
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
7/20/2015
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Also very interested!
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
7/20/2015
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Those CP counts look great and useful!
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genesis
Posts: 924
7/20/2015
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This looks great! Is this script currently (or with minimal effort) able to display things like Airs of London values that have been changed?
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Keeping track of incomplete content and loose ends in Fallen London
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Alistair Cray
Posts: 114
7/20/2015
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genesis wrote:
This looks great! Is this script currently (or with minimal effort) able to display things like Airs of London values that have been changed?
Sadly, no. The interface simply does not contain the information about exact levels of Airs, Bundles, etc. And I will not do additional queries for qualities - that's too invasive. My aim is to be a passive observer (except for the echo to journal commands).
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Quilster
Posts: 25
7/22/2015
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How very interesting. I admit I share your failing of too-quick-clicking and the second-too-late wait, what? I am, perhaps, a bit too green in the game to benefit much from your add-on, but am curious nevertheless.
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Eru Illuvatar
Posts: 65
7/22/2015
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Another interested citizen, checking in!
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Nanako
Posts: 536
2/7/2016
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I'm extremely interested, especially in those accurate CP counts.
I could use that to fill in a lot of blank spaces in the wiki
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
2/7/2016
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Indeed, is this something you continued to work on or was it abandoned for whatever reasons?
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MrBurnside
Posts: 188
2/7/2016
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I'd missed this when it came around the first time. Sounds invaluable!
Nanako wrote:
I'm extremely interested, especially in those accurate CP counts.
I could use that to fill in a lot of blank spaces in the wiki
That hadn't occurred to me, but is a great idea.
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