EmoTracker - suggestions

EmoTracker

Discussion / suggestions

Should there be a square for Magic Bat if you have somaria+shroom

you have with hammer

holdup Im dumb

20:30

Also, at least for now, please put potential logic bugs in #core-bugs. Just so I can see everything in one place whenever possible. I'm actively collecting and fixing issues.

20:31

(even though this is not a bug

)

Sure

I figured it wasnt a bug even if that wasnt a me being dumb thing, since I could see arguments as to why its still hard to consider (using shroom before getting cane)

Oh totally, but in general, so long as a sequence break is allowed in NMG mode, I would like to support it.

20:33

With the exception of hovering

20:34

I'm not adding hovering because there are lots of hardware reasons, especially for emulator players, where it may not even be possible.

And if you can hover I think it's reasonable that you know where you can use hover

20:35

though same applies for some other glitches

Since the tracker is pretty data rich, there's a bit of an instructional aspect to some of this. Like, if I show something as yellow, and somebody doesn't know why it's yellow, nothing would make me happier than for them to go on the rando discord and ask how to do that.

20:37

At which point they'll either say "It's a bug yell at Emo" or explain the trick, lol (edited)

Yeah

20:54

when I drew my own lines on my tracker I would get a range of different skill levels based on what I allowed and disallowed asking me why things were obtainable and if it was allowed in regular rando logic

That's the reason I never ended up releasing my current logic for cross's tracker. I ended up making desicions basen on my own glitch knowledge and didn't want to explain why I made certain desicions

One thing I've considered, which the tracker could easily support, is the ability to tag a name to a sequence break

21:11

And allow users to turn off sequence breaks they don't know

I have been thinking about that but I have no capability to do that myself since I can't code. Good idea though

Technically, you can do it with fake items right now. I'd probably want to build a slightly more user/dev-friendly options system for it tho

will there be a way to activate an option to mark off items that you can't get to but someone else checked, in the case of a 2v2?

you mean mark off item locations?

yeah, like if something's red, i can't clear it

oh right. it seems you can't right click them off

so if my partner finds a bottle and checks sick kid and it's trash, and i don't have a bottle, i have to make a mental note to clear it if i find a bottle

That's also a problem if some glitches aren't considered in the logic and you actually manage to check red location

21:42

can't mark it off in that case

less of a big deal during regular play, but we did a 2v2v2 keysanity the other night and trying to keep track of things was utter hell

I'd believe it's easy fix if she wants to do it

It's easy enough to add an option for it, though I'll have to think through the consequences for doing it before I commit

21:45

The real challenge is that, if you're ignoring accessibility, you're ignoring accessibility everywhere, most likely

21:45

so, for example, right now you can right click to clear what's accessible

21:46

In sahasrala hut for example, right clicking without the green pendant will clear the back room, but not sahasrala's item

21:46

So basically, that would probably stop working with that option enabled, which is fine, but it's an interesting consequence of supporting that

What Im hearing is linked HUDs to have eachother set things for eachother

And THAT is already on the list

22:04

Probably in January/Februrary timeframe

22:04

Right after SR.tv integration

wild ambition at some point way in the future

22:53

a tracker that can change SRAM data without causing trouble

22:54

so clicking bow gives you bow etc, sorta like a practice hack

22:54

You'd have to make it require autotracking to work

22:54

so that its forcefully disabled on race seeds to prohibit cheating twats

22:55

but that way it could replace the coop lua, and potentially even allow the linked coop stuff to work on not only multiple emulators, but perhaps even console via some sort of usb link

SRAM tracking and item updating does work on sd2snes

22:57

I saw redguy patch himself bow over usb before

Thats fucking sick

22:57

okay so this is a legit way to make a not-shit linked coop then

I’ll have to look into that

the coop lua would have to be entirely recoded though (I think)

22:58

cuz its like... really spotty as you may have seen

I think with the trackers being networked. It could be more reliable

22:58

As opposed to just networking ram

22:59

Linking the trackers is an easier problem, then it’s reflecting into ram from there

Yeah exactly

22:59

plus it doesnt even have to be sending data constantly, aside from like hp and such

22:59

Although I guess itll be sending chests so it should just send it all

Yeah, although I’d probably avoid syncing hp and magic in the first version

the HUD would mostly be the link with hidden code to make it work

Focus more on the trackable stuff, rather than consumables (edited)

I guess first version would be like... clicking items gives items, clicking locations off makes the chests opened

23:00

no actual back and forth

So, if that works, and I already built networked tracking, it will all just work

23:01

And networked tracking is on my list, so...

https://youtu.be/q70PdvOG70A

sd2snes usb networking test

The actual sram manipulation would actually be a great use case for building a plugin api, which is something I’ve been looking for a reason to do

Itd be great for a rando practice hack

Nice

23:03

Yeah, that would be pretty cool

23:03

I want to do plugin support

23:03

So people can add new item types, etc.

23:04

But it’s a security nightmare

23:04

So I’m gonna have to sandbox them pretty heavily

well since your HUD is on track to being the greatest it wouldnt surprise me if devs help make your HUD work better

I think most of the devs hate sram trace with a passion lol

so say... hide 30 bytes in a seed that look at the hash to fill an algorithms requirements

23:05

and when those all line up, then your tracker works

I was talking about security for the plugins

and the setting would be called "practice mode" in the website or something

The instant I allow somebody else’s random ass code to be executed by my tracker, it’s all my ass

Hmm

Like, I want to do plugins that can be used by packs

23:06

But I can’t expose users to too much risk

23:07

So for now I’m focusing on adding new features myself to the tracker app

I assume you mean like... mods to the HUD that will have customized function

Right

Yeah

Like we have item types

23:07

Progressive, toggle, etc.

23:07

It would be nice to add more from a plugin

23:07

But I have to sandbox them or they can do real damage if somebody decides to be a dick

23:08

Which unfortunately would make it very difficult to do something like talking to a usb device directly

I dont know enough about countering dangerous software so my suggestions would likely be easy to bypass

23:09

which would be... all plugins have to be approved by you, and given a GUID that is hardcoded to work or something, but then how hard would it be to steal a GUID for a fake plugin

Microsoft provides sandboxing frameworks, But effective sandboxing means restricting access to storage, etc.

23:09

So it’s not about making plugins safe

23:09

It’s about what making plugins safe means they can’t do

23:10

Guids are worthless for that

true

I would have to start signing approved assemblies, which means that the rate of progress is gated by me

23:10

Which is exactly the opposite of why I want plugins

Yeah

If I have to approve everything, I might as well just have them modify the code and I’ll review the changes before publishing

23:11

So yeah

23:11

It’s a tricky thing (edited)

23:12

Honestly, it would be much easier to just build a one off tracker

23:12

But I’m tired of people having to build the same damn stuff over and over, lol

23:12

Like, how many fucking item grids does the world need

23:12

So I built a platform, which is nice, but now I have platform problems, lol

23:13

If I thought I could make worthwhile money on this, I’d quit my job and make this thing AMAZING

23:14

But instead it will have to be “pretty damn, maybe surprisingly, good - but not without real issues”

I still need to learn how to use the HUD

Play around with it, and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Ah I found what I was looking for

23:17

I didnt pay attention to the packages I installed, one was the items only I was looking for

Yah

23:17

One thing pugHUD has that I don’t right now is items that take up multiple tiles

and keysanity andySmug

andySmug

I have other solutions to some of those layouts, but not all

23:18

Keysanity is coming this week

thats all though yeah

I could ship items-only keysanity tonight if I wanted

23:18

But the full keysanity with key/door logic is later this week

I think what Im gonna do when its all like... out and functioning

23:19

Is discontinue pughud support

23:19

and start making layouts for this HUD

It’s not documented yet, but you can publish your own packages to any webserver

23:20

And users can add your repository to their tracker, install your packages, auto update, etc.

23:21

So my dream is that pugHUD by the legend @Fouton (PugHUD) is still a thing, he just doesn’t have to go write code to do it very often

23:21

But people might like your layout better than mine

23:21

So why not subscribe to pugHUD and use that?

Yeah

It’s kind of a weird goal, but that’s the kind of gal I am, I guess, lol. I just want everything to be better for everybody.

I guess I dont even truly need a keysanity toggle

23:22

cuz its simply just two packages

Once I implement switches, you COULD have one

23:22

But yeah, right now it would be two packages

But whats better, one large package or two packages andyThinking

andyThinking

It’s a wash, honestly

(Id make all 3)

There ya go

now 3 packages, thats where its at

3 is a great number. Even just saying it... Three. Just rolls off the tongue (edited)

Which is definitely nice

Definitely

Any chance of adding a ? state to the crystal tracker? I'm sure most people don't care, but it seems weird to me for the tracker to show 10 crystals before I have a chance to change them. I like the way PugHUD has it.

Keysanity is gonna push me to that anyway, so I will update the open mode/items only packages with that when I release keysanity

I forgot to send you the ?

Thought on that animation conversation we had Emo, technically you can have animation and such

15:05

and just leave the broadcast picture as is

15:05

and people can choose to capture the picture that doesnt animate, or the actual hud

15:05

that way youre not limited to using a picture

Yeah, there are definite options

15:06

I started experimenting with an image output on disk for translucent broadcast views, but decided to work on the window refactor instead as it will benefit more things.

15:06

And it’s looking nice, should release late tonight

Is there a way to undo a right click on a location? currently it removes the location but the only way i see to get it back is to refresh the whole tracker

Hit f11 (or is it f10?) It shows every location

07:36

Then you can undo it from there

OH ok thats cool

Probably wouldn't hurt to have an undo feature

1

08:00

Not sure if Ctrl+Z does anything on this yet

would it be possible to have the pinned locations be closable? My idea would be to have the items and both maps in a column so that they take up less realestate on screen. (edited)

I think you can do that already

08:30

Documents\emotracker\user_overides (edited)

08:30

Then edit the tracker_layout.json

oh ok sweet really need to invest some time into reading the stuff...too much restreaming

Editing the json files isn't documented yet (edited)

Undo is currently being thought about. It’s slightly more complicated than people think due to the ability for locations to grant items when cleared, but it will be coming at some point.

09:53

Documentation is also high on my priority list.

It would be good to have different levels of accessibility that we can change on our own, to say have multiple stages of sequence breaking

I like it - this is something that should happen. Things like accessibility require deep integration into the logic for the locations, so I don't expect this to be a user-settable option, but rather a tool for pack developers to build more expressive packs.

not sure if this is avalable or even possible but is there like a general settings that will open the tracker in the same position and size every time?

I think the only thing right now is that it'll open the same pack

13:43

You might be able to edit the tracker_layout.json into a fixed width/height thing

13:44

Use the items only packs for reference

ok ill take a poke

@EmoSaru does item size support % ?

13:47

Say if I want to make the items only pack completely scalable

The position/size of the tracker is in the works, asked previously

(edited)

then i guess this question needs to be asked is there a list of in progress suggestions so i dont keep asking for them

I have an ad-hoc list on my end right now. I will set up something more publicly visible in the near future

14:14

And @jaysee - no, it doesn't

14:14

And it likely never will, for technical reasons

14:14

But whole layout zoom is going to happen

2 things im curious about. first is, is it possible to edit the layout of the items section? second, can the pinned locations be saved? noticed it resets on restarting the program.

You can change item layout on tracker and broadcast views

12:19

You have to edit files in the emotracker directory in documents

Pinned locations reset, including on resetting the tracker with F5. They are intended to be specific to a given run.

13:01

That said, there is support coming soon'ish for being able to set a list of locations you would like to be auto-pinned by default for a given package

13:02

Also, yes, you can customize the layout of the items, but it does require overriding/editing layout files (edited)

13:02

I am working on support for improving the flexibility of these overrides, so that you can override a specific sub-layout without overriding the entire tracker layout

i was just going to ask about defaulting pinned locations =3.

It's been a request for a while

13:04

FYI, I'm also working on setting up a more publicly visible way of tracking my backlog, so that you can see what's already been suggested/captured.

cool got it! also will the documentation you're working on define valid variables for the json objects? it would be helpful when creating packs from scratch. if the json's had the valid options in say comments it would probably help people just trying to modify as well. (edited)

The bulk of the documentation will be devoted to fully covering all the properties and types supported in all of the JSON files.

13:18

I'm intending for there to be both a reference, as well as examples/tutorials with images showing the results (edited)

good to know. i was looking at the jsons today and was wondering what the program was looking for / what it would ignore and most importantly what would break the program.

13:19

because if i can stick a number where it expects a string and blow it up... it might need to be fixed XD

There are apparently a few error handling issues, so I think certain files are actually capable of crashing the app if they contain actual JSON parsing errors (mismatched braces, missing commas, etc.) (edited)

13:20

That said

13:20

The value accessor I use is actually capable of doing certain types of cross-type conversion, so things like numbers vs. strings are generally okay

Can you make broadcast layout independent from the packs?

I could see that being kinda annoying when swapping between keysanity and not

@jaysee No, because it depends on the item codes, which are specific to the pack

22:41

However

22:41

For any of my LTTP packs, once you setup the override, you can just copy your override into the new pack

Keysanity will be one you want to modify to include the keys though

grubsad

so i cant resize the broadcast window, which leads to it expanding/shrinking as i clear or pin locations, and moves it around on my xsplit layout, any solutions for that that i may be missing? if not thats my suggestion

@Benteezy - You have a few options.

16:38

1) I'm not sure how XSplit transforms work, but you may be able to set the origin/anchor for it to "Top Left", which will prevent it from moving regardless of size changes

16:38

2) You can actually fix the size of the recentpins element, or even just the root to set the size of the entire view

16:39

You can do #2 by setting the "width" and "height" properties on the appropriate elements, to the sizes you want in pixels

for 1 i see "lock position but it doesnt stop it from expanding therefore getting higher when i add stuff to it, i can send you screens of the options sec

kk

16:44

If it's expanding upwards, it almost certainly means it's using the center as the reference point/origin for the transform (edited)

16:44

I'll look at your screenshots and see if I can advise

Wow, okay, so xsplit doesn't appear to support setting the transform origin

17:01

Which is hella lame, especially if they're using the center

17:02

SO

17:02

I suspect that #2 is going to be your best bet

Is it possible to make a pack for Emotracker that lets you pin items for any chest? Like what you already have for places like lumberjack cave. Might be useful for classic co-op. Linked trackers might be an interesting idea too, but I imagine that would be banned during SRL races.

Linked trackers is 100% on my roadmap for the future, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the fact that linked tracker support plus custom layouts would make this bananas good for tournament situations, with commentator views, etc.

15:53

Noting an item for any chest is something that's possible, but probably not in the way that the current thing works.

15:54

I've been dreaming up a more general 'tagging' solution for various things, largely to support potential entrance-shuffle and co-op scenarios.

15:54

But there's a significant list of to-do's between today and the point where I'm tackling that

This gives me an idea for future linked trackers

17:40

Where theres different modes of linked, one where one person clicks lumberjack and its gone for both

17:40

I guess actually thatd be good either way

17:41

but what you could do is have it so if you say... hold shift when you click it, you can pick an item from the hud to set there, it goes away from your side of the tracker but their side shows that item at that location

17:42

obviously having a version of linked that doesnt go away when youre teammate clicks it is good if you want to not trust your teammate for clicking things correctly

Yeah, that’s something along the lines of how I envisioned “tagging” working

17:49

Basically note-taking on steroids

Should we make advanced sprites for keysanity note taking or would it be fine to mark something and itll just draw dungeon item ontop of dungeon initials (edited)

I’m still working it out, but my hope is that it will be little overlays

17:52

And that you can apply multiple tags to a single location

Yeah thatd make sense, tag small key, tag dungeon

that would actually make a not bad commentator tracker

We'll need a real small key resource that way, do you have one or should I send one

Yeah. The keysanity packs already in progress just have a grid with keys for each dungeon along with their dungeon crystal

17:53

I have one

perfect

But yeah, commentators are part of what I’m thinking about with rags

17:54

Tags

I picture it looking like this in the box that you mark things on

Image attachment

Like, you could even have a location map that’s being tracked, with pen support for drawing like sports TV

17:55

There’s a lot of potential for expanding what commentators have access to for presentation

17:55

Especially with how dynamic the layout already is

have you seen the Z1 tourney tracker?

I have

something like that with location marking for items would be huge for the race viewers

17:57

i know there are a million items and such

It’s actually not that bad to do

That wouldn't be too difficult to customize as an option for a broadcaster package

17:57

like, make an override that does that instead on the maps if you so choose

Building new layout elements isn’t hard

17:58

So there’s a lot that can be done

17:59

But yeah, I think restreams could be REALLY cool with a few extra tools

I could see displaying items on the map being a bit of a cluster when you get some of those multi chest caves being insanely rewarding

17:59

like if paradox cave gives you 7 noteworthy items

There’s always the ability to scale things, or allow commentators to hide them, etc.

18:00

I think it could be done lots of ways

18:00

Doesn’t event have to be on the map

18:00

Could be a different custom view

I guess you could have it be two windows

18:01

nah my idea isnt good

18:01

I was gonna say two windows, where you can drag the items around and the person running OBS can overlay them

18:01

but thats a bit... awkward

I think there are a lot of options

18:02

Whenever possible, I’d like to offer people simple features they can combine in unique ways

18:02

When somebody can’t do something, id rather add 3 small things to make it possible to do

18:03

That way those 3 small things can be combined with other stuff in ways I didn’t think of

Yep

Anyway, bbiab. Gotta drive

drive safe

18:05

for restreamers i will say the less window management the better so the more you can slap onto the overlay the better Z1 take me 5 min to launch and get runners cropped z3 takes me 15 because i have do deal with the trackers

Cropping trackers is due to other problems

18:09

You can already lock the size and layout of EmoTracker views

18:09

But yeah, sufficed to say, I have ideas

18:09

Also traffic jam, fml

git off yer phone ya bum

The light in front of me has cycled twice since I last moved (edited)

Relating to my small key to change the layout between normal to keysanity for my pughud import

21:53

Just having the option to have buttons to change layouts in general would be good, so that you can have a package that has buttons for hard, expert, etc to remove things you cannot obtain from the hud

21:54

the button being progressive would also be nice

My design for “switches” for packs accounts for that

excellent

Could you remind me what your opinion on chathud was, I was thinking about that today and have more opinions

Chathud

Gah, I just saw this. My thought on chathud is that network-linked trackers is a more generally useful feature

16:57

And would be a good foundation for anybody who wants to build a chathud bot (edited)

16:57

whether's it's me or not

Can you make the tracker just add my items to the game so if I misclick, I'm not confused when I go to use? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

is this even doable at all?

the adding items? very

there's actually a recent thing where you can play a shared item coop on Super Metroid now

20:02

You find an item, it gives it to all your teammates.

20:02

And if you take damage, your teammates get hurt too

20:03

It works with SD2SNES and a special build of SNES9X

aLttP has the same thing available with a lua script.

20:12

Willard and Fouton use it every now and then. There's still some bugs though. https://clips.twitch.tv/OutstandingBravePotOSfrog (edited)

WillardJBradley Playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Twitch Clips

This is what it's like to be on drugs. - Clipped by JRJathome

both on emulator?

Yeah. Not sure what SM uses, but Zelda 3 co-op has to be done with an emulator.

Emu and/or a special firmware for sd2snes

21:12

I new the capability of the firmware for months. Found out about multitroid last week

If they've got a working sd2snes usb hookup, I wanna seee their source

23:24

for... reasons

Ive heard theres a form of the lua that works on sd2snes but I dont know enough about it

01:36

Theres a program thats in the alttpr discord for coop without a lua, seems designed to be crossplatform

01:36

I couldnt get it working due to requiring port forwarding and potential firewalling

In the resources doc?

01:37

Or elsewhere

Other dev

01:37

Their ridiculously oversized and difficult to navigate spreadsheet

01:37

Its in the links at the top

A_Link? That appears to be emulator agnostic'ish, but I don't see anything about sd2snes

01:40

It's also windows specific, AFAICT

Addons, Awskers github

01:42

By cross platform I mean emulators etc

Yeah, that's what I was looking at

I really hope the sd2snes port gets made

01:44

Then I can stop hearing the “oh its emulator thats gross”

hehehe

01:44

I've been having related conversations lately

01:44

So if the metroid folks have something working, I definitely wanna look at it

From what I can tell the difference is minor from sm to alttp based on the lua code

oh I don't care aebout that part

01:45

I wanna see their SD2SNES interface code

Haha

01:45

Planning on a sram sd2snes?

I shouldn't say I don't CARE about that part

01:45

It's just that that's the easy part

01:46

And no, not an SRAM trcker

01:46

Other stuff

Dev tools to win tournaments?

01:46

There are so many jokes I could make, but no

01:46

It's some other community dev stuff, that I'm not the right person to talk about

01:47

I've just been talking with the people involved, so when I saw SD2SNES hookup stuff mentioned here, I got interested

Ahh

that lua thing seems interesting, might try that with friend

https://github.com/OsteHovel/jusb2snes

OsteHovel/jusb2snes

jusb2snes - Java implementation of usb2snes

Evening. I believe I was suggested to come to this server for programming chat?

Sure

Alright, here's the situation. I've added keysanity support for my own personal tracker, based on crossproduct's work (and hopefully I gave enough credit to him on the website). I do like the idea of options for trackers. However, I also don't want operating systems to get in the way. Call it a slight bias of mine.

18:29

If there's a good way we can team up and work together, I'm all for it.

So, EmoTracker is, really, an engine for building trackers.

18:30

The packs define everything - layout, items, locations, logic, etc.

18:30

If you (or anybody) were interested, the most interesting thing to me would be partnering with a strong web developer who'd be interested in implementing the EmoTracker interface in HTML5/JS

hears "JS" and pops out of the ground (edited)

There is an interest on my part, though I cannot guarantee speed. Too many things on my plate from fun to work to sanity. Still, I'll offer my tracker as a recent resume. http://stumpy.nfshost.com (link to the github repo is at the bottom)

18:33

Now, there is something I'm genuinely curious about regarding your tracker. Or rather, how it was programmed. I'm familiar with C# programming due to my own job, but Mono is still new to me. In particular, running it. Does mono work for setup.exe programs?

Setup issues aside, Mono would not run this tracker due to it being implemented in WPF. There is no mono version of WPF at this point.

How is the linked/networked tracker going or is that still on pending

I can tell you that it absolutely runs perfectly in VMs such as Parallels with a real windows installation.

18:34

That's very much still pending @Noraystra (edited)

...then perhaps this may be of interest? https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia

AvaloniaUI/Avalonia

Avalonia - A multi-platform .NET UI framework (formerly known as Perspex)

18:34

I know WPF and XAML are not exactly the same, but perhaps we can figure out a common thing?

That's pretty interesting, @wolfman2000 . I will have to take a deeper look into that, and see what support is present/missing.

18:35

Certain things are likely to require platform-specific work no matter what, like the custom window chrome.

18:35

FYI, I also use mac laptops.

18:35

Just not for my streaming rig

18:36

While converting the native app to be more cross platform is definitely interesting, partnering with somebody to do a high quality HTML5 version would have a broader reach

18:36

So that would be my preference speaking generally

I understand that process.

I notice a lot of trackers - and this is not a jab at you Emo - are written in platform dependant code and Its a bit upsetting (edited)

With EmoTracker, none of the core logic is platform dependent

18:37

However

ar rather, are compiled to platform dependant

the layout system is implemented almost entirely in xaml

18:37

As WPF has an excellent dynamic layout system

Well, let's focus on my current tracker then. It's written in Angular 5 (formerly 4, but it's basically the same), with unit tests in Jasmine/Karma. I have it set up so that I require 80% coverage so that I don't slack off.

18:38

As far as features go, it's got normal coverage, keysanity, boss enemizer support, and also a go mode indicator for the newer players.

18:38

Oh yeah: difficulty selections as well so you can't select red tunic in hard mode.

18:38

The UI is bootstrap based. It's a basic layout, admittedly. I didn't get to implement custom positioning: I know I had one request for that.

Sounds like a nice tracker

18:39

The philosophy behind emotracker is a bit different than most trackers

18:39

Largely because it's not, in and of itself, a tracker

18:39

There's not a single line of code in the app that refers to Zelda, Z3R, etc.

All in the packs then.

Exactly

18:40

So adding features is a bit different, and I prioritize differently

18:40

Based on what would benefit the most packs, rather than adding things specifically for Z3R first

That makes sense. Alright...is there a link to a pack I can view for comparison's sake? It doesn't have to be for Z3R.

The most completely example of what the tracker can do, including some currently unused data that references features that don't exist yet, is the keysanity pack

18:42

one sec, lemme grab the pack url

18:43

http://www.emosaru.com/emotracker/packages/alttprando_v27_keysanity_light_emosaru.zip

18:43

That's a direct download of the pack data

18:43

the open mode pack is a bit simpler - http://www.emosaru.com/emotracker/packages/alttprando_v27_openmode_emosaru.zip

18:44

Some of the location data evolved organically during development. I have a todo to go in and do a cleanup pass

The samples are appreciated. I probably won't dive into them too much tonight, but hopefully I can take a look while also prepping for the bracket stages of the Z1R tournament. ......still can't believe I got this far.

Oh no worries, as far as I'm concerned this is all just conjecture and chit-chat at this point. GJ on getting to brackets!

appreciated.

Emo, what is the thought behind Sahasrahla, Spectacle Rock & Zora being orange? In particular, I find myself forgetting to do Zora because I dont' have flips and it doesn't register with me. What do you think about Zora being separate and green?

The locations seem to be orange when you can get at least one item from a multi item location by itself or with sequence breaks

Orange is “partial access”. In some cases splitting the locations is an option, but it’s very easy to crowd the map and make it easier to misclick, so it’s not a change I’d make lightly.

Hey @EmoSaru , thank you so much for creating such a great tracker.. but i'm currently missing the option to set which medallion is needed for mire and TR... am I overlooking it or is it not yet implemented yet?

right-click on the medallions to mark which dungeons they open

2

aah thanks!

is there a type for an item that goes in stages as follows: 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 etc

Basically a progressive item that loops?

yeah (edited)

Not currently, but I can add a loop option to progressive items easily

thatd be wonderful

15:25

Fitting pughud in Im gonna keep gomode and replace hearts with a rotating heart piece count

15:25

for implementation, would it be more versatile to allow it to start at any point you choose in the stage, and upon looping return to any stage you choose

15:25

say start at 0, and it goes 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 3 4 5 6

Interesting, also easy to add, so sure why not

not that I see practicality in that at the moment, but I do want to not have an 'off' (dark) in the loop

Speaking of PugHUD, Willard was talking about how he used to mark the bottle to indicate sick kid had been checked, but he can't do that now with EmoTracker.

I too miss checkmarks >.>

I assume something similar can be set up with the code the medallions use.

Yes and no

15:28

You could, but it'd be a lot of images

15:28

I have a plan for more generic "badging" of items though, which will be how that gets done

15:29

There's also a layered image feature I was talking with Fouton about at one point that could also be used to make it easier

15:29

but I like badging

Im not too sure what you mean by badging

I personally changed the bottle to use the counter from keysanity instead of individual images. I think it looks better that way.

like notification badging

Image attachment

15:30

Except with image badge support as well

oh yeah thatd be decent

15:30

The way I pictured the solution was

It's actually how the countable items work

15:30

but that's only half what I want to do with it

15:31

@JRJathome yeah, that counter support only came into being as of keysanity

15:31

so we have actual images for the bottle counts atm

My concept for the solution was some sort of overlay where you'd pick a corner of the item, and youd pick an image for the overlay to be, and the hitbox for clicking that overlay would be the image's size

15:33

and perhaps you could even add more options/variables to the overlay by previously declaring all their information either in a new json or at the top of the items

Once badge support gets added, I'll probably use that to indicate Silver Arrows instead of using a separate item slot.

15:34

Just attach it to the bow

Yeah, implementing the pug hud style arrow control is definitely still on my list

15:35

and custom hit boxes for things is likely part of my plan

not sure if this is a bug or not (probably not), but Sick Kid is always green uupon reset. I feel it shouldn't be, because you need an item to check him.

I have not seen that issue - is it new as of tonight's update, or was that happening to you before?

Just the first time I opened it, so probably before the update.

23:14

hang on.

If you can reproduce it reliably from a cold start, please post repro steps in #core-bugs

never mind. it's tavern, and Sick Kid doesn't have a spot

Sick kid does have a spot

23:15

Give yourself a bottle?

not until you get a bottle. it's working perfect.

kk

23:16

Glad to know it's good, because yeah, I haven't seen an issue there.

I think what threw me off was other locations have diffferent colors. So I guess I expected Sick Kid to have a different color to start, since it was available with one item.

The colors are based on accessibility

23:16

Locations with zero accessible items are not shown by default (F11 will toggle them on/off)

AH! There we go.

Green = full, yellow = sequence break, orange = partial, blue = inspectable (e.g. the library without boots)

So orange means some chests are available here, but not all?

yeah

I'm learning

specifically, the definition of partial is whether or not all sections within the location (the little named bits inside) are accessible or not

ok, and what are the dotted line squares?

23:19

Desert has one, which I thought was torch

It is

But Zora has one

Click it

23:19

Zora has a ledge

23:19

Those are spots for marking which item lives on an inspectable spot

23:19

Once you do so, it will auto-pin the location, and it will be removed from the map until you have the means to grab it

gotch, and the chest is for when you pick it u p

Yup

23:20

One other thing that may not be obvious

23:20

Right clicking a location on the map will "clear" it

23:20

Which for most locations, marks it as complete

23:20

But, it actually only clears what you have access to

yep, I learned that during this last race

cool

23:21

So yeah, it's nice because you can just right click sahasrala when you check if eartly

23:21

but he'll show up on the map again if you get the green pendant

23:21

Nice time saver in a lot of cases

23:21

and keeps the map focused on what's actually possible right now

my next suggestion is putting a different category for sewer chest. at least in open modes

Those are the types of things I go back and forth a lot on

23:23

It's a balancing act between keeping things compact and providing more info

23:23

When in doubt, or when the choice is non-obvious, I focus on what keeps things compact and useful to experienced players

23:24

More verbosity generally is for newer players' benefit

23:24

But newer players don't stay new for long

23:24

So I generally prioritize players familiar enough with the logic to interpret what they're seeing

23:24

It would be fairly straightforward to build "training packs" in the future if there's enough interest tho

that's fair

EmoSaru! Just found out about this! Excellent work <3

00:22

I would say that it would be nice if the non-broadcast item window was also able to be dynamically resized like the chest map is

00:22

If it was possible to make the pinned/items section scale larger/smaller just like the item map is

00:23

The "broadcast window" is a stroke of brilliance I must say

I'm particularly proud of the broadcast window

00:23

There are lots of things I'd like to eventually add to the layout system

I was using the firebase app for personal use, and with this feature it's totally not needed anymnore

00:24

The ability to re-arrange the items would be nice too

I always hated the fact that you often had to choose between "cool stream" or "usable tracker"

00:24

So, here you go

00:24

You can totally rearrange the items

Yeah, it's awesome

00:24

Ohhh, how? It wasn't obvious to me right away, but I'm a scrub

Documentation is poor, so don't feel bad

00:24

Poor = missing

I saw that on the annoucements tab, haha

But in the gear menu, you can export overrides for the active pack

00:25

They go in Documents/EmoTracker/user_overrides

00:25

You can totally customize the tracker and broadcast layouts from there (edited)

00:25

The system is a bit complex, but quite powerful

I've done text editing with the version from Zarby's

00:26

but I'm not familiar with a json, I guess I'll have to do some reading

This is all JSON, and it literally defines the entire layout of the tracker

I've got a medical background, not a programming one, haha, which is why I love what you awesome people make

So you can rearrange things however you like

00:26

You can also scale things up, etc., just not dynamically (except the map, which does it itself)

Any quick off the top of your head suggestions as to where I'd go to edit a json file/read up on it if that was a dumb question?

Honestly, my suggestion is to just read through the overrides that get exported

00:27

and start playing

00:27

A bunch of people here have customized stuff, so there's usually somebody to answer questions

00:27

But by looking through the json layouts for some of the existing packs, you can get a sense for what's there

Awesome, thanks

No problem!

An optional timer? And possibility to remove notes tab?

Timer is something I’d like to do, with SRTV integration

09:47

Notes tab?

Would it make sense to separate the big chest from other chests for keysanity for logic and whatnot? Or does that seem excessive?

I've gone back and forth on that. There's an interesting tradeoff right now between how much space the location tiles for dungeons take up vs how much utility it adds to split it out.

11:00

So the short answer is that it makes sense, at least to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth it.

11:02

As an extreme example, here's POD in the "full key logic" keysanity pack that may or may not ever see the light of day. The doors actually consume keys, so as you open doors, what's available to you changes. (edited)

Image attachment

11:02

It provides a tremendous amount of information, and would potentially be very useful for new players.

11:02

But at the end of the day, once players reach a certain point, they're capable of reasoning on their own, and using the tracker as backup.

11:03

Since that's the majority of players out there for the majority of their time with the game, I optimize for that.

Aha! I saw the doors in the locations.json file and was wondering exactly how they were envisioned. Cool!

It is the reason the item type for keys is "consumable" and not just "counter"

(edited)

If I'm reading right, clicking on the door actually decreases the number of keys listed in the small key tracker for the dungeon.

Yep

12:04

It does not decrease the number you've found

12:04

But decreases the displayed number

12:04

Similar to the in-game tracker

I have a suggestion: make setting it up with Linux easier.

15:45

Serious question - how are you trying to run it on Linux? Wine?

yeah. it's not working.

I'm not surprised, for the following reasons. 1) It's an MS OneClick installer for now 2) It's a WPF app

15:47

#1 is going to change at some point

15:47

#2 is not

15:48

I can tell you that it runs perfectly fine on Windows in a VM, but unless Wine has reasonable WPF support that I'm unaware of, I would not hold my breath for it to work there

#2 is sad because PugHud wasn't one. Argh I wish I knew how to do UI better. Stupid Stumpy has no no map option

15:49

Also it did sorta work in Wine but not well I think.

So, FYI, the old pugHUD application is still available, and may be the best option for now for Linux users

15:50

At some point in the indeterminate future, I'd like to do a web version that supports the same pack format

15:50

But that's a pipe dream at this point

15:50

But ultimately, EmoTracker is decidedly a Windows app, and the percentage of people trying to do what you've been doing is too small for me to spend much time on

the problem with Stumpy is it is stupid big on screen real estate and this laptop is like 1366*768 resolution. And PugHud does not work at all in Wine on this laptop.

I'm confused - I thought you were running pugHUD before? Maybe I misunderstood.

I managed to half get emotracker working in Wine once I think.

Regarding the full key logic pack, apparently there's an unused keyhole sprite from aLttP that might be more clear than the door sprites. https://tcrf.net/File:ALTPLock.png

File:ALTPLock.png

My recommendation to @Teraunce is to wait until I get a version with a self-contained installer/updater out. (edited)

15:55

That will at least fix #1 for you, and then we can see how big of an issue #2 might be

15:55

@JRJathome neato

15:55

That pack is very much in prototype phase at this point

15:56

I have no plans to release it, unless there's a lot of demand, since it's really complicated, a LOT of tracking, and really only helps very new players

15:56

In the meantime @Teraunce, I'm sorry I don't have a better solution for you.

yeah it makes Keysanity a lot of "fun" when there are no available trackers. oh well, stupid Windows 10 broke Windows 10 leaving it a highly unstable pile of garbage or I'd use that.

For what it's worth, my Windows 10 setup has been pretty solid for quite a while? Though I certainly have sympathy for long-term Windows users.

I wont lie I know too little about OS to know why pughud doesnt work, but I assume its the required imports and dlls

Suggestion regarding medallions, specifically when both require the same. If a check mark isn’t possible, how about moving the Mm to bottom left and TR to top right.

00:32

Then, we wouldn’t need the “2”, which confuses me even though I know what it means.

00:33

Don’t ask why I get confused by a “2”. I can math, I swear.

I've got some custom sprites that say BOTH if you'd like.

That's certainly doable, and I'll keep in it mind. It's a pretty straightforward set of image overrides, if you really need it soon

00:42

Or that

00:42

I've seen Willard using those as well

Yep. I originally made them for him, but I've been using them too

Another suggestion: I can haz a cool color?

00:43

For my name?

Image attachment

00:43

Image attachment

00:43

Image attachment

He'll need the filenames, just FYI

That is nice, JR. And won’t confuse me like a “2”.

But as far as name colors go... I'm trying to reserve colors for actually meaningful roles.

Lol.

There are actually only two roles right now that you see a lot - me and the people who helped me in the closed alpha (edited)

The Maligord category will never be meaningless.

lol

00:45

That said, there will probably be a category for people who've contributed a lot sometime soon

00:45

Because we've got people doing cool stuff

How about if I give you a plug in my post-race interview Friday? I think I’ll be on SG.

Anyway, Mali. If you save those images to Documents/EmoTracker/user_overrides/pack name/images, it should work without changing any code, since I used the original file names.

Hahaha, I'll think about it @Deleted User

00:55

FYI, the filenames for those are 0123.png, 0124.png, and 0125.png in the order they were posted

Doesn't discord keep the file names? It does for me when I try to download them.

oh, not sure

00:59

huh, neat, I guess so

Would it make sense to have an uninstall option on the package manager?

It could, but deleting is a more destructive option then the redt

09:31

So I haven’t done it

09:32

Since it’s a pretty easy file delete otherwise

So if !hud flush is a thing..... could it be set up so a chat mod can turn on/off items in HUD for a runner and be their tracking person? :thinkdorm:

Yeah, that's the main purpose of the chat integration.

13:42

The flush command is just for fun.

Right now both people can still track

13:43

But I'm considering adding a disable

13:43

at least as an option

13:43

also eventually more fine-grained permissions

13:43

and most importantly, more meme commands

I meme, that's the real reason for the chat integration, right?

very much so

Meme commands? Oooooh.

Would it perhaps be possible to set a starting stage for a Progressive item? An example would be adding this to the sword item, add a new first stage that's an X'd out sword, and set the the starting stage one ahead of that. That way you can right-click to X it out to indicate on your tracker you're playing swordless, while not losing the regular functionality of left-clicking through until gold sword and it stopping there. You can kind of do this right now with the loop property of course.

So something like setting up a progressive item like normal, then added a tag like "starting_stage": 2,? (edited)

Basically yeah.

Is it possible to add a counter to the heat pieces? So, quarter, half, three quarters, back to empty but there’s a 1. Four more quarters, it’ll be a 2, etc.

That is not currently possible (edited)

14:41

Initial stage for progressives would be a pretty minor change

14:41

I'll try to get it added, but I'm still working on redo'ing the way I handle app updates

I assume for the sword example, you'd have to set "allow_disabled": false, and make your own disabled sprite for a total of 6 stages.

14:47

Once that's implemented, of course.

Yes, although to implement @Dudude Dude's idea properly, you'd also want a loop point and some kind of exception for right click, probably

14:47

I'd have to think about that

14:48

Might be easier to just make it a progressive toggle

14:48

Or to just build a swordless pack

14:48

Since there are logic changes anyway

Yeah, it was more a random thought that crossed my mind.

I also still have a plan to add "options" to packs

14:48

That you can toggle on and off

14:48

And logic rules can be conditional on those

I'd currently just build it with a loop, and add crossed out sword as the stage past butter since that achieves most of the same effect.

So swordless could just be an option on the existing packs

Options like that sound better though.

Progressive toggle could work, but I'd want the swap_actions tag to work with it too, otherside you'd be toggling swordless on and off with left click and cycling through swords with right click.

swap_actions, where supported, is pretty raw

14:54

literally just swaps the mouse button bindings from whatever they were

Yeah, I'm thinking back to my attempt to add a sick kid badge to the bottle using progressive_toggle. I mostly had it working except I had to toggle the badge with left click and increase the number of bottles with right click. I was hoping to do the opposite with swap_action, but it didn't work. (edited)

Emo, the suggestion came up in Willard's discord of adding different icon sets for various packs. For context, Dude made a Zelda 1 item only pack, and I decided to make an override that replaced the item sprites with the 16-bit equivalents from BS Zelda. Willard liked both sets but wanted a way to switch between the two without messing with the files. Currently the easiest way was for me to create a separate pack with the different icons, but still using Dude's layout.

01:03

I know one of the other trackers had something similar where you could replace the sprites with ones from Minish Cap. (edited)

Yeah, the idea of different art options is an interesting one

01:06

I'd like to do something to make the user experience around that better

01:06

Just have to figure it out

01:06

There are simple versions that are possible quickly, but perhaps with some extra storage space requirements beyond what should be necessary

01:06

So I want to think about it for a bit

01:07

But I definitely like the idea of providing formal support for this

It'd be appreciated for the Z2R pack too.

I'm starting to run some old v27 Festive seeds; is there a v27 logic pack?

No, but the logic is very very very close (edited)

19:35

You should not experience much of a practical difference

19:35

It mostly changed whether certain things are sequence breaks or not

19:35

In either case, they will show on your map

Yahoo! I'm gonna use it for the first time on Wednesday!

Is there a way to add options for tracking Pizza, and Full Hearts?

Sure. You can add any sprite you'd like. What do you mean tracking pizza?

21:00

The tracker by default has a heart container sprite included with the images, and you can copy the coding used to count keys in the keysanity pack in order to count full hearts.

Pizza = Piece of Heart; and I'll add those in this weekend if that's the case!

theres a few versions of its existance, pughud uses one to show when you'll refill, but the options for containers and pieces should already exist

11:31

unless Im mistaken on what exists in the items already for emo's packages

Sprite exists, but no item definition

Would it be possible to add a broadcast_img tag, to specify a different image for the broadcast view than the tracker itself? Specifically thinking here of adding boss icons to the broadcast view of my Z2R tracker while keeping the tracker itself still displaying where the palace is after completion. There's something I can currently do to get close to this effect using composite_toggle (Which is something I actually use in my Z1R pack) but not while retaining the palace location information on the broadcast view before a palace is completed.

That is an interesting idea

10:59

It would be a bit of work, but it's definitely possible

Preferably I'd also be able to specify a disabled_broadcast_img. But I think it'd have a number of applications.

If I was going to do one, I'd have to do both

11:10

Because of how it works behind the scenes

11:11

so yeah, you'd get duplicates of all the image properties

Well, that's good for me.

Any ability to chromakey out the background would be awesome.

You can do that. Use the gear menu to export an override file for the broadcast layout. It'll be saved to Documents/Emotracker/user_overrides. Open the .json file with notepad or notepad++. One of the fields you can edit is background color. Just enter the hex code for the color you want and disable item shadows and save the json. Then in EmoTracker, press F5 to refresh the tracker, then F2 to open the broadcast view.

Oh nice. Thank you for explaining that.

19:46

I appreciate it immensely

If you make a mistake with the json file, you can always delete it and re-export it.

One more question / suggestion. Is there a way to show the amount of chests per dungeon on items mode for the hud? I don’t see much documentation so I’m not sure if there is a json variable for them

The items only pack doesn't have it built in, but it certainly can be added to the items.json. That's getting into more advanced customization. Once I get home, I'll be happy to go over that with you. (edited)

13:55

In the meantime, the open mode pack with the location tracker has what you need as well.

Adding dungeon item trackers to the items only packs would be nice

16:53

keysanity would need special treatment

16:53

due to the size they would need to be

16:53

but the open mode one would be pretty straightforward

So I believe the format for the item you'd want to add is something like this. To add the item, you'd export the items json, then add the following code to it.

{ "name": "Eastern Palace Treasures", "type": "consumable", "img": "images/0058.png", "codes": "ep_treasures", "swap_actions": true, "initial_quantity": 3, "max_quantity": 3 },

Then within your tracker layout, you'd add the item code ep_treasures that you defined in the items.json. Emo, is it possible to add disabled images to consumable items?

I'd have to double check

16:54

but I think it should go grey when it hits 0?

It does. I'm thinking about the open chest icon that's in the images pack though.

16:55

rather than just having it go gray

Ah, yeah, that would be cool

16:55

I'll double check in a bit

16:55

I HAVE to get the updater stuff published this weekend

Yeah, don't let me distract you.

It's mostly done, but I have to wrap up the "Hey, this is no longer being updated, uninstall this and install this" stuff

16:56

because otherwise it's gonna be support hell forever

is it possible to make the window always stay on top of others?

14:10

I like to play like this https://i.imgur.com/r42C6Et.png

Not currently, although it's an option that's been requested.

ahh ok

what about that save the location on startup >.>

Can be done, but it's more complicated with multiple monitors

21:59

Especially when, for example, one of those monitors goes away :p

dunno what codebase were in cuz I dont pay attention but c# can do that pretty easily

Which part are you talking about?

I've played around a little bit with the tracker and I love what I've seen so far. Also really stoked to see what chathud will be able to do going forward, that looked really promising. Is there any likelihood of adding SRAM trace to EmoTracker in the future? I'm not versed enough to know whether that would be a part of a package or part of the entire engine.

SRAM trace would have to be part of the engine. It's not impossible, but it's very low priority, since it's disallowed in races.

That makes sense. Thanks for the answer! I'll be incorporating the tracker into a stream soon.

the save location part

@everyone just wondering does the dark world chest game actually have a item in it or no?

That's a good suggestion

06:13

And yes it does

really

Why is SRAM in races not allowed?

Yes

how would i know what it is though andy

You always get it on the first try

it might just be rupees

06:14

O

06:14

ok

It always comes in your first play

so i already got it

It could just be rupees, but once in a while, it is an item

I thought it was the second chest you opened?

first and second

Sram trace isn't allowed for races because pulling from game memory can lead to MUCH worse things

06:14

So they allow no room for gray area

06:15

Idk if it can still be first chest or not

06:15

It used to be like 25% chance first, 100% chance 2nd

06:15

Either way you always get it first try

I have a suggestion: please set this server's default notification settings to only mentions. I was wondering why I was being spammed with notification sounds while trying to sleep.

You would've gotten one either way bc of the @ everyone

I think that is just discord in general as I've had to set to mentions for every sever I've joined I think?

Just like anyone else who's here rn

yeah once which would have been fine

06:18

I heard the sound like 100 times in a row

Also you should do that every time you join a server tbh

06:18

It's not too hard to do

true but tbh I shouldn't have to

06:18

well regardless I fixed it on my end

Lmao

good night gentlemen

So if SRAM trace is not allowed its time for a solution based on image recognition. I would love to tinker around but i think emotracker itself isn't open source right? (edited)

06:28

Image recognition would even work for people streaming from an actuall snes/snes mini.

Imo in a race you shouldn't be able to use a tracker free of potential time loss. It's an extra tool that you should need to learn to use to avoid losing time

4

In an oddity of timing, the image tracking thing came up in the main rando discord last night, zarby got a pretty functional base made already

I agree with Andy on requiring to manually update your tracker. It helps sharpen your mind and memory, not to mention you have to figure out when and where you can update your tracker to minimize time loss.

In a race all that matters is if everyone is playing by the same rules. Given if don't have to be speed running for an online leader board to be doing a personal run or race.

09:58

Yeah any professional board shouldn't allowed things like pulling from SRAM but if your just entertaining viewers or doing it for your personal best only what's the issue. (edited)

So SRAM trace (actually direct WRAM polling) can be done on console now with the sd2snes usb connection. I’m still not gonna do it though, because I agree with the ban in races, trackers are a tool for humans, and there should be a price for using them. Tracking during door transitions is a skill, and one you should learn to get the benefits.

11:35

Most of the randomize activity, buy volume, is races.

11:36

So it’s not that I don’t care about non-racers, but I will always prioritize features that benefit everybody.

Ok what about being able to assing each item to it's own key on the keyboard?

14:11

can removing needing to reach for the mouse.

14:14

and the one other thing I'd like to suggest is a required items only mode. Where it only tracks items required to beat the game.

I have a suggestion

14:45

Turn off @ everyone ping for anyone who does not have a server role

My suggestion: Learn to mute

1

Image attachment

17:29

Even the top mute slider is an option to avoid the pings

I have a suggestion. can you come to my house and open up my discord everytime someone pings me and read the message? I shouldnt be expected to hear the ping AND read my own messages

I suggest food delivery sombreroguy

sombreroguy

hi there^^ im just a beginner in the randomizer, so i take in all stuff that comes with it^^ just found youre Tracker, i like it (even though i know that u wont make it SRAM connected, i would like an extra option^^) but i would have an suggestion, as a beginner i dont run not a complete Seed in one Session, so would be Great if there would be a progress Save/Load option in there

Greetz from Germany

on that subject

14:22

sometimes im a freaking idiot and forget to select the right package, how possible would it be to swap packages without needing to re-toggle everything

So.... incoming item_state.json?

@Fouton (PugHUD) Anything is possible, but that ranks pretty high on the "would require a LOT of thought and effort to do properly"

14:26

There is no notion of equivalence between packs, and multiple packs are never loaded at the same time

14:26

So

14:26

There's a lot that would have to be sorted out to do that

my thought process would be it makes a list of everything thats turned on (codewise) and then turns them all on in the new package, and the package itself could have an option called reset upon selection or somethin like that which controls whether or not it cares about doing that

14:28

and then encouraging package makers to use more universal codes

It's not just codes

14:28

It's item types

true

You can have the same item, with a similar functionality, implemented using different item types

new plan, it just randomizes everything for fun

ezpz - I'll call it "Fouton Hates Goodness" mode

perfect

14:30

I could see toggles working with progressive toggles in some way, like silvers and bows being seperate icons could easily merge to 1 when changing packages based on how codes are done

14:30

cuz if left toggle is bow and right toggle is silvers it could handle that

To do it properly requires either an exact match, or a transformation definition

14:30

And I'm not writing a transformation definition language for EmoTracker packs

I'd say exact match is fine, and if people dont put the effort to make their package interchangable, the users can fix it themselves or yell at the package maker

My personal belief is that doing nothing is fine

And I'm the one with "weird fucking ideas"?

shrug

Honestly, like, regardless - this would be beyond the bottom of my priority structure

14:32

which is basically the same as saying "it doesn't actually need to be fixed"

14:32

If the bottom of the list ever gets done, I'm doing something wrong, lmao

Can I have access_rules for map_locations? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

As in, the map location is visible or not based on access rules?

14:34

That is... interesting

14:34

Definitely doable

I tried to put access rules within map locations instead of the parent or sections

14:35

It might be the whole item count thing can't be less than 1

access rules in map locations would be for the purpose of preventing the display of individual locations on the map

14:38

So it would allow for, e.g. "you can enter from here if you have x, y, z..."

14:38

location access_rules would be for global accessibility/possibility

14:38

but if I added it to locations, it would just filter the visible locations on the map

if you did .json file for saving the state of a tracker, then importing between packages would come easily

Not really

14:47

The format has nothing to do with it

i didn't mean specifically a .json

14:47

i meant the idea of having it save in general

Having it save is not the problem

14:48

Please remember that packages in EmoTracker are everything

14:48

EmoTracker knows NOTHING about the items contained within

14:48

Any equivalence between packages, as it stands right now, is purely happenstance

14:48

So

14:48

It's a data transformation problem

14:48

And data transformation is never "easy"

are the packages developed by other entities?

Yes

14:49

There are packages for multiple games, by multiple people

14:49

Some of those packages for different games may even have equivalent data

14:49

Should that data propagate when switching packs?

14:49

Not in my opinion

14:49

So

14:49

When I say doing it properly, I mean doing it properly

14:49

Not, "doing it in a way that will happen to work for a few LTTP packs in particular"

14:50

EmoTracker will always be a 100% data driven tracker, with no game-specific knowledge in the code

14:50

Any feature I add has to be done according to those rules

14:51

There are lots of things that would be easier if I broke that rule

14:51

But then it would be no different from any other tracker

14:51

And would be far less powerful for it

Yeah, code agnosticism is hard

14:51

I know that very well

14:51

I didn't know how the tracker worked with packages, I thought they were mostly made by you

14:51

but now I have an understanding

14:52

pack switching can still be done, but it'd rely on the package devs

14:52

it could be done with a verification code for each different game, and a standardized set of key-value pairs in a text-based save file

14:53

(basically any markup language, or json)

14:54

is there an api for the tracker/package development?

All package development is pure data, and done via declarative data in JSON

Also relatively easy to just open up an existing package and figuring out from there how things work. I had no prior coding experience and still managed to put together something that works pretty well.

With the 2v2 tournament coming, is there still the possibility of a coop pack so you can mark locations with required items when your partner tells you?

Definitely not in time for that tournament

Make every item with {} and pin afterwards?

?

In the way you make indicating say lake hylia or desert ledge then you can put the item in

13:15

Probably no where as convenient as suggested idea

Oh, I see what you're saying

13:15

Yeeeeeah, that would be brutal

It's not a no logic seed.

"capture_item": true, means that's a location where you can mark an item, correct?

Yes, but doing that for knowledge sharing would be kinda of annoying

13:20

I mean it's doable, but yeah, would get annoying

13:20

cuz you'd potentially need multiple slots in dungeons

Yeah, any place that has multiple chests would need a way to mark specific chests.

Something that might be helpful for co-op is the ability to mark red locations as complete after pressing F11 (for when your partner has checked a place you can't get to yet and determined it to be worthless)

The ability to ignore access requirements when manipulating locations is going to happen, though I can't say exactly when as I'm working on other things at the moment (and life is kicking my butt)

Gotcha. No worries

How about an auto tracker based on the randomized rom. That would help out a lot, if it’s possible.

Auto-tracking is beyond the bottom of the list.

10:25

It is explicitly disallowed in races - a decision I wholeheartedly agree with, even if the console limitations were addressed.

10:26

That immediately makes it very low-priority, and to be honest, it's not something I think adds much value. The people who want it most are those who are learning, and I can tell you that all literature on educational theory that I'VE read suggests that the act of tracking yourself is much more likely to help you learn the game properly than having the computer do it. (edited)

I see. No worries, I just thought that it could be helpful if the computer tracked what items you’ve collected, instead of you stop for a few moments and highlight the items you have. Thanks anyway

The more you use a tracker and play the game, the more comfortable you will get in finding the small windows to update your tracker without wasting any time. In keysanity it is harder if you want to track all the keys since they might be easier to keep in your mind for a while (especially in high density locations like Kakariko well). In normal modes you should be able to update tracker between screen transitions if you keep playing with the same tracker.

has there been any effort into making route optimizers that calculates good routes based on collected items?

It is inherently possible, as are a number of other things, but see my comment on auto-tracking above for why I don’t intend to spend any time on it or release such a thing.

understandable

so is there currently no way to access the functions in the #welcome pin (broadcast view, etc.) except for the undocumented keyboard shortcuts? (edited)

By "undocumented" do you mean "documented in the #welcome pin"?

14:00

There's a reason why the tracker link in the resources document points to the discord, rather than the installer.

14:01

Regardless, F5 is equivalent to the refresh icon in the window titlebar

14:01

but the rest of them are currently keyboard only

fair enough, my real issue is just that they interfere with my OBS/livesplit global hotkeys, so if you could make them configurable that'd be cool, but i personally don't need them hotkeyed so just a clickable menu option would also be cool

22:52

excellent tool on the whole though, i'll probably bug you with a bunch of little questions once i piece through the pack files and see what's already available

Customizable hotkeys ARE coming soon

02:20

Probably in the next application update, I'm rolling a few things up into it

Would it be easier to allow locations to still be clicked once cleared rather than adding an undo button? (Eg turn gray instead of hiding them)

Press F11 to show all locations, even cleared ones.

Oh wow

You can then pin the location you want to undo and right-click the chest to unclear it.

Thanks!

10:39

I've been resetting and reclearing it all

how big of a refactoring would be necessary to make the 'bracket types' available in access_rules (like square brackets for glitch accessible and curly braces for viewable but not collectible) customizable? right now i've moved things like bombos tablet and graveyard ledge exclusively to the dark world map to remind myself that i have to start in the dark world to get them, but being able to mark them like "<mirror>" or something and have that show up in a color of my choice would be a preferable option

pretty big, and unlikely to happen

23:52

it's not impossible that arbitrary color tags could happen in the future, but the various accessibility types are defined and addressed directly in code, because there are priority structures around them and additional logic that comes into play when consumables/gates/other things come into play

My take on features: obviously undo will happen eventually. (I clicked something accidentally yesterday, no idea what it was.) Additionally: logs would be nice. Timestamped "acquired flute" or "cleared mimic cave". would be nice for 3rd party apps/scripts for streaming, or for just having a recent progress section. Lastly, is there any save/restore feature (planned?)? in the middle of a run yesterday, (my runs are long still, 4h+) ... I needed to reboot.

07:00

Other than that and the fact that i often expect right-click to be a context menu ...

07:01

yeah, i suppose that'd be super nice for my personal needs, the option to make right-click be a shortcut for pinning the location

07:02

pretty nice, otherwise :D

Saving/undo are planned but not coming soon. Standard advice seems to be push F11 instead of undo (shows all locations so you can toggle them back on) and take screenshots if you need to reboot

Saving is not planned (edited)

11:00

Undo is on my list, but it’s more complicated than you might think to do properly, because of some extra features, so it’s not coming anytime soon

I started work on a LADX map for entrance shuffle, then remembered that items pinned to locations wouldn't show on the map unless you kept the location pinned or clicked on the location again. I'm sure it'd be low priority, but having the option of showing marks on the map would help with entrance shuffle maps.

yeah, there are a bunch of map features I want for ER

@betty f11 won't help a situation like i described where an accidental click clicked something

Because you don't know what you clicked?

right

Undo would certainly be useful. F11 is more of a workaround that's easier than starting again.

or you accidentally reduce the number of chests in a dungeon from N to 3, because your compass says you have 3 left... and then realize you updated the wrong dungeon and have NFC what it was before you changed it.

Undo is a known request, but as I've said, it's currently much lower priority than a bunch of other stuff, and so it's not on my list of things I'm planning on getting to anytime soon.

i'm not being critical. :D

12:46

it's a beautiful tracker

12:46

the right-click pin instead of dismiss would be an awesome feature, for me, at least :D

12:46

outside of one-segment caves, i don't typically want to nuke a whole cave

The vast majority of locations are one segment

12:47

But moreover, when you right click it only clears the portions of a location that you have logical access to

12:47

If you gain access to the rest, e.g. by getting hookshot and opening up the back of hookshot cave, it will reappear (edited)

interesting

12:48

but basically i just have to always tell my self, out loud sometimes, "never right click"

Conversely, I right click to clear literally everything but dungeons

12:49

Dungeons are the only thing I ever pin

i'm exclusively a keysanity player, if that's relevant

Unless I'm marking a location on a visible spot

12:49

I play keysanity the exact same way

12:49

Not sure why that would change anything

probably wouldn't.

overworld works exactly the same way

it's also affected by the fact that i never saw the f11 bit until last night

12:50

my accidental clicks are less than one per seed

12:50

so f11 is probably sufficient for most of my oopses

12:51

how many non-dungeon locations are there, anyway?

I'm not sure of the exact count

probably hard to categorize them all due to HC and AT and the escape path, i suppose

12:52

but if you include the sanctuary as HC, I suppose there's 12 dungeons, right?

12:53

+ pyramid maybe

Pyramid is definitely not a dungeon

12:53

HC definitely is, and Sanctuary is absolutely part of it

boss fight in there though

12:53

multiple rooms, not really

Dungeons contain dungeon items

12:54

Or at least have them defined in the code

well, thanks for the tracker, regardless, good luck developing it.

Thanks, and I hope you continue to enjoy it

lack of a save feature may be a dealbreaker for me in the long run because I can't yet sit down and run a run uninterupted.

13:00

had a serious need for a reboot about 2h into my 4h run yesterday :D

That's usually a short-term problem, at least if you keep running the game

maybe i'll Git Gud soon

13:01

not really, i've got 3 kids and a wife and a 24/7 call job

13:01

even if i was regularly under 1h45m for keysanity. :D

13:02

just curious, and tell me when i'm annoying you, but how are you storing the data for items/locations? bitmask flag? hash table?

It's a good bit more complicated than that - locations are actually stored primarily in a tree, because they have inherited access requirements, but also in a hash map for fast lookup. Items do not use bit masks, as there are a number of different types of items that can be used/customized in a game pack. They are actually stored in a flat array, as they respond to multiple potentially non-unique keys.

sorry, specifically i meant /state/ data

13:04

recalled another request... it'd be nice to have a poop emoji icon or something similar

13:05

for use as an item marker for things on ledges you don't care about

13:05

(either that or the rupees/heart pieces/ etc)

13:05

though most people would just right click them away

your last line is my suggestion

Hmmm. I like this idea. Left click good, right click poo emoji

i typically use boomerangs as indicators of things i might want later.

13:07

heh

Sigh, @jaysee

was joking about poo emoji

13:07

for the record, at least :D

13:07

right now emo's tracker is very nice looking :D

Emo is always judging me grubsad

grubsad

lackSub

@EmoSaru .append('Soul Destroyer Overlord') (edited)

Hmmm

Spawn more Overlords.

13:11

Hmm. That takes on a different meaning out of context...

Yes, yes it does

I'm pretty sure there's features emo will never add because of what I might do with said features.

13:12

Well. Damn (edited)

Nice nickname, jaysee

He's fully free to change it back at any time, lol

Time to pull up the commentary ban list

13:14

sombreroguy

13:14

Nope. Can't ban emo

The only ban I want is a ban on competitive keysanity

13:15

I only seek to protect others

13:16

From their own madness

Tbh, I'd ban glitchless if I could

13:17

Or rather just glitchless keysanity

aren't fake flippers and hovering already allowed in the normal category?

For now.

and the out of bounds room

13:19

what glitches aren't allowed?

There's some discussions going on about reclassifying glitches

13:19

Anything that lets you clip through walls and ledges

13:20

Anything that messes up the room, or teleport past a room or fall into the wrong room

13:20

Anything that messes up a screen transition

There are LOTS of glitches that aren't allowed

13:21

Some of which are even easier to do than fake flippers

I think I summed them all up in 3 lines

More or less, yup

20 or so methods to glitch in 3 sentences

13:22

Currently rules are based on the end effect only rather than the glitch itself.

You've probably thought of this but save/load might actually be the easiest way to add an undo feature

I've thought of many things, but that's only a time save if I want to invest in save/load and undo, both of which are very low priority.

Using save/load in place of an undo feature only really works if you're saving frequently. And if you're saving that frequently, you're probably losing time on your run.

15:12

Of course, if you're playing casually, you probably don't care as much about that.

They were saying I could implement it using that

15:12

Auto save before actions are processed

15:13

But I’m not doing save/load or undo any time soon, so it doesn’t matter. (edited)

auto reset every 5 mins! sombreroguy

sombreroguy

1

15:14

wouldn't be too bad of a training exercise

It says I don't have permission to view message history on the #faq channel right now.

misclick on my part, should be fixed now (edited)

sakuLove

1

When's discord channel tracker? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

1

sakuRage

1

1

So I trolled myself earlier today by accidentally marking off the pyramid ledge instead of the pyramid fairy. I had only marked one of the 5/6 crystals so the tracker didn't think I could go to pyramid fairy. I was wondering if you could make it so the location info (name, chests, etc) would show on mouseover so you can see it before right-clicking

Mouse over was tried at one point but it is problematic for other reasons (edited)

19:06

If you hold the left mouse button, the location will display

yeah, but it's too much to hold left-click to check the name before marking it off

19:07

I did also edit my locations.json so that pyramid fairy shows if you have 7 crystals in addition to having 2 crystal56

So I don’t recommend overriding rhat

19:07

Because you just opted yourself out of logic updates

yeah, I figured when it updates I'll have to look at the diff and update my own

But also, this is one of those things where you do need at least some awareness of your current state in the game to efficiently interpret what the tracker is telling you

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

19:08

I just need to play more so I can stop using the map part

The location tracker is an excellent backup

19:09

I still use it

19:09

But the important thing is to be able to interpret what you’re seeing correctly, which does come with more experience

was definitely my own fault, not blaming the tracker

19:09

you're absolutely right

I’m only pointing this out because it’s been a recent topic of discussion here

19:10

Basically, I get a lot of requests that would potentially make the tracker more foolproof for newer players

19:11

But they often would either be low/no value to moderately experienced players, or actively hurt the usability for more experienced players

19:12

So unfortunately, issues like that will almost never get resolved for people, unless I implement a whole set of opt-in “new player” features, which is hard to justify right now

Yeah, I understand. This is #suggestions, not #demands anyway

19:12

Thanks

No problem, and sorry you got mixed up!

in-game timer for keysanity was 2:20:24 even with full-clearing pendants looking for Ether to get into TR too

19:14

was playing off and on throughout the day, but still probably would have been my new PB

@EmoSaru any thoughts of supporting discord rich presence in your tracker? ^_^

I actually looked into it for about 5 seconds when they first announced it and decided against it, lol

Poor presence! sombreroguy

sombreroguy

It's more like the tools for prioritizing presence options are somewhere between sucky and non-existent

discord rich presence? what is that?

it's the thing where people can see stuff about the game you're playing in discord

14:33

Image attachment

14:33

like that

@EmoSaru Real suggestion: for items.json, can there be like an "overlay_img" key? For example, I'm going to make my next pack toggle which glitches are allowed and which glitches are required. So I'd like to do something like here's this glitch, then when you left click or have left and right clicked, it'll say required on top of it. then right click only, it'll say allowed. That way I just have to make the one image for each glitch name, then just add required or allowed on top of it.

overlays are a fair amount of work, but they're something I've been thinking about how to do properly, although mostly for locations

15:51

items would get them too

I see

15:52

are disabled images the only thing I can add a filter to?

no, you can use filters on other stuff too

15:53

but most of the available filters are more useful for creating disabled images than anything else

hmm.. sepia filter? or something similar

15:55

alternate idea is glitched banned is grayscale + dim, then stage 1 for allowed makes it yellow + dim, then stage 2 for required and no filter

tint is something that could be done

15:56

it doesn't exist now, but it's addable

sombreroguy

15:57

oh. and your macro idea you were telling me about, would it apply to locations only? or could it basically do like an enable group of items sort of thing too?

it would be for location access requirements only

15:57

linking items woudl have to work very differently

indeed

So now that keysanity logic assumes you have map and compass to complete the dungeon boss have you thought about adding them to the tracker and have a color for "logically available" or something?

Also if you want to support the Retro mode, I guess there should be something to indicate the new one entrance caves that might have sword/HC. Shop locations too possibly

Yeah, I'd like to add that to the map, but since (I'm assuming) there's so many possible locations, I'd like the pins to be a different color than the normal item locations. In the meantime, I guess I should finish up the items-only pack and get that sent to Emo. (edited)

I checked 10 retro randos, and they had 25 unique locations between them. I looked over the Ian Albert maps, and I think there's another 6 that could also fit the criteria. Note that "caves" includes houses in Kakariko, the Fortune Teller and other hint locations, Fairy and Great Fairy fountains, and the minigames that don't give special items as prizes (Archery game, Treasure chest games in LW)

08:55

(for "take any" caves)

09:00

here's my ugly low-res map of them

Image attachment

Yeah, I would definitely want those to be a different color to differentiate from the normal item locations.

One idea for those would also be that since there is a specific amount of items available from them you could automatically turn all locations grey after getting the items. Or there could be a button that turns all single entrance caves grey if that is possible (sounds simple to a noncoder)

09:09

You could use that after getting the Sword from them if you don't care about the Hearts

09:11

I also agree with JR about the color. They should definitely look different. Possibly circles for single entrance caves and triangles for shops.

The shops probably don't need anything fancy, because over half of the generic ones will sell keys and the Arrow. Even if you forget which is which, you should only have to check a few before you find one. But sure, some optional little markers to remind you where the shops are would be cool.

Map/compass only affect completion I think? Not entry

10:02

(For keysanity)

10:03

So in practice, tracking those would not actually impact the map tangibly

Yeah. It would only make the boss a sequence break.

Is anyone working on a retro tracker with a map? I might try it.

20:41

And yeah, potential take anys become circles. Like entrance randomizers.

20:42

I'd put triangles on the shops, except meh.

Would be nice to have a few of the "junk" items selectable for the blue locations, in case you're looking to 100% the seed and want to remember what's there after checking it. Don't really need all the different quantities of the items that have different amounts available, like rupees, arrows, and bombs. At the very least markers for Heart Containers and Heart Pieces would be helpful, plus maps and compasses for Keysanity.

Can I ask why?

23:14

The expected usage is that if you wanted it,, you would grab it

Like I said, for the blue locations. Currently there's no way to mark these item types.

I guess you're considering going back for hearts/maps/compasses later?

Yeah, like for 100%ing the seed.

I guess I'm wondering how much value that actually adds for the vast majority of players, given that it would - for example - make the item capture window larger in open mode

If you're 100%ing, then not marking the chest as open should do the trick, imo.

^

Or another option, doing an all hearts run.

So, it's not an issue of whether it's possible to add

23:17

The question I'm evaluating is whether it's worth adding

I just find it a bit limiting that I can't mark what I find in those places if it's not considered an important item.

Right, but I guess my point is, items take up space in the ui

23:21

so

23:21

the question I'm asking is - what percentage of the player base is that item important to?

23:21

And i suspect the answer is a very small number

They don't need to be in the main item tracker, just in the drop-down you get by clicking the box.

23:22

Like I said at the beginning, it would be nice to have, but it's not critical.

So, just in general, anytime I expand a UI, I get feedback.

23:24

When I feel like I have a justifiable reason for doing it, I'm happy to deal with that.

23:24

I'm not sure I would have a justifiable reason in this case.

Not a problem, just thought I'd throw it out there.

I appreciate it - I'm not trying to shut down the idea entirely, just pointing out what I'm considering with it.

23:26

I'm working on some stuff that would potentially make it easier for users to add via customization than it currently is.

sombreroguy

You could just add them to items.json and then they could be added in a tracker layout override file?

09:40

I guess at that point they could just override items.json too though

They could, however doing so also complicates your life because you now have to deal with updates potentially breaking you. I’m working on some new things to make it easier to override/add minor things without that pain. (edited)

Yeah, I was thinking it'd be handy if the overrides were merged into the existing files so you could just change a few specific things without having to worry about that, but with almost everything being in unkeyed arrays that wouldn't really work

Hey guys, general question here: Tho all items necessary to reach turtle rock were collected, it wasn't shown on the tracker at all, which leads a friend of me and myself into not considering the dungeon at all (was our very first randomizer here). Is this kind of bug-ish or is there some sense behind this issue? Also the fairy beneath the zora waterfall wasn't shown as well. Is this an error from us or is this a known issue (both places where exceptionally mandatory for solving the seed) (edited)

05:57

and obviously this is the wrong place for that - sorry.

better place would be bugs. Can you specify what pack you are using and what exact items you had on that channel? (sorry didn't read general support before) (edited)

Already solved it in the bugs- section. Thanks!

an "open overrides directory" button would be helpful; i keep looking for them in %AppData% instead of %UserProfile%/Documents

it would end up in the gear menu, but that's an excellent suggestion. I will add it in the next version - thanks!

awesome, thanks

22:31

btw this isn't a "suggestion" per se and in may just be one of those things that comes with experience, but i keep getting tricked by locations like escape/sanctuary and tower of hera that stay yellow despite the fact that it's possible that all the items might be collectible since map/compass might be the only things in inaccessible areas

That's going to come from experience. There's no way for the tracker to know that the inaccessible chests only contain dungeon items, so it remains yellow until you can access all the chests.

yeah, the only solution that came to mind was a different color for those cases but then i realized that basically just means "all dungeons" so it's probably not worth it

do you think you could mark BOTH entrances to super bunny cave? i didnt actually know exactly how to get to it (first time trying to do a full run) and tried going into an entrance i couldnt access since it was the only one marked

I will check the available space. In general though, there are space limitations in some areas. Knowing the entrances and requirements is still important, and I just wanted to point out that sometimes I don't do things I COULD do because they make it easier to make OTHER mistakes. (edited)

what do you think about adding a "visible item" box to race game? it's always in logic but practically you might have to come back with a bomb

There are bombs one screen to the right

17:18

Well two

17:19

It’s certainly addable, I’m just not sure it’s all that valuable

very good point

It would be more useful in an entrance shuffle pack than a normal one.

Def agreed with that

17:26

One thing that's coming is a toggle in the gear menu to always allow location/chest manipulation, regardless of access levels

17:26

it's intended to improve the coop experience a bit (edited)

Custom colors and icons on map, and extra image support to replace chests, then I can make FFIV Free Enterprise Randomizer pack sombreroguy

sombreroguy

Those things are definitely on my list

Is...Is making lists on the list?

Yes

Is there going to be a save feature In case I want to stop and return to a run later on without taking a picture and re-entering everything manually?

ditto on this!

Check #faq. Emo has already answered this there.

ok

19:51

The reason I ask this is not because I am new, it is just that I have a very busy schedule, aswell as my friend that I race with and we can only race for short periods of time a couple times a week

it would be great to have sequence broken items marked, and locations available because of a sequence broken item highlighted with a red border or something

shakes fist you know why Im here

I know, !imbad

16:49

Life kicking butt, plus tournaments, equals sad fouton

Emo confirmed Willard? O.o

i forget whether i've mentioned this before, but when i try to mark locations close to the title bar (floating island, ether tablet, etc.) the title bar's "hitbox" extends beyond its visual representation and i have to try again with the mouse further down

23:19

which is especially dangerous when i'm right-clicking them to mark as collected, because it opens the title bar right-click menu, which contains "close"

I’m aware of this issue, and am looking into it for the next version. Depending on how you size the window, you may be able to increase the space around the map which will insulate from this in the meantime.

great, thanks. unfortunately my monitor's native resolution is too low and my glasses prescription is too high to support making the window any bigger than it is :)

It’s not so much window size as it is aspect ratio, but fair.

Yes, yes, I know.

haha

14:50

andy brought it up this time!

Oh shit

14:50

Now I gotta do it

Plz add more bugs for me to find! sombreroguy

sombreroguy

any thoughts about the sequence break thing?

How would you implement that? Since you don’t mark where you pick up items, it’s impossible to know if something is sequence broken or not. For instance, say you get lamp at spec rock. You could have gotten it in kakariko for example. One is a sequence break, the other isn’t. The tracker doesn’t have a way to know if you sequence break.

^

20:18

I have considered it

20:19

The amount of additional inputs you would have to do on the tracker to make it work is not justified by the benefit for most players

20:19

The only way to make it work efficiently involves memory inspection or an image-based solution for determining your current location

20:19

Both would be disallowed in races, as they should be

20:20

Since races are the primary mode for mid and high-level rando, it's not a direction I can invest substantial time into

20:21

Even if I built the player-input based system, personally I'd consider it cheating

20:21

Trackers are memory aids, not game solvers

20:22

The things my tracker does already run about as close to the line as I'm willing/interested to go

shift-right click to mark an item with a red border, there's no reason it would have to be done automatically

There is limited value in knowing it was acquired in a break if you don’t know the nature of the break

19:53

Like, next to no value

19:53

Also now you have to go clear that state later

19:54

So basically if you’re already having to remember, tracking isn’t worth much

19:55

Two handed gestures are also much more disruptive

19:55

Everything in the tracker right now is one handed

19:55

So you can move while tracking

middle-click for a generic 'mark as location of interest' would be unobtrusive and might satisfy several of the 'one more things' folks would like the tracker to do at once

21:48

although it's also hard to say whether a function that generic really adds much value over "oh well i'll just remember it"

is there a way to mark individual chests from a multi-chest cave?

13:57

say like... blind's hideout mark only 4 chests, because I couldn't open the bomb chest

13:57

or mire shed because 1 item was go mode item and didn't bother to check the other one?

If you pin blind's hut, you will see that you can mark the sections independently

pin?

double click it

17:52

which is the same way you can track individual item gets in dungeons

ah, ty

Has anyone suggested an "undo last"? Just got it, and already accidentally closed a thing I wanted to track several times.

21:54

Also things on my "nice to have", setting the pendant/crystal available at each dungeon and marking a seen item location as "trash".

I usually marked stuff that I see but not grab as grabbed anyways

That is a viable solution

21:58

Alternatively for the undo, some way to reset just a single location.

If you press f11 you will see all locations and be able to change the colour again

Right click the dungeon crystals to change what they are

23:37

Undo is not happening, at least not for a long time

23:37

#faq

23:38

People keep asking for “trash” marking, and I’ve yet to hear a reasonable argument for why it’s valuable

F11, OK, will try that

I haven't seen anyone ask yet. Savestates for casual runs so you can work and come back without losing all the marks you made {opened chests, gathered items, etc.

#faq

I would like save/load or undo support These are both known requests, and while I won't say NEVER, they are beyond the bottom of the priority list. Save/load primarily impacts new players, and new players don't stay new forever. Undo is more complicated than people think, and it is of relatively little value - tracking is a skill unto itself.

Appreciated answer. It's true, I won't stay so noob forever. (edited)

If needed, you can always use alt+print screen with the tracker as the active window, then paste that into a graphics program such as paint to save it for later.

Actually, I've done that before for different projects. So I don't know why I didn't think of it.

Suggestion for this discord. Could we have a channel for people to provide links for unofficial packs? There's been a few packs made available that are currently hard to find without searching through months of old posts, and a dedicated channel for them would be much easier.

ALotOfLove

1

After playing with it, here are my suggestions: 1) I'd like a different color for areas that are technically accessible, but dark (I guess for now I can edit the pack to mark them as sequence break) 2) I'd like the game to start out showing F11 marks (or at least give us an option in settings to make this happen). 3) I'd like to be able to mark inaccessible areas as completed if I so choose. I don't understand why there is a forced block. Let me mark things the way I want to mark them! :) 4) I'd like the game to remember everything from the last session if crashed or force closed. Since this is primarily used for racing, a fast recovery from a computer crash is pretty critical. Oh and might as well throw in save/load too while you're at it

1) This is an incredibly LTTP specific thing, so I'm unlikely to add it unless I add support for packs defining arbitrary accessibility levels. FYI, potentially dark areas are already sequence breaks if you don't have the lamp, so I'm not sure what you're reacting to. 2) Sure, I can add this as a tool setting 3) Responded elsewhere - I'll be adding this as a user option, but it's never going to be the default 4) No. #faq (edited)

1) I was just used to it from another tracker, that's all. 4) I read the #faq but I strongly disagree that the ability to load/save is unimportant. But whatever.

What other tracker displays dark rooms differently? Genuinely curious.

15:24

Also curious to know what benefit you feel you get from that?

Crossproduct does (all dark areas in blue), but it doesn't have separate sequence break option (like fake flippers). Helps me route. If know all I need is a lantern I might put off something else nearby.

I guess my question is, does that actually tell you anything you don’t already know? Like, all the information is available to you. You know it’s a sequence break for some reason, and you can see you’re missing the lamp.

After playing several times no, but it was nice as a beginner to have

I guess that's the thing. There's a balance between helping new players, and not overwhelming experienced players with generally valueless information.

09:55

My approach has been "new players don't stay new"

09:55

So I optimize for the vast majority of players

This is so far the most modular app I've seen and I'm thoroughly impressed. I understand you are busy and have priorities. Anything that allows pack developers to create their own vision of a tracker is great. If you let the pack developers define the states and colors that would be even more awesome. The more you give us the less you have to do

10:19

(and I know colors are already set up)

10:20

I'm already working on a pack to get everything the way I like it, e.g. full of useless information lol

should mm/tr show up as a "maybe" if the player has 1-2 medallions, but doesn't know which medallion is for the dungeon (having all other reqs)?

Unfortunate there’s no “maybe” option other than sequence break currently, and so I made the choice not to show it in that scenario. This is one of those things where I erred on the side of not being potentially misleading, but also expecting some awareness from the player.

i see

Something I've thought of (I'm sure that's been mentioned before) but since there is a check off for flute activation and mushroom check etc. what about a middle click option or otherwise for sick kid check.

I know Willard at least changed his bottle icon to include a sick kid check instead of counting bottles.

14:37

I tried at one point to change it into a progressive toggle similar to the medallions in order to add the sick kid check, but the left-click and right-click functions were opposite of what I wanted.

Swap actions support for progressive toggles is coming

15:36

I’m trying to avoid middle click for now

15:36

Mostly because I’m saving mouse wheel for some things, and using both of those gestures in the same app gets dicey (edited)

what about.... gesture detection?

16:07

so like you flip off your webcam, then boots get activated? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

...

sadgrub

16:17

that was just a sample gesture

I was thinking something yesterday. If item icons could open separate tracker UIs, I could make a tracker for the community center bundles in Stardew Valley. Don't know if that particular idea it would be useful in a speedrun, though.

Can you describe the flow you have in mind there? Like, what inputs, new windows/same windows, etc.

Well, taking Stardew Valley for instance, you could start with a tracker layout with icons for each bundle category. Clicking one changes the tracker to show icons for the bundles, and clicking one of those will show the items needed for the bundle. You would also include an icon in each layout to go up a level.

16:28

Or you could make multiple layouts with arrow icons to switch between each layout.

What if it was a series of pop outs like the item capture ui for locations?

How would you follow that with the broadcast layout though?

Broadcast layout is a whole other thing

16:30

And would require different solutions, potentially

16:31

Like, some kind of focus or something

16:32

Because a navigation based layout is interesting, but you need a way to share nav/focus with the broadcast layout if you want it to follow along, etc

Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of what you're planning on adding to maps to reduce the needed space for the SMLttP pack, and it might be nice to have something similar for the tracker layout too.

The tab control I’m building would be completely generic

16:39

I wasn’t planning this sort of navigation system though

@jaysee I laughed a little too hard at that middle finger thing

adding in a map feature to the ALTTSM would be great

18:20

like, if you put in several buttons that opened up each map,

18:21

I.E. Toirian button opens up toirian map

18:21

Dark World Button = Dark World Map

I won’t be the person making the pack, as I’m not familiar enough with the game. I will be adding some features to make it possible for somebody else to create it in a nice way though.

alright, well, thanks for what you've done so far!

there's not really much to track regarding map in SM side though

21:09

It's one of those full clear SM like 10-15 times and you'll never need a map again

21:10

and SM map is just too giant to reasonably do anything with imo

Somewhat serious but maybe too complicated suggestion: a responsive layout feature that changes based on another thing being marked.

10:44

Maybe this is similar to what JRJathome has in mind, no idea

10:45

But something like track different things based on flags

10:45

But not make brand new packs for each thing

Would it be based on e.g. items being marked, or just a checkbox/toggle of some sort? (edited)

Either/or

Like I can imagine two versions of this

10:49

One where the tracker is progressive somehow, and actually changes state as you collect things

10:49

Two where it’s just a ui navigation system for moving between views

I was thinking about one object being a flag tracker, then another object that's responsive based on that was my initial thought

10:49

But check box sounds just as good

If I write the logic for the map, can someone make the map itself. I have a map that we can use and stuff but I dont know how to make it

You know I could just teach you how to make it

Too bad that tracker can't read the ROM real time.

Can’t is different from won’t

19:32

I know how to do it

19:32

Some might say I’m an expert in it

Oh is this so?

19:33

I'd like to try it

But I won’t do it

19:33

Because it’s disallowed in races, and I don’t think it should be a thing

It would be for us casuals lol

19:33

But I see your point

Any feature I build can and would be used in races

19:34

Frankly, I’m already sad about chat hud for that reason, but it wasn’t disallowed and some good community members wanted it

That's kinda like saying because you can't use your textbooks in tests, no-one should ever make a textbook...

^^^^

I didn’t build a textbook though

I guess because it's web based?

I built a single 3x5 notecard to help with memory

I really should get into dev with some of the stuff I like...

19:36

I would infer the track is open source yes?

I mean, it's all semantics. You built a tool that is very useful for people learning how to do something. I'm probably in no position to say anything since I only started doing rando running today. So I'm still figuring out how to use the basics properly.

The tracker is not open source, for reasons. #faq

19:40

The main thing for the tracker is that I’m not opposed to it being a learning tool

19:41

But it can only ever be part of the process

19:41

The community is how people should learn, imo

19:41

Beyond that

19:41

From a dev priority standpoint

19:41

Anything I do has a cost

I use it for it's intended purpose

Any input or additional data I add has a cost

19:41

Either in dev time, or in number of inputs required

But that's any and everything too

I could literally make it tell you what an optimal play is at any moment

19:42

But you’d have to tell it more stuff

19:42

To make it work

19:42

So I always err on the side of keeping it lightweight and usable efficiently by experienced players

19:42

Largely because new players don’t stay new

True

19:42

Like myself

As an example of the things I like

19:43

One thing I love that makes this feel like a success is people seeing a location go yellow (sequence breakable) and going “why”

19:43

Then learning a new glitch or trick or path from the game Discord

19:43

To me that’s perfect

19:44

The tracker highlights that there is an option

19:44

But it’s up to you to learn about it

o0o0o0o

19:44

I meant just the items

Maybe we're discussing different things? I dunno. I thought we were talking about the game tracker updating what items you have when you collect them instead of having to manually click it

With respect to auto-tracking, it’s all disallowed

19:45

If I did items, why not locations

Because that's too easy lol

There’s no real line there

True

So my judgement is that none of it is worth it, the game is a skill, tracking is a skill

19:45

Learning to interpret the tracker is a skill

19:46

Etc.

Very true

Trackers should be a memory aid

19:46

But that’s about it

I am just basic with it, track items and that's it

19:46

And honestly it's more for my recordings

19:46

Not so much me, because all I'd have to do is look at the menu

19:47

Then I got a pedestal seed

19:47

And holy hand grenades

19:47

I am trying for sub 3 hours

19:49

Then I may consider a race lol

I'm lost, like I said, completely new here. What do you mean by auto-tracking locations? When you manually click the item you just collected, it updates the locations to reflect what can and can't be done there. Is there some way that it tells you exactly where to go? I know you said that's possible to code in a way to tell you the optimal path, I don't think anyone would want that. So maybe I need it explained to me like I'm an idiot (Because I feel one right now) how auto-updating your items is more advantageous than just clicking it, and how that correlates to what you're saying about locations

Until then, I am enjoying the new life that the randos has brought to LTTP

Because I agree with your point that I myself love seeing a new box appear on the map, and being like, "Ohhh, how do I do that?"

I should start using the map lol

19:50

I run seeds on my phone too and I don't have the luxury of a tracker then too lol

Auto tracking means the tracker automatically tracking the items for you, and possibly locations. It’s an advantage because it eliminates the possibility of forgetting to track or mistracking

19:51

Until recently, it was also not possible on console

19:51

And even now, it’s only possible with one beta version of one firmware fork for one flash cart

That's impressive.

19:52

I am guessing data is being read via some kind of serial connection?

The sd2snes supports a usb connection. A beta fork of the firmware supports reading system memory, as well as other things.

I thought that might be the case.

It’s the underlying tech that made my work with Karkat on bitraces possible (making it work on console)

And it's the tech part that makes that cool

There’s a lot about that thing that’s very cool

Slightly off topic, but I'm super excited to be working on Bitraces as a 1p-mod

Now if I could get my TG16 like that I'd be a happy man lol

I also might add, I know I'm sounding very ungrateful, and like a little child stamping his foot demanding more chocolate, that is not the case at all

This comes up a lot

Uber you are good

I explain it because it’s a philosophical thing

So what are the bit races?

19:56

I must have missed something

If you’ve seen one of the alttpr “interactive races” on speed gaming

19:57

That’s what it is

o0o0o0o

19:58

Where everyone is a player In my Oprah voice

More or less (edited)

bigbomb?

No clue, I don’t know he item codes in the alttpsm pack

1

19:59

You can check the items.json in the pack zip

1

Oh I understand your side. You don't want the tool you created to completely ruin the skill/memory needed to play LttP in a race scenario. I guess my point of view is, since the tracker is already allowed in races, and the high skilled players (ideally) would never forget to check something off, that adding in an auto-update item feature wouldn't be that catastrophic. But, I'm saying that as someone who has never completed a run, and has only started two, to get to used to how it works.

It’s a philosophical thing. If the competitive community ever changes our stance on it more broadly, I’d consider it. But right now, it’s a non-starter.

Suggestion for who ever made the ALTTPSM tracker, its called a powerbomb not a superbomb (edited)

Hahaha @Fouton (PugHUD)

it became 1million monkeys on a type writer in sakuras chat for a second

Did they write Shakespeare?

no but we wrote fouton

LOL

20:04

I guessing it was mass chaos?

Yeah fair enough. Agree to disagree, but I respect your argument and stance on it.

I understand your side too, and it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I’m on break from competitive rando right now because I feel like parts of it are getting ridiculous, but maybe if I ever quit permanently I’ll say fuck it, do the interesting tech stuff, and watch the world burn and then be runneth over by noobs.

I'll try a run with the maps up sometime just to get better, I just want to race one time.

haha

Hey to race with some of the greats around here?

20:07

Twould be an honor

20:07

So gotta get on their level, just to say i did it.

Get a sub 2 hour time on a seed once and I will gladly race you for fun

That's the goal

Right now my goal is to finish one, ha

I got a sub 2 hour on a glitched seed, will you race me in that @EmoSaru ? sombrerogrub

sombrerogrub

You know the answer to that, lol

20:18

I would, but I don’t know all the glitches

lol get owned nerds

Owned by a superbomb?

Ye

20:20

you get my previous updates in or should i resend

I got em, life’s just been kicking my ass

20:20

And yea

The answer is yes! sombreroguy

sombreroguy

I also have packs from jaysee

sounds good pattyOK

pattyOK

That will be published at the same time

20:21

Because I am terrible

ye. JCpacks need adding

need me to send you the changes for better twitch chat

20:21

actually Im gonna make a lot of changes

That would be awesome if you wouldn’t mind fouton

so that the metroid bosses arent boss1 boss2 boss3 boss4

20:21

lmfao

Do you have an ETA? Maybe I can make full glitched pack by then

Ill work at snail pace just for you

is it GhostBoss, WaterBoss, RawrBoss, and SpikeBoss?

I have to google them to know the answer

20:23

But like... boss1 isnt even boss1 lmfao

20:23

boss1 is ridley which is bottom right corner

20:23

chat hud was NOT a thing when i made this

GhostBoss is Ridley, WaterBoss is Kraid, SpikeBoss is Phantoon, and RawrBoss is Draygon

it's boss1 in RBO though

the only run that matters

I need to try a coop rbo run sometime

20:25

i wonder if anyone made the alttp coop thing work with SD2SNES

20:27

Is linked trackers given any consideration?

I think at one point Emo wanted trackers to be sorta like how firebase works in that you can have people connect to yours like a room?

20:28

but with like... good functionality

I have plans for it

20:31

Involving my brother who’s actually really good at server side suff

20:31

Stuff

20:31

Once I get my job life situation figured out, it’s something I want to tackle

@EmoSaru is there consumable composite toggle? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

16:40

like, I want to be able to right click to change an image if necessary, then left click to increase count

Example:

17:27

Image attachment

17:27

is the same character, upgraded at a certain trigger

17:28

in the FE randomizer, a random char can be found of to 3 times, and 4 random char can be found 2 times

No, that would be new tech, but I’m not sure that’s what you need? Why would the consumable part be necessary, as opposed to a progressive toggle? I guess I’d need to know more about the behavior here.

can I make right click do one thing and do left click progressive toggle?

I don't understand that question

22:11

progressive toggles use both buttons

22:11

currently left toggles the item on/off, and right cycles through the options

22:11

I'm adding support for swapping that in the next version

how long till we can save? D:

forever (edited)

rip

Please stop asking about save

22:13

it's in the #faq (edited)

22:13

and my answer isn't going to change anytime soon (edited)

22:13

If it does, you'll know

oh, woops :S

but it's not likely to

read the faq. ye makes sense never mind then

So the latest version of the Z2Randomizer brings hints as a feature, with NPCs being able to tell you explicitly where an item can be found if the feature is turned on. Being able to take notes on that is something I'd enjoy adding as a feature to my Z2R pack, but I think having to left / right-click a bunch of times to cycle through the full list of items is messy, since I'd need to do so for 14 total potential items. So what I'd like is for items with that many different states to have a context menu appear on click (or right-click for progressive toggles) which would then allow you to select which of the 14 items you want to change to. This would also be a rather good implementation for what I was looking for for my mapping experiments a few months ago. I don't think this is something that should be enabled by default though, so it'd have to be an extra attribute you could set to enable this particular behavior. (edited)

Oh, that's a cool idea. If I'm understanding right, that would basically let you toggle any location to the dark blue (Viewable but not gettable), like the DP torch in z3r? That would be a really cool thing for any game where you're hoping to play co-op and want to be able to record things your partner finds.

Probably! I've never used the map functions in the Z3R packs so I'm not particularly familiar with how they work.

08:13

And yeah after checking it, that's basically exactly what I was looking for, except just adding interactions like that to the regular tracker view instead of having to use the map and pinning a location (Since those don't really make sense with the randomly generated overworld Z2R has) (edited)

To put it in Link to the Past terms, I'd like to have an attribute that would make it so that right-clicking a medallion instead of just cycling through MM > TR > Both in order instead pops up a context menu like that that would allow me to just pick from those three. Very similar to how that existing behavior for viewable items works. It'd be excessive for that particular example of course, but would be nice for anything that involves six or more possible states. Which is something that currently already comes up for spells in the Z2R tracker, and would definitely come up if I wanted some way to take note of the hints. I could work my way around it a bit by adding a pinnable location to the pack that just has 8 empty spots to fill in for both item + location, assuming that's possible, but that's messy.

What if, instead of a context menu, it was that mouse wheel let you scroll through them quickly?

09:25

Context menu is a much bigger change

Mouse wheel selection could be convenient...

Mouse wheel selection would work too.

10:01

I'm just fond of the context menu idea just for both quicker access and precision.

I appreciate any change that improves it over having to click something 7 times in a row though.

Okay, next question. What if instead of context menu, it was a UI that looked similar to the capture item popout. The contents of that popout would be customizable by you.

Image attachment

That would be perfect.

Where "you" btw, in this case, is a pack author or a user with an items override

10:14

I can't do any option other than mouse wheel automatically for packs in a general sense

Makes sense. I'm mostly looking to just add better support for things to my Z2R pack and a potential more detailed Z1R pack in the future.

10:15

A popout like that would be perfect as an addition there.

okay

10:15

that's a bigger change, but a direction I like for other things as well

10:15

it sounds like the biggest bang for the buck, without doing something I potentially have to rethink later (when I add popouts like that, I'd like to use them for other things too), it mousewheel

10:16

Just to confirm, that does improve the situation for you in the immediate, right?

Definitely.

okay, cool

I'll play with progressive toggles some more tonight

oh I'm dumb. I was looking at bottles for reference instead of medallions

Will there be something for the OOT randomizer/windwaker randomizer once its gets further in development

#pack-development I have an items-only pack for OoT and @Spleebie is working on a map pack.

There's a wind waker randomizer too? speedNotLinkThis

speedNotLinkThis

its in beta @Spleebie

19:03

ah ok JR

Image attachment

4

Can we get a randomizer randomizer? To randomize which randomized game we're randomizing? vellOL

vellOL

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/001/123/xzibit-wtf.jpg

Embedded image

Can we keep fake suggestions and jokes out of this channel please? Emo monitors this channel, and if there's too much non-tracker related messages, it makes it hard for Emo to respond to others. Thanks.

4

12:03

#off-topic is a better place for that kind of stuff anyway.

How goes the work towards reversable progressives toggles?

My deepest darkest secret is that it's done, but I have a list of other stuff I'm working on before I release the next version. Chiefly to support the alttpsm rando map packs people want to build, in a reasonably usable way.

Alrighty

12:29

I notice andy has forgotten sick kid and it reminded me lmao

Hmm

not that it would save him, and not that the race matters

Would it be possible to get a couple buttons for the warps in SMALTTP like you check something when you get to norfair and it shows what's avalible on the mountain, same with maridia and lower norfair energy room

Not that I have any interest in making a map for this, but I am curious how the map will be designed, I have some ideas for what it could look like but Im sure Emo's got plans to make it work for whoever's planning to make the smlttp mapped package

Fouton in the SM discord under randomizer channel the pinned map tracker there I think is what it would look like

Specifically, I'm doing some work to enable a few things that I think will make this nicer to use for map heavy games like alttpsm. 1) The ability to restrict which maps are displayed by a given maps layout element 2) Some form of "tabbed" layout that packs can use, in order to allow users to switch between the alttp and sm maps

okay so tabs is what I was wondering

20:38

cuz I imagine it like clicking the warp point on the map tabs to the other one, though I can see it having better usage as well, such as seeing whats available from that specific warp

realistically, I think just a way to switch maps is the main thing

21:15

because actually filtering maps in some way is kinda interesting

21:15

especially with how sequence breakable the game is

21:15

if you're rarely filtering much of the map

21:15

that filtering has little value

What happens if I were to try using an animated gif for an item?

It uses the first frame of the animation.

Try it and let us know

11:23

Darn

I'm waiting for animated gif support too for the ladx pack. Last I heard, Emo said it's on her to do list, but not high priority.

^

13:25

Unfortunately, static images and animated GIFs require completely different controls in WPF, so it's a bit of a job to make it work properly. It's on my list, but yeah, low-ish priority

I'm actually having trouble coming up with a legit reason to have an animated gif anyway

14:46

I think it'd just be distracting

rainbow colored instruments maybe, since JR said LADX

That’s what the original request was about, yeah

yeah.... still having trouble coming up with a legit reason to have them animate

(edited)

Eh it’s a nice to have feature for things in broadcast layouts

I had two reasons for wanting animated instrument icons. The Windfish tracker, which most LADXR players use, has them , and they're not represented in the game by a single color.

https://ericlakatos.github.io/windfish/windfish/ (edited)

Windfish Tracker | Windfish.io

Windfish is a web-based game tracker designed for streaming The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX that tracks the overworld, items and much more!

is there a way to save your progress on a tracker? If I'm not doing single session it'd be helpful to save what I did do the last time I played

Answered in #faq

oh ok

derp (edited)

have you thought about incorporating a timer of some sort?

I've thought about it. At one point, I was planning a pretty fully-featured SRTV integration

13:11

But ultimately, I've prioritized keeping the tracker focused

13:12

because there are much better timers for speedruns

13:12

and doing race service integration is a lot of work

13:12

that would probably be better served by a tool more focused on it

Makes sense.

Would it be possible to add a dialog box when downloading/updating a published pack that gives a changelog for the pack? Pack authors could make the changelog in a txt file or something. I just ask because I like to keep track of changes in my packs, and it would be nice to share those changes more easily.

it's definitely possible. The thing is, in order to add more stuff to this process, my next big priority is making it possible for you guys to self-publish

18:10

I'm still working on the details for that

18:10

But now that we've got so many packs, I need to finally put in place a real process for this

18:10

Once you guys are able to manage this stuff on your own, I'm a lot more comfortable adding all of that kind of stuff

Alright. Sounds good.

Sounds great

would it be possible to make the map for layouts "popout-able", so you basically have 2 windows, one for the items (and pinned locations?) and one for the map? (edited)

Is there a way to incorporate an emulator in it so I do t need 2 programs

@Zurai that's possible, but definitely a lot of work. Something I'll consider for the farther-flung future

1

19:52

@Elminster - that's pretty much definitely off the table, for a variety of reasons.

@EmoSaru thanks just a thought :)

for sure, would be kinda neat, but ultimately the emulator part would be 10x the complexity of the tracker part, so i'm really just buiding an emulator lol

mind merging the item layout for OoT's item only and overworld packs into one layout? @Hamsda @JRJathome

the thing is for logic the map tracker needs some "stupid" stuff tracked

20:38

but I think I could make the capture layout pretty much the same

i was thinking your layout merged with the items only pack

20:39

maybe some improvements here and there if possible

i pretty much just "rebuilt" the in game layout

20:39

because I was searching for stuff otherwise on the tracker^^

if you copied the ingame layout why are the adult trade items after the child ones when ingame adult comes first

oh LOL i actually had that swapped in my head

21:49

will fix

rooKek

So youre NOT gonna make an emulator? shame.

Why would I make an emulator when playing on console is so much better? emosarSideEye

emosarSideEye

what if you found a way to make a better console though, like... always lagless

00:24

maybe use zsnes as a base

You’re bad and you should feel bad.

lmao

00:25

I do wish emulators had more scripting support that could avoid lagging the emulation

That’s REALLY hard to do

Yeah

Because scripting more or less requires synchronizing state

I dont even know how to accurately keep a game running at a specific fps

And that’s the slowest thing to do

without like, intentionally throttling the fps

There are only two options, throttle, or vsync

oh so maybe I am doing it correctly

Throttle is the only workable one for emulators for systems that run at weird frame rates tho

how do emulators know how to accurately lag stuff, is it set to use a maximum amount of cpu power?

00:27

also do we want to move this to general

No, it’s about modeling the actual time it takes for the simulated chip to do the thing

00:27

We could

00:27

Or I could go to bed, lol

also works, sleep well!

Thanks!

This is a perhaps silly suggestion, but do you think saving states would be possible in future?

17:49

I'm doing a multi day causal race with a friend and it's kinda tedious to set up the tracker each time...

#faq

17:52

I would like save/load or undo support These are both known requests, and while I won't say NEVER, they are beyond the bottom of the priority list. Save/load primarily impacts new players, and new players don't stay new forever. Undo is more complicated than people think, and it is of relatively little value - tracking is a skill unto itself.

Oh okay

19:54

Sorry

adding to the pile of save/load requests

21:47

is what I am doing at this moment

21:48

https://puu.sh/A6GmL/64f058f66f.gif

Embedded image

^ best waifu ever

She isn't even the best waifu in that show let alone ever

It's okay to have a wrong opinion

About this? Maybe not.

let's try to keep this to things that are more or less on-topic, and not waifus

Sorry if this has already been proposed but... would be good if we could mark the treasures which are visible but inaccessible (ie, the blue ones) as rupees, hearts, useless, etc.

That's entirely dependent on the person making the pack, you could also add it yourself with a bit of work

Someone actually has proposed it before, but Emo couldn't figure out why you'd want to keep that information on the tracker.

Considering you can just tick the treasures off as they're not useful for what you want, there really isnt a point

What if you want that 300 rupees, so it kinda is relevant? I know everyone is gonna be all "just remember where it is" or "you don't need it just mark it off" but the perfectionist in me thinks you should at least have the option

For the Chat hud, would it be possible to open up the app to receive direct api type calls to accept those !hud commands instead of relying on monitoring chat, or add it as an option? I ask because I use a Stream Deck, and it's nice to be able to tap a button or two to activate/change something on the Tracker without interrupting the gameplay by having to use mouse each time. For the time being, I've simply setup a bunch of buttons to just do twitch chat and say those exact commands when pressed, but obviously that spams chat with !hud xyz when I press each button, I would just prefer if it were silent. I use PhantomBot for my channel and they've come up with a similar thing by using an app (for now) to send the commands directly to the bot instead of using Twitch chat. Source code here: https://github.com/IllusionaryOne/PBStreamDeck/ (edited)

IllusionaryOne/PBStreamDeck

PBStreamDeck - StreamDeck Application to Send Chat/Commands to PhantomBot

An extension of that would be to allow for the Streamdeck button to be a toggle instead of an "on"/"up" or "off"/"down" command, which currently requires two separate buttons for the same item. (edited)

Maybe, but probably not. Like, I said, there's a tremendous amount of stuff I want to do to improve the core tracker. Also, anything I "kinda enable" ends up being something people start expecting support for, so I have to be mindful of what I can reasonably handle.

Hello I need some misc. tracking options i.e. wine, sips, and hits

13:23

I’m just kiddin also but ty emo for all your hard work

1

Hello tracker user, who I am definitely not joking around with because I love you. 1) I'm actually building a thing to make it easier for you to inject new items into packs generically. :) 2) #customization-support is full of friendly people who can help you with satisfying your deepest, darkest needs for miscellany 3) Thank you and looking forward to drinking with you at GDQ. ❤ (edited)

1

Suggestion: have something even more visible in #welcome sending people to FAQ.

13:30

If for no other reason than for extra sass when someone misses it.

1

13:36

It's everything I dreamed of and more. Thank you ❤

There

13:37

I've made the problem better and worse

Haha I love it

Hmm...is it possible to allow for the colors of the squares to change? I'm thinking about color-blind-ness here.

That is supported. Scroll up a bit in announcements, and I will add it to the faq.

This was a 10/10 suggestion

Don't you mean 20/20?

Hello! I really like the map feature for a link to the past open mode!

16:45

Suggestion: any plans for a map version for the link to the past/supermetroid crossover ?

people are working on it, but these things take time

16:54

one thing to keep in mind - I actually don't build most of the packs you see

16:54

Only the LTTP packs with me listed as the author

yay, i'm sure it was on someone's mind, but i really enjoyed that feature. It really helps when you think your stuck in a seed.

A super Metroid tracker is in the works by me, after which I'm okay with somebody just ripping the whole thing for an alttp+sm tracker (edited)

18:47

Just getting the building blocks put in place

Suggestion.: an easier way to find packs. pack support doesnt have pings there isnt a channel in here to get new ones and the official packages are a very small selection of packs.

I think everyone that has made a serious effort into creating packs and feels their packs are complete, are now available in the package manager

1

Yup. There are no finished packs that I am aware of that are not being published in the package manager in the app.

11:36

If anybody is aware of any, please send the author my way.

so I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the official packages are a very small selection of packs" @Xel ? Is your emotracker like a few weeks out of date?

Please always install the latest app updates... Shocker - they contain new stuff.

unless i couldnt see it, there isnt a way to see if the tracker needs updates while loaded. it only prompts you to update on launch and i only put my pc to sleep since its considerably more annoying then it needs to be to reopen all the programs i need for streaming

I'll add a check for updates option to the menu, but I'm not interested in the tracker doing continuous network traffic by polling for updates, because of the traffic and because I don't want notifications popping up in the middle of my or your runs

16:22

I advise restarting the tracker periodically

I stg If emotracker started telling me that I had updates available, during my runs I would copy it on to a USB stick And burn that stick in front of you.

have no fear

16:46

your usb sticks are safe

5

def dont want a constant notif thign but a check for updates ubutton wasent even there and i was like oh

you should be able to mark the desert temple bump item as the big kay

there's a keysanity pack for a reason

in the tracker, doesn't the game logic take into account you need cape, blue cane, or mirror shield to full clear the laser bridge on TR. On the tracker it turns green with all the other necessary items except one of those. Should TR be orange until that condition is met or am Iosing my mind? I Think the same scenario game logic applies to mire too (for the one chest in the spike floor room). Not that I don't know how to get around those aspects, just thinking it might be confusing for new players

I believe you're right for TR. For the mire and ice spike rooms, the logic no longer requires invincibility unless you're playing in OHKO - that was changed a few versions of rando ago.

TR would be yellow under those conditions, not orange

23:56

but I'll look into it

23:56

realistically, it's not that big of an issue tho - kinda low'ish priority

i'm gonna sound like oh just do this wen its probably way to hard but it would be nice if it would save what you've done after you close it if you cant finish it in one siting

#faq

Is there any thoughts on changing the # counter to remove the black box and replace with white text with a block outline?

Making consumable counts more customizable for packs is definitely on my agenda

21:54

If there are specifics people, especially @Pack Developer folks would like to see, if love to hear them here so I can go through them after GDQ.

Change position on item img, font, size of count

22:00

And as Willard said the background

22:00

If transparent is possible that would be a good option

FYI outline is harder, the rest of this is easy

as a Pack Developer, I would like to see Emo relaxing with me by the beach sipping on a mojito

4

There isnt really beaches in Minni sakura

I don't believe this has been suggested yet, but I would like it if there was a way to also uninstall packs rather than just the reinstall option. There are one or two packs I installed and did not like the look of or just don't use anymore and don't want them cluttering my list anymore.

i can look into adding this, although in general I'm always leary of having the app delete files on its own, because bugs could be bad. You can delete them though - just go into Documents/EmoTracker/packs and delete the ones you don't want.

13:28

Then restart the tracker to refresh the list

Okay, thank you!

This actually also allowed me to realize I somehow had accidentally done an override for a layout that was causing it to break and going through the files let me fix it. (edited)

how about an "open package folder" button in the package manager? that would make them easy to find (and would be a good case for moving it to %appdata%)

appdata is a deeply annoying folder for users to work in

14:01

not least of all because it's hidden by default (edited)

not if the app itself directs them to it

14:01

like, with a button to open it I mean

having magic buttons that open folders you can't see is not exactly intuitive, IMO

just showing them the path will do squat

14:02

true, but as a technical user it took me forever to find the pack folder 'cause I was looking in appdata instead of documents

14:02

but I still think it would be good to have the option to open it somewhere, 'cause even in Documents it's hard for people to find

Sure, but that makes you one of about 5% of people (at best) who I don't have to worry about anyway

14:03

Adding the button is a fine thing

14:03

and I'll probably do that

would it be possible to add a mouse-over tooltip that displays the name of the spot without having to click each one individually?

01:29

thats kind of an issue with maps that have a lot of spots in very close proximity e.g. oot rando

01:30

as an example of what i mean: https://testrunnersrl.github.io/oot-tracker/

Is there a way to have a tabbed menu with multiple rows instead of just piling them in there? The SM Rando Tracker by SauceRelic has a tab row with Zebes & each Zone; if I wanted to force a linebreak, is that functionality implemented? I tried another array index of tab definitions and I guess it was seen as malformed because it failed to load anything.

Support for x,y coordinates to know how to do simple math? Addition like instead of a value 100 I'd be able to accomplish that with 50+50 as well.

1) Not currently 2) Not currently, but I’m working on things after GDQ

Thanks Emo!

In the meantime, you can currently nest the map tabs. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/386962380548079619/457706574702575616/unknown.png

Embedded image

@JRJathome Like submenus almost?

Yeah. In the screenshot I posted, the dungeon tabs only show when the 'Dungeons' tab is selected.

Hmm. Not quite my goal but I changed my design a little to not necessitate what I was thinking of previously. But I do appreciate the tip! :D

We've got max_quantity. Can we have min_quantity?

00:10

(I realize that Emo's afk for a few days, just documenting for posterity.)

Maybe a multiples option that will only display multiples of a number. Ex: "multiples": 5 would be good for SM's ammo counts.

The multiples suggestion is in the works.

EmoSaru - 06/16/2018 My advice to you all is to learn a bit about LUA. :smiley: JRJathome - 06/16/2018 Sounds ominous. EmoSaru - 06/16/2018 Nothing you're currently doing will change because of it But if I'm adding support for math expressions I'd like to do it in a way that gives me the ability to offer more control in the future So I'm going to be embedding a scripting language and I think LUA is the best fit

Excellent.

00:25

Sounds like I'm just a couple days behind the curve. Thanks!

It would help if you had access to the pack development channel.

I can't assign roles though, so we'll have to wait for Emo to do it.

How about @include files? (Rofl?)

00:27

10-4.

Includes are a no

00:49

Because JSON doesn’t really work that way

is there any chance of having the mouse-over tooltips i asked about?

That is possible, but low priority

01:03

Nothing is happening until after I’m back from SGDQ though

understandable. thank you anyways

No problem!

(its not called LUA its Lua, its a name not an acronym.)

04:17

(I'm sorry, I'm a pedant)

is there even a tracker for metroid zero mission?

nope

not yet anyways

Custom imagery for location icons on maps?

Might get too confusing tbh.

15:40

Considering the location icons are quite small

I need unique portal icons for SMALttPR.

Ahh

15:42

Then ignore what I said :p

Could be implemented as an "undocumented" feature. ;)

cant you just photoshop them into the map image?

15:47

maybe i'm misunderstanding what you want to implement them for

I could. But they open up with different access requirements.

i guess being able to create different stylesheets for sets of buttons could be a feature in the future but that'd most likely be way down on the priority list

It all depends on how that code is written. It's closed source, so I'm not speculating. Just asking.

yeh its a shame its not open source otherwise i would've implemented my suggestion myself instead of having to bother emosaru

16:21

i understand not wanting to go open source though

Closed source also helps control the sandbox and so that it doesn't get unwieldy. Perfectly understandable.

There are options that I’m working on in the future, but yeah

16:40

You guys are at the mercy of my prioritized list

Thanks Emo! Perfectly acceptable. All we can do is ask. :D

Also, style sheets aren’t a thing, because it’s not HTML

It's obviously sorcery. nodnod

used to calling it style sheets from Qt (edited)

CES - Cascading Emo Sheets? sombreroguy

sombreroguy

I mean you don't need to have the portals open up on the map.

is there already a sm-alttp tracker? with MAPS? (edited)

for now you can just run two instances of emotracker with each game pack (edited)

i think @MikeTrethewey | Axiom Verge is working on one

No dungeon support yet. Not released publicly yet. I need to write Tournament Norfair still.

Image attachment

2

pieHug

1

looks great!

Thanks goes to Fouton for the ALttPR inventory, SauceRelic for the SM inventory, and Crossproduct and his team for the Hyrule graphics. I still need to re-find where I lifted the Zebes map from.

guess i need a bigger 2nd monitor

1

SR Zebes? I wasn't aware zebes was in samus returns.

Zebes is not in SR thats SR-1701312123 (some number combo

It’s SauceRelic’s map so I can compare if necessary. Not slated for release.

Looks really awesome @MikeTrethewey | Axiom Verge !! As an FYI there is a big logic rework coming for SMZ3 v10. No idea on release schedule for that, but just a heads up

Yep! I’m keeping my eyes open for that one. Next trick is how to implement dungeons.

Dungeons

PogChamp

10:43

This tracker gonna be beast

I could include dungeon maps but I was figuring out Chest counts first. Rofl.

So here's a question. A The Wind Waker randomizer just got released. I would like to slide in a suggestion/request for an EmoTracker pack for this randomizer.

@Darkened5ky has already started work on a tracker.

Cool. Wasn't aware there was already one in development

Yup :)

16:27

It'll probs be two weeks ish before it's ready though.

I had to delay a bit due to an unexpected commentary gig, but FYI this will be happening today, starting sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 PM EDT. Please stop by! https://twitter.com/EmoSaru/status/1015441187866415105

EmoSaru (@EmoSaru)

TOMORROW, I'm going to do a long EmoTracker dev stream, working down my list of small fixes (and one big feature). If you've got small'ish feature requests or questions, come hang out - it's possible that I might just take care of it on stream if it's reasonable.

My power is out, so yeah... sadly not happening.

https://twitter.com/EmoSaru/status/1015798383611482112

EmoSaru (@EmoSaru)

Power is back but it's too late to start the dev stream, so I'll be doing the EmoTracker dev stream tomorrow (July 8th) at 5:00 PM EDT. I have a list of small things to do, plus one big feature. If you have questions/requests it's a good time to make them - I might just do...

I'm super new (just did my first rando) so this suggestion would be for novices, but would it be possible to implement tracking for what dark world portals are available?

The main issue with that is that, while you'd think it's purely helpful, it can start to clutter the map in certain areas

21:30

I'll think about it though

Tyty

Most of them are hammer or titans mitt no?

all but one

21:31

hammer + gloves or titans (edited)

Ah, the one on death mountain

Even the locations without item requirements would've been helpful for me

right

21:32

there's only one

21:32

without item requirements

https://twitter.com/EmoSaru/status/1016064496924688385

EmoSaru (@EmoSaru)

Going live with a long'ish EmoTracker dev stream. I'll be working down my issue list, plus diving into one rather large feature, but if you have questions/suggestions (or just want to hang and listen to music) come on by! https://t.co/96bFP1TnZu

has a GUI been suggested for trackers to use as opposed to chat commands?

What you're suggesting is really network-linked trackers

21:45

Which is going to happen

21:45

Sometime in The Future™

21:45

But it's a large, longer-term project

21:45

Probably not gonna happen until later this year

what about a webpage similar to google docs with simultaneous editing?

22:49

or is that exactly what you said?

@k3vlar12 See the main EmoTracker app? Now envision that being able to send its status to another viewer and give them edit privs as well.

@k3vlar12 that's more or less exactly what I said

Something that I would like to see (or if this is already in the tracker, let me know) is the ability to save the current state of the tracker, so that I can close the tracker and pull it back up again later to continue a run.

#faq

The #faq answer still stands. That said, I am going to be soliciting feedback sometime soon specifically from players who are routinely playing the 5+ hour randos that have started appearing.

yeah the ootr runtimes especially for first timers are quite long <.<

I'm less concerned about first-timers for the reasons listed in #faq. I think leaving the tracker open is a reasonable solution for them. If people who are routinely playing them have an ongoing want though, that's a slightly different situation.

true, though they will likely not go below 5-6hrs for most people, which can be too much for many people to complete in one sitting. so there is definitly value in a save feature. how much is an entirely different thing though

1

Yeah, exactly. In any event, I'll make an announcement when I start to consider things.

gabisver - 11/10/2017 add hotkey support and i'm sold EmoSaru - 11/10/2017 What hotkeys do you use? I haven’t used the modified version of CPs tracker gabisver - 11/10/2017 it has hotkeys for all items lemme take a pic that better explains EmoSaru - 11/10/2017 Ah, okay. Item hotkeys are trivial, and because of the way my tracker works, you can customize them if you want I’ll add it to my list

What's the status on this? Someone was asking about trackers with item hotkeys on the alttpr subreddit. (edited)

Lost to the sands of time... I've added it to the Trello so that it doesn't happen again. https://trello.com/b/Sik3omFm/emotracker

Organize anything, together. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, know what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.

oh yeah i've seen yaga with a modified version of CPs tracker with the hotkeys, that does look handy rooThink

rooThink

TBH I think it sounds cumbersome, but since it's easy enough to do and doesn't hurt much, I'll get to it at some point

12:36

Frankly, my main interest in it is that it potentially opens up at least item-tracking to more accessibility-oriented input devices.

The OP of the reddit thread mentioned they use a controller so they feel it would be faster to have keyboard shortcuts rather than messing with the mouse each time they want to track something. That and using a controller opens up more room for hotkeys.

TBH that sounds like somebody who hasn't used a tracker very much, and underestimates how much not faster it is when they have to precisely hit one key amongst 25+ without their hands in actual keyboarding position (edited)

Well, if you're a Starcraft player, it's not much of an issue with hotkeys. That game has a ton of hotkeys.

if you're a starcraft player, your hands are in keyboard and mouse position

I've only played it once. My buddy was trying to get me to learn the hotkeys at a fast pace. Didn't work out so well.

12:43

But yeah, with OOT, I still haven't officially done a speed run. Been watching other streamers do their runs, to help memorize things. Typically their speed runs are around 4.5-7hrs per run. Mine would probably be the standard 20hrs right now.

I'm using Hamsda's tracker; any intent to put rupee and heart icons in, so you can mark those from Gossip Stones checks?

not really, they are irrelevant, just open the chest

I meant for marking on the map tracker that 50 Skulls/Big Poe's/etc are worthless.

21:44

The things in blue that you can mark what they are; being able to mark that they're just rupees or whatever, so if you're using that tracker layout you can remember that you don't have to deal with them.

yeah thats what i meant, just open the chest if its garbage

Cant you just tick it off

I'm a dummy; I hadn't thought of that :P

We all do dumbs maxyyLUL

maxyyLUL

I know it was suggested, but I also want to see a save feature eventually.

Yes, persistent tracking please! My computer is old and unreliable, and I've had to bail on several seeds because my computer crashed (or even just spontaneously restated itself), any I've lost all my progress.

Maybe have an app pointed at it that takes a periodic screenie. Or stream and get it from the last saved video to Twitch since it (is supposed to) save on stream cut.

I do stream, but I'm not having the entire map tracker on my scene, lol, just items. I'm playing OoT, if that matters at all; haven't played with the LttP trackers at all, so dunno if their maps are now stream-friendly.

Save/load is under consideration again, but just FYI the long randomizers like OOT and WW are the only reason. I'm going to be doing a survey at some point soon.

Skulltulla tracking? No way to get all of that info from the stream, unless I wanna rewatch several hours. I know saves is an extremely low priority feature to implement, but still... For people who are extremely bad and/or forgetful like me, losing tracking progress means having to start over.

21:28

Nobody's under any expectation to make things beginner-friendly, and I'm thankful I have access to what I do for helping me play this game!

Hamsdas tracker has skulltula tracking and locations

he was talking about the ability to save said information

Aah, my bad

dunno if its been suggested, but an always on top feature like livesplit has?

How i can fullscreen the emo tracker?

14:39

with oot randomizer

You should ask this in #general-support

Do you think a separate channel for new pack (and update?) announcements would be worthwhile? I've seen people make announcements in one of the support channels (myself included), but such things could get lost in the other discussions.

I like that idea. Maybe one where only those with the pack dev flag (or greater) can post in

Maybe something like pack-releases.

^Yea, that's what I was thinking

#pack-announcements

10:59

Great idea, and yes, only @Pack Developer and above can post, but everybody should be able to read and react.

pjdNice

1

Thanks for implementing it! maxyyCool

maxyyCool

geseiiYay

Gonna repost my announcement there, then.

Fastest implemented feature

dab

1

maxyyLUL

Cannot access #pack-announcements... It's not showing up in my tray, and clicking the hyperlink here does nothing. It appears that not everyone has access to read this new thread. (edited)

The settings should be set so that it's a public channel (not private), ATeveryone can't Send Messages, ATpackDeveloper and above can Send Messages. That'll keep it read-only for anyone not "Pack Developer" and above. Right now it's got a security lock icon on it that indicates that Read is set to a restricted set of roles.

13:40

(Posting here so that people on their own servers can learn too.)

sorry, one sec

13:42

it was in an interim state, because I initially created it as private to avoid people sneaking in messages while I configured it properly

13:42

should be accessible now

Thanks

Can the interface support tooltips on item icons for labels? Like, mouse over the Bow in an ALttP pack and it tips with "Bow."

I would also like to see that

Would help out in certain obscure cases like the new icon in Hamsda's OoT which is representing the "bridge repair"

Precisely.

Or, same tracker, the three medals/stones on the far right aren't labeled for the child dungeons by a text label below them. I had to basically assume the order was emerald ruby sapphire when that changed.

the three medals/stones on the far right aren't labeled for the child dungeons by a text label below them I see them labeled in Hamsda's pack. Not sure what could be causing it to be different on your end, unless you have an override or something.

I'm on Keysanity actually

14:39

The labels below are replaced with GC, GTG, and GF because those keys are shuffled in keysanity

14:40

so the three on the right don't have a Deku, DC, or Jabu label because of the placement of the three additional shuffled key locations

14:46

In the narrow item layout, it seems the right three medal markers do shift below Forest Fire and Water labels, but that's no help in the default wide item layout. I've learned by now, of course, but someone using the Keysanity tracker for the first time might get momentarily confused.

yeah, it was an effort to keep the layout sorta compact hover tooltips would be pretty amazing, especially for items but to a lesser extent also for map locations (though that could end up weird in location dense areas)

Tool tips are easy to support

18:54

but I can also tell you that when you leave your mouse cursor over the tracker after manipulating it, they get annoying as hell

couple second delay, couple second vanish. only need short tooltips and should be quick and easy to read. toggle option, of course.

hmm would broadcasting software even capture the tooltips if you don't capture your mouse for that? rooThink

rooThink

OBS would only capture them in monitor capture, not window capture

21:10

But that’s fine

21:11

Honestly, I just find them annoying and distracting.

21:11

And everything that makes them less annoying, like a longer delay, also makes them more of a pain to use for people that want them (edited)

Probably just make it a toggle to enable them, off by default

21:12

don't need them once you understand the tracker completely

yeah

The idea is for a familiarity tool. It could either be a menu option or hold Shift and mouse-over or something.

Honestly, given the relative lack of volume of "what is this icon" questions here (when compared to the size of the member list), I'm kinda wondering if this is something users actually finding themselves wanting in any significant volume.

21:54

The effort is minimal, but it's more settings, more stuff.

Hamsda's "bridge repair" icon has sparked a few questions over in OoTR discord. Probably be better to have some kind of bridge icon., personally

Yeah. Like, this is not always the case, but my initial assumption when people don't know what an icon means is that the icon is unintuiitive (edited)

21:59

so the followup question is always "IS there an icon that WOULD be intuitive?"

21:59

if we have a bunch of cases where there's not, then tool tips make more sense as a solution

find me an icon that explains carpenters rescued aka gerudo fortress guards are now friendly and the bridge is repaired and i'll gladly use it

I've wanted it for a while just never suggested it because I felt like I could deal with it. I have a feeling many feel the same way. When I was learning Super Metroid I didn't even know which icon was space jump and which was screw attack, even though they were good icons. An option to turn on a tooltip would have been really nice.

i already requested tooltips a while back, especially for big maps like OOT where a lot of locations are close to each other it would help a lot.

Tooltips for locations are significantly less likely to happen, TBH, because it's actually faster to just click and hold on a location which will show you the full location name and all info (edited)

thats pretty darn slow if you have 5+ locations in one spot

how is "mouse over and wait 2 seconds" faster than "mouse over and click and hold which pops up instantaneously"?

i'm talking about instant tooltips like https://testrunnersrl.github.io/oot-tracker/

instant tooltips are DEFINITELY not going to happen

14:38

and moreover, they're less appropriate for trackers (like emotracker) that support tracking chest completion within locations (edited)

14:38

(as part of the location UI)

testrunner's tracker does the same and it works rather nicely but I doubt I can change your mind

testrunner's tracker is pretty much a kludge upon kludges

so, one thing I want to make sure we're NOT doing here is ever dumping on other trackers. People put work into them, and if people find value in them, that's worthwhile no matter what.

14:41

that said, I have a UX philosophy for EmoTracker, and as a general rule, I don't do things that are contrary to that (edited)

14:42

Locations have multiple ways already to access the name is a way that is quick for people learning, and unobtrusive for people who already know

14:42

Items have no way to access the name currently, which is why I'm considering adding tooltips there.

well for me its all about finding a location as fast as possible. that's where i'm wasting the most time with your tracker. (minimal amounts of time but they add up)

reading is extraordinarily slow

14:44

if you're having to read to make up for that, it's already slow

Way I have to work around that is to basically pin every location in that little spot and work from there

is this to avoid memorization, or to avoid misclicks

14:45

that's a serious question

14:45

because if it's misclicks, you should talk to the pack owner (and they can request things from me if need be) about improving that in their pack layout

I find it easier to pin everything and then use the pin list to pick off items as I hit them.

that's almost impossible given the individual location density in oot

14:46

especially if you add skulltulas

14:46

that is regarding memorizing the entire layout

Some items can be packed in pretty tight in OoT, particularly with specific requirements, and if you lump them into one location of note then the entire pinned object becomes huge.

people memorize the whole in-game layout

14:47

memorizing the map on a tracker is a fraction of that

people that have played the game for multiple years maybe

Honestly memorizing is way faster, less work of tracking

there are ways to split maps up into sub maps, etc.

14:48

my point is, if you're struggling with a pack, we should look at ways to make the pack more usable

14:48

tooltips doesn't do it

14:48

it's an incremental improvement on a fundamental issue

Just play token sanity multiple times and learn that way

The main reason I pin groups of items at once is to quickly pick off items instead of remembering which map point contains what, especially if I'm only getting a couple of items at a time for whatever reason.

natalie - just to be clear, I'm not knocking your strategy and way of using it

14:49

that's a perfectly fine thing to do, and I don't expect everyone to use it the same way

14:49

what I'm more concerned about is, if the issue is location density, let's make location density work better, rather than add tooltips to an already dense location

14:50

bbiab, I have commentary on speedgaming. feel free to continue discussing the ways in which I'm wrong.

ooo a bitrace?

14:53

double ooo the other comm is WJB

14:53

i just think it's odd to implement tooltips but then limit them to items only instead of giving the user the ability to limit it to either items,locations or both (edited)

If tooltips are implemented for locations, the ideal solution on that front would be to allow for a specific place outside of the map for location names to be displayed when the location is moused over.

14:54

Won't obstruct the map that way.

true

That's still a learning issue on that front, though.

14:56

Item density should definitely be handled with submaps. There's a minor issue on that front, though: some games don't have good map images to use, like how we're using some poster art of the Hyrule world map in OoT trackers.

14:57

It's pretty, but we don't have decent maps for specific regions. (The stuff that falls out of strategy guides is usually already peppered with icons anyway.) (edited)

15:00

Metroid games use a nice minimalist type map which we can hijack for our own purposes in map trackers. Tile-based games are fairly easy to simplify for maps but just take a little effort to design and create. (edited)

yeah that was pretty much the biggest struggle I had early on

15:04

i'm still not 100% satisfied, because of said dense regions

15:04

but I also don't have a better solution

3D games just don't come with nice maps a lot of times.

15:05

We could in theory use the in-game Dungeon Map for OoT dungeons, but that can also be a little kludgy. (And there isn't an item marker density issue for those anyway.)

I usually do the same you do when I'm clearing a location with many places, I just pin them all real quick and clear them one by one

I do the exact same thing

but yeah, I don't think suggesting tooltips for locations is quite the right play

I pin whats on my route/around me (edited)

Hell, I pin a stack of locations as a to-do list, regardless of where they are. Helps me set up routing during the learning process.

as emo explained earlier, no way for anyone to learn what an item means, but locations can already be viewed

yeah

so if anything, this is on my end to make better

15:06

even if I dont know how

I learned by just watching other rando runs for routing

We really just don't have a solution for dense locations like Kakariko and the entire Death Mountain Trail/Crater situation.

15:07

Not right now.

15:07

Largely because of the lack of nice looking maps to use.

well I think your package handles it pretty well Hamsda of not showing too much stuff & stuff appearing as per what items you possess works pretty great (edited)

Kakariko and DMT/DMC are really just the big offenders on that front and especially for turning on Skulltulas.

I keep Skull tracking off for the most part but I have most locations memorized

^im learning from him lol

but yeah with it on - yeah it can get cluttered

Might be wise to recombine certain items on that front. (say, the DMC heart pieces, all of the Kakariko skulltulas)

15:11

But that's drifting to #pack-support content

15:12

ultimately the biggest issue with creating subregions comes in that we just.. don't have the best maps to use in some cases

15:12

..right?

15:14

I mean unless someone has the original poster and wants to give us the high resolution... or if someone knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can hand over the original artwork for strategy guides

15:15

subregions that convey a meaningful image can be a little difficult

My only suggestion is how emotracker it handles resizing maps needs tweaking because it can be really wonky - especially for those under 1080p resolution. As in no matter what someone does the map won't enlarge for them whatsoever (edited)

Manually resizing/rearranging panels on that front is probably coming Soon(tm).

15:21

But seriously, maps. If we could just get top-down orthogonal projections of every in-game region, we'd all kill to get our hands on them. (edited)

I really like Hamsda's OoT tracker, but since we're talking about pinned locations... A couple updates ago, it was changed (probably as a space consideration) so that Skulltula pins no longer give their full location, just their number designation. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has no idea, off the top of their head, where the heck G34 or whatever is.

that's back to #pack-support content but may be a valid use for a mouseover hint (not a tooltip, but something that appears in a dedicated location like with the locations suggestion)

15:39

the expanded list by holding down M1 on a location shows the full names

15:39

the flip-side of that coin is you'll start remembering which ones go where if you do it long enough

15:39

but it is a hitch for learning the tracker

Yeah, I'm not saying it's the wrong move or anything, just a choice that, for me, reduces functionality.

Okay, back from comms

18:20

So, with respect to things like

18:20

"where are all the skulltulas"

18:20

I think there's a philosophical discussion/debate underlying this

18:20

which is

18:20

"Is a tracker a manual, or a memory aid"

18:20

My personal opinion is that a tracker is a memory aid at most

18:21

and while it can certainly help you learn a game, or at least prompt you to have questions to ask about the game, it's better to learn about the game from resources designed to teach you about the game

18:21

like the OOTR discord or other resources, in that case

18:22

that's a really fuzzy distinction, which I appreciate, so there will always be questions - per game - about which side of the line certain things might be falling into (edited)

18:22

NOW, that said

18:22

obviously the lack of good maps are a problem for sub-areas

18:23

i also think that there are functionality limitations in the tracker that would help a lot if we got them

18:23

like for example, actual support for sub-maps, where double clicking a location opened that submap

18:23

or even location markers that when clicked popped open a custom layout that could include anything

18:23

(which I like more)

18:23

so

18:23

there are definitely things that can be done here

18:24

which is why I want to approach this from the standpoint of, "what tools do pack developers need to make their packs more usable"

18:24

anytime we come up with something that really and truly addresses that, and it's doable in a reasonable amount of effort, I'm probably down to do it (edited)

there are people who are exporting the 3D models of regions in games for one reason or another; would be neat if we could get our hands on the people doing that, but those people aren't quite the same group as the ones making the randos. though putting that on that community to ask around and work on it is probably helpful

^

that's the neatest way to handle situations like Kakariko Village in OoT or dungeon submaps, I'd expect

I guess I could try and make the maps from here work http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/N64/#L

19:59

but yeah, I don't think theres something to do from the trackers side

20:00

I'm just erring more on the side of guide than memory aid

20:00

because of how much bigger this game is compared to say z3

I think the size has less to do with it than the relative newness, TBH

20:01

like, people play crossworlds entrance shuffles on LTTP with no tracker

that has nothing to do with the tracker though

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