Abandoned Picard, the most handy toolEVER for an Inarauser

CMDR Torsol · Feb 5, 2017

My friend CMDR VirtualPaper has launched Picard! He's posted to the Tools discussion, but it hasn't been approved yet. I'll update this with a link soon.

Both of us have been using Inara for a long time, and really hated the time it takes to update the cargo after a session. Seriously, updating 100+ numbers when you can only see 6 of them at a time is the kind of thing that makes you want to rip your hair out.

So he (with a little, tiny bit of help from me) created this tool. It will login to Inara for you, download what's currently up there, and then make changes based on the CMDR log. It will show you the changes that it's going to make, and then ask if you think it looks good. Then it will actually post the new numbers onto Inara, totally eliminating the most maddening part of using Inara for your Engineering tally sheet.

We've been building it and testing it for many weeks, and it seems to work really well. I hope you all try it out!

Download link: https://jefftickle.com/picard/

Yes, it will complain that it isn't a digitally signed program, because we don't have a certificate, but it's safe. You can view the source code at:

https://github.com/jtickle/Picard

Check it out, and I hope it helps you as much as it's helped me!!!

Zeeman · Feb 5, 2017

CMDR Torsol said:
My friend CMDR VirtualPaper has launched Picard! He's posted to the Tools discussion, but it hasn't been approved yet. I'll update this with a link soon.

Both of us have been using Inara for a long time, and really hated the time it takes to update the cargo after a session. Seriously, updating 100+ numbers when you can only see 6 of them at a time is the kind of thing that makes you want to rip your hair out.

So he (with a little, tiny bit of help from me) created this tool. It will login to Inara for you, download what's currently up there, and then make changes based on the CMDR log. It will show you the changes that it's going to make, and then ask if you think it looks good. Then it will actually post the new numbers onto Inara, totally eliminating the most maddening part of using Inara for your Engineering tally sheet.

We've been building it and testing it for many weeks, and it seems to work really well. I hope you all try it out!

Download link: https://jefftickle.com/picard/

Yes, it will complain that it isn't a digitally signed program, because we don't have a certificate, but it's safe. You can view the source code at:

https://github.com/jtickle/Picard

Check it out, and I hope it helps you as much as it's helped me!!!

this looks very useful. will give it a spin - thanks!

Z...

Hitsuke · Feb 5, 2017

MALWARE DETECTED! Nah just joking

Seriously though, nice job.

CMDR Torsol · Feb 5, 2017

Hitsuke said:
MALWARE DETECTED! Nah just joking

Seriously though, nice job.

Hehe,thanks for checking it out. It's invaluable.

CMDR VirtualPaper · Feb 5, 2017

Thanks for trying it out. We're pretty confident in its general bug-free-ness but I'll be paying attention here and on GitHub in case there are any issues. Remember it's important that you are already manually synchronized with Inara before you run it the first time.

Phargone · Feb 5, 2017

Fantastic software, great help!!!

Archon Valec · Feb 5, 2017

Good job lads! +rep for you!

Question, should it load the totals right away? When the program starts, it shows all zeros (this is obviously inaccurate). The refresh button does nothing. A couple of points for consideration:

Game installed in non-default location (therefore cannot find logs)

I have multiple accounts/pilots

No settings/config menu to manually specify where to find logs/journal as far as I can tell.

Cmdr Lycian · Feb 5, 2017

You have to manually enter everything the first time, and then it syncs ED with Inara.

Archon Valec · Feb 5, 2017

jtsiokos said:
You have to manually enter everything the first time, and then it syncs ED with Inara.

There is no option to edit or type anything in, I had looked for that.
Unless I completely missed something?

EDIT: You mean entered on INARA first... nevermind

Cmdr Lycian · Feb 5, 2017

Yes, sorry was not clear on the explanation.

Archon Valec · Feb 5, 2017

jtsiokos said:
Yes, sorry was not clear on the explanation.

it's all good... makes sense now...

JohnCarter · Feb 5, 2017

Thank you!
I'll try this out for sure. I was updating INARA yesterday and hoping someone would come up with this.

Rep for you sir!

Codger · Feb 5, 2017

What happens if you have more than one Elite account? I have 2 separate logins, but just the one installation. Will this software work, or will it get the two confused?

CMDR VirtualPaper · Feb 6, 2017

exgoaltender said:
Good job lads! +rep for you!

Question, should it load the totals right away? When the program starts, it shows all zeros (this is obviously inaccurate). The refresh button does nothing.

Thanks! And thanks for the observation here. I've released a small update that is a little more clear on the first load screen.

exgoaltender said:
A couple of points for consideration:

Game installed in non-default location (therefore cannot find logs)

I have multiple accounts/pilots

No settings/config menu to manually specify where to find logs/journal as far as I can tell.

artigan99 said:
What happens if you have more than one Elite account? I have 2 separate logins, but just the one installation. Will this software work, or will it get the two confused?

Regarding multiple accounts: this is not a use case I had considered, although I see it's a pretty common thing. Picard does not currently support multiple accounts but that should not be too hard to add. Look for an update in the next day or so.

As far as I can tell, the journals I use only ever go to user home Documents\Saved Games\Frontier Developments, regardless of where the game is installed. But there are a few reasons to might want to change that path, so I'll get a config option for it.

BreaksWindu · Feb 6, 2017

CMDR VirtualPaper said:
Thanks! And thanks for the observation here. I've released a small update that is a little more clear on the first load screen.

Regarding multiple accounts: this is not a use case I had considered, although I see it's a pretty common thing. Picard does not currently support multiple accounts but that should not be too hard to add. Look for an update in the next day or so.

As far as I can tell, the journals I use only ever go to user home Documents\Saved Games\Frontier Developments, regardless of where the game is installed. But there are a few reasons to might want to change that path, so I'll get a config option for it.

Yeah, I'm on Windows 10 and don't have a Saved Games folder under Documents. It's in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Saved Games\Frontier Developments. Probably better to use %USERPROFILE% to get the correct root path to the Saved Games folder in Windows 10, as in %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Frontier Developments.

Thanks for creating this! o7

CMDR BreaksWindu

CMDR Torsol · Feb 9, 2017

I anyone sees a window pop up when you begin Picard that says: "Unrecognized Materials/Commodities" and has something listed under"Elite Material,"please let us know either via the forum here or post a GitHub issue. It's pretty straight forward to add them to the list, but we haven't gathered everything yet. For your convenience, you may Ctrl-V their names into your post/issue. For instance, I just found that:

indite
uraninite

hadn't been found yet.

Thanks, and fly safe!

CMDR VirtualPaper · Feb 10, 2017

CMDR Torsol said:
I anyone sees a window pop up when you begin Picard that says: "Unrecognized Materials/Commodities" and has something listed under"Elite Material,"please let us know either via the forum here or post a GitHub issue. It's pretty straight forward to add them to the list, but we haven't gathered everything yet. For your convenience, you may Ctrl-V their names into your post/issue. For instance, I just found that:

indite
uraninite

hadn't been found yet.

Thanks, and fly safe!

Also let us know if you'd like your commander name (or whatever you want as long as it's relatively clean) listed as the "original discoverer" of these things in the data file. Just for funsies.

The game in some cases has very different names for the materials, data, and commodities than what appear in the in-game inventory list as well as Inara unfortunately, and there is no big list of those anywhere (except where other projects are parsing similar data, and I've checked, they seem to be about as complete as we are.) What this means is that we don't know the "real" name of an inventory item until it shows up in someone's log file, and Torsol and I have certainly not run into every single possible item in the game. We have to keep track of "ignored" inventory items (such as wine, indite, uraninite, etc) as well to make sure we don't overlook a real engineering item that has a weird name and has not not yet been seen by us.

I meant to put out some point releases this week but real work has been keeping me surprisingly busy. Planning to get these issues knocked out this weekend.

GraXXoR · Feb 10, 2017

Just to let you know I've used Picard for the last three or four sessions and it has picked up every single item I've found and flawlessly updated Inara to match.

Thanks be to the creators (and VirtualPaper) for this tool.

Well done indeed.

I just hope that Inara is not on the way out (Artie has been virtually non-existant for the last few months) and there are some glaring problems with the Engineers part since the 2.2.0.3 patch.

Gurnea · Feb 11, 2017

Has been working great for me until the last CG.

Its now throwing up "wreckagecomponents" as a negative since i sold them into Fedmich.
and I've also got "uncutfocuscrystals"

And hey, why not, I'll take the discovered first tag. Every explorer wants their name on all the things!

Keep up the good work.

o7 CMDRs.

jgm · Feb 11, 2017

CMDR VirtualPaper said:
Also let us know if you'd like your commander name (or whatever you want as long as it's relatively clean) listed as the "original discoverer" of these things in the data file. Just for funsies.

The game in some cases has very different names for the materials, data, and commodities than what appear in the in-game inventory list as well as Inara unfortunately, and there is no big list of those anywhere (except where other projects are parsing similar data, and I've checked, they seem to be about as complete as we are.) What this means is that we don't know the "real" name of an inventory item until it shows up in someone's log file, and Torsol and I have certainly not run into every single possible item in the game. We have to keep track of "ignored" inventory items (such as wine, indite, uraninite, etc) as well to make sure we don't overlook a real engineering item that has a weird name and has not not yet been seen by us.

I meant to put out some point releases this week but real work has been keeping me surprisingly busy. Planning to get these issues knocked out this weekend.

EDDI has most of these items (only missing the alien data materials). You can find them at https://github.com/cmdrmcdonald/EliteDangerousDataProvider/blob/master/DataDefinitions/Material.cs