Discussion VoiceAttack profile for Materials and Synthesis Management

[Andrew Linton]

QL;BHWAR [big grin]

Until the Companion API provides data on your stock of materials, here's a VoiceAttack profile which will help you keep track of what you have in your hold.

This video gives a flavour of what the profile can do:

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;vOz1sabrZLw]https://youtu.be/vOz1sabrZLw[/video]

MATERIALS
For each material, you can:

• Ask for a description of the material.
• Ask how the material can be used in synthesis.
• Ask for your current stock level.
• Update or correct your stock level. It is important when you first run the profile to set your quantities for each material. You might also need to correct a value that is different from that showing in the Inventory Panel.
• Report when you collect the material (this is essential to maintaining your stock level).

The stock level of each material is held in the profile. That means each time you load the profile you need to retrieve the saved values and set the stock level in active variables. If you import this profile into another one, then that profile will need to include a call to ((RetrieveInventory)) in its initialisation.

Here's a profile screenshot to show what's available for materials management:

Spoiler

SYNTHESIS
For each type of synthesis showing in the Inventory Panel, and for each grade of synthesis (basic, standard, premium), you can ask which mataerials are required and in what quantities.

This means you can ask questions like:

• What's needed for Premium FSD Injection?
• What do I need for Standard SRV Repair?

When you issue the following commands:

• I refuelled the SRV
• I repaired the SRV
• I re-armed the SRV

the profile assumes you performed basic synthesis and adjusts your stock levels by the appropriate amounts. Future versions of this profile will include a comprehensive set of synthesis actions covering all three grades.

Here's a profile screenshot showing what you can do with synthesis:

Spoiler

SETTING STOCK LEVELS

I wanted the user to be able to speak stock levels as numbers. I tried using VoiceAttack's dictation mode, and also the detection of numbers as full commands. Neither of these options performed well.

The solution I have is a little awkward, but is more reliable. By declaring spoken numbers to be suffixes and providing the prefix 'Stock', you can reliably capture numbers by saying something like: 'Stock 26'. You follow this with something like: 'Set stock of Vanadium', and the profile will set your stock of Vanadium to 26.

LIMITATIONS OF V1.0

Only the SRV-related synthesis is managed in terms of reducing your stock levels appropriately.
The upper limit of stock for each material is 100 units. I had a lot of confusion between '26' and '206' in the early days of developing the profile.
If you have a command somewhere in your profiles that performs a 'Clear Saved Profile Values' and you execute it, then your stock levels of Materials will be wiped.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to jgm for suggesting I try this as a straight VoiceAttack profile rather than as a plug-in.

Urbane slang: QL;BHWAR - Quite Long, But Hopefully Worth A Read.

Version 1.3 of the profile is attached.

 

[Zen17h]

Looks useful, will definitely be giving this a shot!

 

[Andrew Linton]

Looks useful, will definitely be giving this a shot!

...and I'd welcome your feedback after you have taken a look.

 

[Zen17h]

It could be a version thing(I'm on 1.5.7.20 prerelease), but after importing it, a couple of things are not working immediately

-When importing the profile as-is it looks like a command is supposed to run on profile startup, but that command is not part of the export.
Looks like this should be set to ((RetrieveInventory))
-Stock category commands do not have a set prefix/suffix group, I don't really know if it is required, but made them all part of a new "Stock" group
-Stock numeric commands refer to {CMD}, causing a failure to convert the "Stock One" command to a number
Changing this to {SUFFIX} works well

Other than that, I really like the way you put all possible actions with an item/material in one spot, with different action triggers.

After the above changes, it works like a charm , I'll be using this for some time[up]

 

[Andrew Linton]

It could be a version thing(I'm on 1.5.7.20 prerelease), but after importing it, a couple of things are not working immediately

-When importing the profile as-is it looks like a command is supposed to run on profile startup, but that command is not part of the export.
Looks like this should be set to ((RetrieveInventory))
-Stock category commands do not have a set prefix/suffix group, I don't really know if it is required, but made them all part of a new "Stock" group
-Stock numeric commands refer to {CMD}, causing a failure to convert the "Stock One" command to a number
Changing this to {SUFFIX} works well

Other than that, I really like the way you put all possible actions with an item/material in one spot, with different action triggers.

After the above changes, it works like a charm , I'll be using this for some time[up]

Thanks for the feedback, it's very useful, and I hope you continue to find the profile valuable.

The problems you found are most likely related to source control problems with me. Sometimes I experiment with amendments in my target profile and fail to update the 'clean' copy of the profile. All of the changes you have made are in my main profile. I will clean up the version that I have published here.

Also, if any ideas for improvements occur to you, I'd be glad to hear them. Do you have any Polonium or Antimony? I haven't been able to provide descriptions of them because I haven't found any! I asked FD if I could have all of the material descriptions but haven't heard from them (but it was in the run-up to 2.1, so I guess they were busy).

 

[Andrew Linton]

I've placed version 1.3 of the profile as an attachment to the original post. This includes a description of Polonium, which I couldn't provide because I didn't have any. The only material description I'm short of, now, is Antimony; can anyone provide the description that's available in the inventory panel?

 

[Stockard]

how to insert the profile in voiceattack ? under script ??

because i always need .vap at the end not .txt

or only change the ending ?

 

[Andrew Linton]

how to insert the profile in voiceattack ? under script ??

because i always need .vap at the end not .txt

or only change the ending ?

Yes, you only need to rename the file with a .vap filetype in order to be able to import its commands. I only gave it the .txt extension because the forum doesn't allow .vap to be attached.