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Topics - [Lestrades.com] Nao 尚
31
The Illustrious Idea / Trading system being worked on...
« on March 12th, 2017, 05:06 PM »
So, as you probably all know, Barter.vg went crazy and no longer accepts logins, so new users or logged off existing users can no longer send offers.
I took it upon myself to build a basic trading system on Lestrade's this weekend.
I feared it'd be harder said than done, and of course it is.
Here's what I have that's relatively usable right now (NOT open to any users but me while I'm testing):
- Showing a create offer page to any member, where you can see a list of your matching tradables.
- Said page has checkboxes that you can click to select games. Also has a Submit button to send the list to LT's.
- Insertion of an offer into the database.
Due to a number of architectural issues, this is, err... Pretty much all I've got so far.
What's left to do:
- Allow users to select how many items from which side, like Barter does.
- Setup an expiry system.
- Notifications.
- Accept, decline, fail offer.
I don't think it'll take too long, so it's not unlikely that I can complete a really basic system before tomorrow. (Perhaps without the notifications & expiry, since both are linked and I'd rather do them properly. i.e. I may have an expiry date set, but maybe LT's won't honor it for now.)
However there are a few points that I'd like to ask opinions about.
Here's the first.
How do you feel about storing every item's ratio at the time the offer was sent/edited? Is it of any use? I was thinking, if someone sends an offer with a rare game that was just bundled and the receiver only sees it 2 days later, they might see a much worse ratio than when originally sent, and get offended (yes, I'm wary of easily offended traders). If the site indicates the original ratio (or more likely, the current ratio + the original ratio if it's different by more than 10 or 20%?), they may just consider that "well, too bad for you, your game lost value in the meantime", and decline without getting offended. My only concern with storing ratios is that it takes more database space, and in the long run could make the whole thing a bit slower. I've even made the column the smallest possible size I could get away with (3 bytes), by storing them as 2 twelve-bit numbers (that's about 4000 items max... If you have that many traders with that item in their tradables, it's pretty much infinity to me. Even 300+ is infinity to me.)
If I can remember my other concerns, I'll post them here. Also feel free to post suggestions, but only after I've released an initial version. This whole damn thing is making me very weak right now, and I need to focus.
I took it upon myself to build a basic trading system on Lestrade's this weekend.
I feared it'd be harder said than done, and of course it is.
Here's what I have that's relatively usable right now (NOT open to any users but me while I'm testing):
- Showing a create offer page to any member, where you can see a list of your matching tradables.
- Said page has checkboxes that you can click to select games. Also has a Submit button to send the list to LT's.
- Insertion of an offer into the database.
Due to a number of architectural issues, this is, err... Pretty much all I've got so far.
What's left to do:
- Allow users to select how many items from which side, like Barter does.
- Setup an expiry system.
- Notifications.
- Accept, decline, fail offer.
I don't think it'll take too long, so it's not unlikely that I can complete a really basic system before tomorrow. (Perhaps without the notifications & expiry, since both are linked and I'd rather do them properly. i.e. I may have an expiry date set, but maybe LT's won't honor it for now.)
However there are a few points that I'd like to ask opinions about.
Here's the first.
How do you feel about storing every item's ratio at the time the offer was sent/edited? Is it of any use? I was thinking, if someone sends an offer with a rare game that was just bundled and the receiver only sees it 2 days later, they might see a much worse ratio than when originally sent, and get offended (yes, I'm wary of easily offended traders). If the site indicates the original ratio (or more likely, the current ratio + the original ratio if it's different by more than 10 or 20%?), they may just consider that "well, too bad for you, your game lost value in the meantime", and decline without getting offended. My only concern with storing ratios is that it takes more database space, and in the long run could make the whole thing a bit slower. I've even made the column the smallest possible size I could get away with (3 bytes), by storing them as 2 twelve-bit numbers (that's about 4000 items max... If you have that many traders with that item in their tradables, it's pretty much infinity to me. Even 300+ is infinity to me.)
If I can remember my other concerns, I'll post them here. Also feel free to post suggestions, but only after I've released an initial version. This whole damn thing is making me very weak right now, and I need to focus.
32
The Noble Talk / What's up at Lestrade's?
« on March 9th, 2017, 12:46 PM »
I realized I don't have a topic to announce casual changes to the site, so let's do this.
- Added yesterday: a quick improvement to the search engine. Previously, if you made a typo and searched for "monke island" it would return no results. Now it does. You can also ommit search words, or just type words you remember from the game's name. "letter grimm" will return a result.
- Added long ago, but someone asked me for the 'feature' and didn't realize it was already there: an easy way to go from Steam and Barter game pages to Lestrade's (from which you can also go directly to Steam, Barter and ITAD pages.)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/246760/ -> replace the steampowered (or store.steampowered) with lestrades
-> http://store.lestrades.com/app/246760/ (which is the equivalent to https://lestrades.com/game/2371/)
https://barter.vg/i/2371/ -> replace the barter.vg with lestrades.com
-> https://lestrades.com/i/2371/ (which is the equivalent to https://lestrades.com/game/2371/)
Note that currently, the Barter and LT game databases are interlinked, so they're essentially 99% the same. Any Steam app on Barter you can find on LT with the same game ID. This won't be the case forever, which is why there's a difference between /i/ and /game/.
- Added yesterday: a quick improvement to the search engine. Previously, if you made a typo and searched for "monke island" it would return no results. Now it does. You can also ommit search words, or just type words you remember from the game's name. "letter grimm" will return a result.
- Added long ago, but someone asked me for the 'feature' and didn't realize it was already there: an easy way to go from Steam and Barter game pages to Lestrade's (from which you can also go directly to Steam, Barter and ITAD pages.)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/246760/ -> replace the steampowered (or store.steampowered) with lestrades
-> http://store.lestrades.com/app/246760/ (which is the equivalent to https://lestrades.com/game/2371/)
https://barter.vg/i/2371/ -> replace the barter.vg with lestrades.com
-> https://lestrades.com/i/2371/ (which is the equivalent to https://lestrades.com/game/2371/)
Note that currently, the Barter and LT game databases are interlinked, so they're essentially 99% the same. Any Steam app on Barter you can find on LT with the same game ID. This won't be the case forever, which is why there's a difference between /i/ and /game/.
33
The Fatal Problem / Help test Lestrade's!
« on March 9th, 2017, 12:54 AM »
And another topic which I hope will be a bit more lively. ;)
For now, I'm trying to see if my wishlist/tradable scraper is good enough, and I'm asking for volunteers to:
- open their wishlist & tradables
- open the same on barter.vg (using the same order, IIRC by time added)
- compare both. You shouldn't have to bother about whether all entries are here (only the unlinked ones will be missing), I'm mostly looking to see if all tags are correctly shown.
The reason I'm asking is because last week I noticed I'd forgotten to import the 'extra' tag for wishlist items (i.e. items you already have in your tradables/library but that you want more than one copy of.)
So I'm guessing it's possible I forgot something else, although unlikely. (The 'extra' tag was shown differently in Barter, i.e. with a '+' sign instead of the wishlist's place of origin.)
For now, I'm trying to see if my wishlist/tradable scraper is good enough, and I'm asking for volunteers to:
- open their wishlist & tradables
- open the same on barter.vg (using the same order, IIRC by time added)
- compare both. You shouldn't have to bother about whether all entries are here (only the unlinked ones will be missing), I'm mostly looking to see if all tags are correctly shown.
The reason I'm asking is because last week I noticed I'd forgotten to import the 'extra' tag for wishlist items (i.e. items you already have in your tradables/library but that you want more than one copy of.)
So I'm guessing it's possible I forgot something else, although unlikely. (The 'extra' tag was shown differently in Barter, i.e. with a '+' sign instead of the wishlist's place of origin.)
34
The Trader's Clerk / Bedtime trading stories
« on March 6th, 2017, 10:23 AM »
I thought it would be fun to have a topic about trading stories.
That is, not trades that failed or anything like that.
Just trades that ended up being weird, funny or funnily disappointing.
I'll start.
Last month I unsubscribed from Humble Monthly after another letdown (for me). I still added the latest early unlock to my tradables in case someone wanted to trade it for a good price meaning I'd get the rest of the bundle for cheap.
Then two weeks ago I got this offer.
"Oh, cool... OP3 was something like 7 or 8€ lowest price, that's a great offer for me. Plus, I was hoping for it to be in the Bandai Namco bundle on week 2 but it wasn't, so it's unlikely to get bundled anytime soon."
So I did the trade.
And then Friday the bundle got unveiled. And it has OP3 in it.
Okay, I thought, now that's the weirdest thing ever. I mean, I was positive it wouldn't be bundled. And there it was.
The trader assured me it was a complete coincidence, as expected.
Eventually I decided I'd just trade and retrade it for some good value, because, well, that's the only worthy game in that bundle.
Guess what? It now has a 2:1 ratio on Barter... As if I was the only person who wanted the game at all.
I think it's a sign. Of what, I don't know. I just like that it's a sign.
Any other good stories you remember?
That is, not trades that failed or anything like that.
Just trades that ended up being weird, funny or funnily disappointing.
I'll start.
Last month I unsubscribed from Humble Monthly after another letdown (for me). I still added the latest early unlock to my tradables in case someone wanted to trade it for a good price meaning I'd get the rest of the bundle for cheap.
Then two weeks ago I got this offer.
"Oh, cool... OP3 was something like 7 or 8€ lowest price, that's a great offer for me. Plus, I was hoping for it to be in the Bandai Namco bundle on week 2 but it wasn't, so it's unlikely to get bundled anytime soon."
So I did the trade.
And then Friday the bundle got unveiled. And it has OP3 in it.
Okay, I thought, now that's the weirdest thing ever. I mean, I was positive it wouldn't be bundled. And there it was.
The trader assured me it was a complete coincidence, as expected.
Eventually I decided I'd just trade and retrade it for some good value, because, well, that's the only worthy game in that bundle.
Guess what? It now has a 2:1 ratio on Barter... As if I was the only person who wanted the game at all.
I think it's a sign. Of what, I don't know. I just like that it's a sign.
Any other good stories you remember?