Skill Discussions

Could be one of two things - either the export from EVEMon is in a format that is wrong, or the import to EVE is broken. Very hard to tell which one, if I'm honest... I'll do some exploring.

You're welcome. I'm working on some other Citadel things at the moment but I'm not sure that the XML API provides the data that I need. Feel free to show your appreciation in my wallet!

FYI,

The code in the main menu-->help-->forums still goes to the old forum https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=483928.

While the old forum has a link to this one it would nice to have the app link point to here upfront.

Just a thought.

It doesn't appear to have the porpoise in ship browser when setting up skill plans yet - any plans to add this soon?

I wonder if this from the trace.log means anything...

0d 0h 01m 12s > EMDItemPricer.GetPricesAsync - begin
0d 0h 01m 32s > EMDItemPricer.OnPricesDownloaded - no result

MD

Sadly the "total skillpoints" is WAY off the mark with the current version, with some of my characters having nearly 2 million more on evemon than in eve, while others have 200,000 less in evemon than in eve itself. So currently you can't depend on evemon for things such as skill extractor alt updates.

Just a couple of things. Nothing big just some little things to look at when you are
working on other stuff.

Help >> Forums points to the old posting, not this one

In Skill Planner under Conflicts the "Downtime" is showing up at wrong time...
example: I have a skill "Earliest End" of 7:19AM ( I am in US Eastern Standard Time Zone)
So downtime for me would start at 6AM not 7AM.

You also could get rid of the IGB Mini-server, or change it so it can be used out of game.

Keep up the good work...

Hey

No news from some time, I just hope EvEMon is not dead. Keep up the good work. Thanks so much for your effort and time !!!

why is the update time so long now? can I change it?
I remember it was like 10-15 minutes or less, now it is around 45 minutes...

Good afternoon everyone!

I'm afraid it's been a little while since I posted and there's good reason for that. Christmas was a relatively quiet period for me; it's been the first time that I've actually been able to switch off from work and life and have a break for a very, very long time and so obviously I made the most of it. The flip side is, I got nothing done, either in EVE or with EVEMon! Then the new year came and whilst it's been a bit of a shock to the system to get back into the spirit of working, an even bigger shock was actually losing my job outright. I'm unemployed, and so my biggest focus at the moment is on trying to find a new job. That said, I'm here on the train on the way to central London to deal with something, and working on EVEMon whilst I do so.

So, you might ask, what is it I'm actually doing? The answer is quite long winded and complicated, but the short answer is "lots."

Over the past couple of years, CCP has done a tremendous amount of work around the APIs that they provide. Many of you will be aware of the old XML API, which EVEMon still uses today. The XML API was OK at its time, but the authentication model wasn't ideal and the model wasn't particularly extensible. To deal with the problem, CCP created the CREST API - a vast improvement and an insight into the capabilities of APIs to allow developers to interact with the universe in more than a "read only" capacity. Anyone that flies incursions with The Valhalla Project and uses their waitlist will have a good understanding of what CREST is capable of. The fleet and the waitlist live in a parasitic relationship, in that the waitlist reads data from the fleet in game, and actions performed in the waitlist have an effect in game - when you get a fleet invite for a TVP incursion fleet, that invite was probably generated from their waitlist.

Both the XML API and CREST are being replaced, with the new all-singing-all-dancing ESI API. Replaced is the operative word here - @CCPBartender has been in touch with me privately since I took over as Lead Dev on the EVEMon project and has suggested that CCP want to start turning the XML API off from about June of this year. I have four months to completely refactor EVE to use the new ESI API. Unfortunately, that's not an ESI... Uh, easy... Thing to do. See, the API is at the core of what EVEMon does. All of your character data, what your toons are currently training, where your assets are, the contents of your wallet, it all comes from the API. That means that every interaction that EVEMon has with the EVE universe needs to be re-written, and that takes time. But for this, there's an added layer of complexity. CCP are removing the old ID/Verification Code model of authentication. This is a huge change that requires careful consideration.

To tackle this, I basically have two options. I can either write and host a web server which the EVEMon client would call, and the web server would be a gateway between you and the EVE Universe, or I can integrate a web server within EVEMon that will facilitate the bi-directional HTTP requests required for the Single Sign-On process to work. EVEMon has always been a stand-alone application; the relationship has always been between the client and the EVE universe, and I intend to keep it that way. As a result, I need to completely re-write the authentication model for EVEMon, then go and find every single API call that the application performs and re-factor it to use the ESI API instead of the XML API. This really isn't a small piece of work.

Of course, that's not all we need to do. There are a number of deployment difficulties with the current EVEMon architecture and that's something that I want to address very soon. Doing so will hopefully bring a level of automated testing to us as well, something which I'm keen to directly integrate with GitHub, so that any contribution from you guys can automatically trigger some tests and we can get an instant indication of breaking changes to the code. There's also the question of a huge number of bug fixes that need looking into. Many of the crashes that EVEMon experiences can be attributed to Citadels. The problem here is that whilst the XML API knows that someone or something is in "a Citadel", it doesn't know which Citadel or where that Citadel is. Re-factoring EVEMon to use the ESI API will give EVEMon a better awareness of Citadels and, I'm sure, fix a huge number of the problems we're seeing that cause crashes. I also know that Cpt Patrick Archer, my corp CEO and a fairly well known face amongst EVE players, is particularly keen that I look into an issue with his inability to connect to EVE to query the API when EVEMon runs - unfortunately, he's the only person I know of experiencing this problem. If anyone else is seeing this behaviour as well, please let me know.

We have a hell of a lot to do, and thankfully, I'm not alone in my endeavour. I'm pleased to welcome Scetrov back to the informal team which I seem to be creating. Scetrov was one of the EVEMon lead developers back through the years, and I'm immensely grateful to him to come back and share his skills and experience with me to get EVEMon back on track. Scetrov's day job happens to regularly take him through the SSO and API based authentication model that we're having to adopt, and so his arrival and the expertise he brings is very timely and welcomed. Scetrov and I will be working very hard over the coming weeks to stabilise EVEMon and, hopefully, get cracking with some new features.

I said at the start of this post that I'm out of a job, and as a result, I'm really having to watch the bank balance at the moment. If anyone can contribute ISK or PLEX to keep me in game (having an account I can use to query the API really, really helps in the development process!) then I'd be really very appreciate.

I'll update you again soon, I promise!

Ash