...now TCE is broken because EliteOCR is broken. It looks like Frontier intentionally obfuscated the graphics to make OCR extremely unreliable...
...3rd party add-ons are not simple wants of a spoiled player base. They are the only thing that make a large portion of your open world viable. Either fix your galaxy interface so that players can buy trade data and get reliable reports about which station has the commodity that they need, or continue to support 3rd party trade add-ons until you do fix your game. Because right now, it is broken. I think I speak for a lot of the community when I say that we have been willing to put up with your broken game because we believed in you guys, and were able to, as a community, come up with work arounds...
So much of what these 'addons' provide should be in game, and should have been there from day-1.
Overall, and on many fronts, I sometimes feel that FDev resent people enjoying their game 'too much', and that if it isn't a 'pita' then it's not hard enough. C'mon peeps, most of your players have only a few hours per week to devote to gameplay, and I am struggling to understand why (e.g.) the CR curve is so flat.
The most fun I had in ED was when there was a 'bug' in some long range missions some while back - where I could actually make good money for my limited hours play - needless to say FDev seemed to be able to sort out that bug very quickly...
I hate to moan, as Horizons really is excellent, but there is much that is in need of attention that seems to be being willfully ignored, or even worse, 'by design'.
Trading without these tools would be a nightmare, prices are fluctuating all the time and one person one their own could never keep up with the markets, imo there should be a trading computer in game and a commodity search, technology now can do this now so why not in the 33rd century?
I appreciate your sarcasm but ... that's just like going to some game megazine and reading the solution cause you can't figure out how to play the game and explore, make money, all they should need to add is an ingame notepad where players write down stuff, like discoveries and prices, no need to use websites to find profitable stuff to do, however that's a choice, I honestly don't like having to use a website to find stuff to advantage me, the only one type of website I like are wiki explaining game mechanics and ships' features, maybe how to craft a particular object, other than that, I prefer discovering stuff myself
So essentially, what you're saying is that as long as you approve of the information everyone else can access, it's not cheating. You're fine "cheating" by reading the wiki and finding shortcuts on how to make things (but I thought you said it was fun finding out) but somehow you're now arbiter of what everyone can read and how they access information?
Galnet is a news network, there could be ships getting the news to every system, CQC is just another game mode, you don't get to fight in your ASP, it's just like a simulator like Arena commander in Star Citizen, chat and other stuff is part of the game.
There could be ships flying to every system, all 400 billion of them but you're not fooling anyone here with that nonsense I'm afraid. How is it you ignored people telling you Galnet reaches to Sag A? How do you explain the instantaneous transmission of news articles but then turn around and say that for some reason, when it comes to text in the form of prices, that cannot be transmitted from one station to another? I think you'll find you can communicate with your friends across the galaxy too.
As the technology exists to be able to communicate, there's absolutely no reason trade prices wouldn't be advertised and in fact, a station that didn't advertise would do worse in trading than one that did. It would be in their best interest to put their station on a huge, universal network. This could be called the "Outernet" and they could have things called "Websites". Much like today I can go to any country on the planet and check prices using the internet but for you, you'd want everyone to be sailing frigates and communicating via carrier pigeon whilst using a scroll and quiver to scribble down prices.
Even without an instantaneous communication system to think that there wouldn't be a service to cater for this huge hole in the trading market is a little odd. Given that traveling in space is a) so easy and b) so quick, you would think that some bright spark would have thought that they could sell this data to other stations and thus have a fleet of couriers traveling around, dropping into systems to transmit the data before jumping to the next system.
As a follow up to the PM from last Wednesday I did sent to Zac. He stated that the ppl like Michael Brookes and co (my words the decision makers) where on holiday and would be back next year - this week I assume. I just sent him a new PM and asked him if perhaps some new information has become available - been able to contact MB etc, decision made, meeting(s) scheduled etc... Fingers crossed. I will keep you updated.
To all that are whining saying this is cheating give me a break. Did we somehow invent spaceships but lose basic computer/internet functionality between 2016 and 3302. I can go on google and compare prices on items from across the world now, did we somehow lose this technology when we went into space? Put the API's back, people can choose to use them if they like.
Commanders. We are all passionate about ED, otherwise we would not play the game and be here in the forums. We all have a right to voice our opinion - pro or against the open letter. A plea to you all. Can we please act in a civil manner and discuss the open letter in such a way that this thread is meaningful. The tone makes the music. The OP requested the same, lets try to abide/honour his wishes.
As promised we've discussed the topic for you all, sorry for the delay in replys but today was the first available opportunity to review the thread.
People are free to continue use of the existing companion app API, though please be aware this is something we hope to expand and improve on the future. Since we don’t yet have a date for that, use of the existing one is fine, but we ask that you do so in a careful and considered manner – for example not polling it continuously. We will bring in guidelines and an approval process over time too, but for now please be aware that we will stop apps that are not well behaved.
We are passionate about the development of community created content and very much see the value in the tools that are being created which is why we are happy for this API to be continued. As we have mentioned before, we would like to create a new API which allows tool developers support to create their own tools but this will not be a short term implementation and is instead something we are considering for future development.
Thanks for your patience, we will keep you informed as and when we have more information to share.
As promised we've discussed the topic for you all, sorry for the delay in replys but today was the first available opportunity to review the thread.
People are free to continue use of the existing companion app API, though please be aware this is something we hope to expand and improve on the future. Since we don’t yet have a date for that, use of the existing one is fine, but we ask that you do so in a careful and considered manner – for example not polling it continuously. We will bring in guidelines and an approval process over time too, but for now please be aware that we will stop apps that are not well behaved.
We are passionate about the development of community created content and very much see the value in the tools that are being created which is why we are happy for this API to be continued. As we have mentioned before, we would like to create a new API which allows tool developers support to create their own tools but this will not be a short term implementation and is instead something we are considering for future development.
Thanks for your patience, we will keep you informed as and when we have more information to share.
There you go, you can continue using what you've been using, they'll get around to making it better at some future point but until then, keep on using it, but do so responsibly, no constant polling, etc.
As promised we've discussed the topic for you all, sorry for the delay in replys but today was the first available opportunity to review the thread.
People are free to continue use of the existing companion app API, though please be aware this is something we hope to expand and improve on the future. Since we don’t yet have a date for that, use of the existing one is fine, but we ask that you do so in a careful and considered manner – for example not polling it continuously. We will bring in guidelines and an approval process over time too, but for now please be aware that we will stop apps that are not well behaved.
We are passionate about the development of community created content and very much see the value in the tools that are being created which is why we are happy for this API to be continued. As we have mentioned before, we would like to create a new API which allows tool developers support to create their own tools but this will not be a short term implementation and is instead something we are considering for future development.
Thanks for your patience, we will keep you informed as and when we have more information to share.
Hi Zac,
Thanks for your reply, we really appreciate that our thread was review.
Be assured that we are not polling it too much, we always added in the client (EDCE then EDMC) some time out (Actually one minute) to prevent that.
I cannot guarantee that it is the case for other clients I'm not aware of, but I'm not sure they are much there.
EDMC is also open source so we can assure that they are no stollen informations for the player.
It is easier for us to concentrate on one client republishing the informations to EDDN, those every third party developer is able to grab the informations, and your API is not pulled too much.
As usual, if you need private intel about how we use it and what should be corrected in the API, feel free to contact us in private.
People are free to continue use of the existing companion app API, though please be aware this is something we hope to expand and improve on the future.
I know it is probably a squishy number, but is there any guideline as to what would be considered too much polling?
Without a defined, even if loosely, limit app devs will be playing a guessing game when trying to apply this kind of non-functional requirement to their applications.
Would hate for someone who, in all earnest was trying to put a limit on polling but didn't quite get it right, have their application summarily blocked/banned/whatever.
As promised we've discussed the topic for you all, sorry for the delay in replys but today was the first available opportunity to review the thread.
People are free to continue use of the existing companion app API, though please be aware this is something we hope to expand and improve on the future. Since we don’t yet have a date for that, use of the existing one is fine, but we ask that you do so in a careful and considered manner – for example not polling it continuously. We will bring in guidelines and an approval process over time too, but for now please be aware that we will stop apps that are not well behaved.
We are passionate about the development of community created content and very much see the value in the tools that are being created which is why we are happy for this API to be continued. As we have mentioned before, we would like to create a new API which allows tool developers support to create their own tools but this will not be a short term implementation and is instead something we are considering for future development.
Thanks for your patience, we will keep you informed as and when we have more information to share.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT NEWS. Thanks for the fast response by PM AND creating a post here. Totally appreciated. I was in the car so I missed the PM/post but I'm exited. I do have a few additional questions but that can wait. Because I'm gonna open a bottle of very good wine perhaps even champagne to celebrate this. Don't drink and drive is a very good principle, don't drink and write is another one;-) Again thanks for the cooperation and its absolutely positively good news!!!
I also would like to thank Anthornet who didn't give up after many other similar threads failed. I personally didn't think the outcome would be different then in the other cases but I've been proven wrong. CHEERS my friend!!! Currently drinking a glass of the good stuff and a toast to you !!!
Also in this thread commanders have expressed there personal opinion about this API. Also (personal) statements have been made about whether or not FD would allow the usage of the iphone API and the natural/logical data sharing aspect involved with it - if commanders choose to do so. I think its important that now that we have an official statement by FD about the usage of the existing iPhone api that is water down the bridge and that we look forward - not backwards!!!
Update: I forgot to mention the person who made the current situation a reality. Its commander Andargor as he created the first publicly available api based tool. "EDCE: Elite Dangerous Companion Emulator". The intention afaik was to make a proof of concept that could be used as a base by commanders. Eggplant! and Otis B. picked up the gauntlet and have updated their programs so that they kept working after every update like Horizons. Eggplant! created "EDAPI: Elite Dangerous API Tool" which integrates brilliantly with Trade Dangerous as he created a plugin for TD which is distributed with it. Otis B. created "Elite: Dangerous Market Connector (EDMC)" a tool now more or less a synonym for the api based tools. GREAT works guys, all three of you ;-)
Added comment by Andargor from a later post.
For the record, I was not the first to create an app that used the mobile API. In fact, there were a couple of people during and after the beta (summer to autumn 2014) that posted about tools they developed, but their posts were removed. Although they did not explain how the API worked at the time, which is why I did my research and published EDCE to show how it's done and help people develop great tools.
It feels GREAT that we are now allowed - I'm assuming - to openly talk about these tools, link to them and promote them!!! All tools can be found on EDCodex
I'm in agreement. Either add these quality of life enhancing tools to the game or allow 3rd parties to run their own tools easily. They are all optional and no one has to use them if they think it will break their immersion.
