Galaxy Harvester News

How do you keep track of what ingredients you use to make the different variations of products that you craft? I have pretty much relied on my memory in the past, which is not so great. That is why I was happy to see the feature being released today voted to the top of the suggestions list by Galaxy Harvester members. Starting today, you can build recipes that define a set of resources that are used to fill a schematic. If you're already using the favorites/inventory feature, you'll be ahead of the game for getting started with recipes, becuase your favorite resources are what you can select to build recipes from.

If you haven't already started defining your inventory on Galaxy Harvester, you might want to start by clicking the star on some resources in the resource list you have, or heading over to the My Resources page to set up some inventory. If you've already got some favorites defined you might want to start at the Recipe Home page to start a new recipe or try out the suggestions tool. I hope people will find this to be a useful crafters aide.

With this release, there's also a little something new to acquaint you with the new recipes feature. In addition to providing some information on the help page, there is also a tutorial video available to watch that will show you around. You can watch the tutorial on the help page here.

Other Minor Updates Included in this Release:

• Schematics will list component ingredients as a link to that component schematic.
• Schematic resource ingredients will link to resource type.
• Added shortcuts to Alerts and Inventory in login area at top right of pages.
• Prevent same user from being able to verify resource on same planet multiple times.
• Updated the default theme to resemble the in-game Alpha Blue theme.
• Tweaked Top Resources list calculation to more directly take into account a weighting of how much different stats are used in resources overall.
• Include unavailable resources in auto-complete add by name feature on Favorites page.
• Make user names in Waypoint list linky.
• Fixed favorite indicator not working on schematic pages resource lists.

Over the past couple weeks, I have also been adding more schematic images. The Artisan and Armorsmith professions are complete, and the furniture for architect. If anyone is so inclined, all members are able to add images for schematics that do not have them by going to the schematic page. The new recipe tool uses the schematic images for the lists, so some of these will be blank until more schematic images are uploaded. If you do decide to help out, please follow these guidelines to make the images more consistent:

• Include only the object and background in the cropped image, not any surrounding borders or text.
• When you crop the image, make it square.
• Make sure the cropped image is at least 300x300 pixels.
• If the schematic uses an image that is the same as another schematic, just link it to the other schematic instead of uploading a new image.

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There are some upgrades to the Favorites page today. You can now enter amounts for your resources there. This can allow you to keep track of how much you have of a resource, or how much you want to collect, etc. You will also notice an indicator for the resource availability stats in each row now.

There's also a new theme! It's called Hutt, and it's meant to look like the Hutt interface style in game. Tons 'o green. Go to your profile page and try it out if you like that color scheme.

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While the feature to be able to click on any resource type and view info for that type has been handy, it didn't quite give you the ability to get to all of the higher level resource groups. Also, sometimes we might want to just browse the whole tree of groups anyway instead of trying to find a link a type in the group we need. Well, the tree is now here. You will also find a link to it on the home page. Clicking a resource group in the tree takes you to it's page where you can see the best and most recent spawns for any type under that group, as well as schematics, min/max stats, creatures, and links to parent/child groups.

In other news, the creature data has been refreshed from SWGEmu code. You will notice that some creatures show a 0 for harvest amount (Everything on Endor at least). There are problems with harvesting those creatures now, but after that gets fixed in the server code, I'll do another refresh and they will be back on track.

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New feature time! The My Resources page is ready go. You can click the star icon on a resource anywhere on the site to add it to your My Resources page. You can also add them directly by name from the page itself. You can organize your favorites into groups that you define, like grind resources, or groups for each crafting profession, or need to harvest/currently harvesting, or whatever makes sense for you. Check the bottom of the help page for more details on how to use the Favorites controls.

With the Liberator wipe on the horizon, and an intense month of testing focus, I don't imagine people will have a ton of use for this new feature right away. Getting it out there now though, maybe a few people can play around with it and submit any suggestions for it. Then, by the time the new play server comes up and we're starting to build up our resource stocks, this tool can be even more polished.

May the 4th be with you and go Team Xavia,

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At long last a new feature has been released. A new tool called My Alerts lets you pick a resource type or group and enter minimum stat values you are looking for. If a resource is added that has at least the minimum on all stats you specified, you will be notified, either by a list on the home page, an email, or both, depending on your selection. You will only be notified if all the minimums on a row you specify are met, so if you want to be notified if one stat OR a another stat of the same resource meets a minimum, you should make two separate alert rows for that. Go to the My Alerts page and set up your alerts now.

A couple smaller updates are also published today:

• The xml and csv file links should no longer forget what galaxy you have selected and give you the link for the right galaxy.
• Buttons to add a waypoint have been added to the home page and the individual resource pages.



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A bunch of small tweaks have been released today, mostly related to waypoint maps. You can now verify and mark unavailable waypoints. If you use a waypoint someone posted, finding the concentration accurate when you get there, click the green checkmark in the waypoint list for it to acknowlege that it is good for others who might come across it. When a resource is marked unavailable, the waypoints for it have always automatically gone off the map, but since resources can sometimes move before they go away, we needed a way for anyone to indicate that they are not available at a location anymore. If you travel to a waypoint and find that the concentration listed is no longer there, click the X in the waypoint row for it to mark it as unavailable. The waypoint will go red on the map, eventually go away if enough people with experience mark it.

Other updates coming on today include:

• Added resource type column to resource history on stats page.
• Changed resource names to be links to resource page in waypoint lists.
• Add badge for users on their page for those who have donated to the site. (Thank you for covering costs for the first time last month!)
• Changed the information for a waypoint listed on the resource page to display how long ago it was added instead of spawn name.
• Added automatic refreshing of waypoints when making entries or changes.

For those who haven't stopped by the suggestions in a bit, I got it updated so you can comment on suggestions to help facilitate conversation around the items. Stop by and check it out!

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First of all let me say, forums are great. For discussions that is, but not really so much for sharing a constantly changing set of x,y coordinates on planets. So, if people want to share waypoints, why not do it in a convenient place? Well, starting now you can. Check out the new Waypoint Maps feature and start sharing all those great locations (except your own top secret ones of course ;-) - but we'll have a way for you to store those too privately or with your friends at some point).

Check out the help section on waypoints for more details on how this new feature works. On a side note, if you want to get the most out of this tool, you'll want to view it using a browser that supports the graphics features needed to draw the maps. If you use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari you're probably set, but the newest Internet Explorer doesn't quite support it yet as of version 8. It sounds like Internet Explorer 9 will support it, but until then...

Any feedback on this new feature is welcome, and can be shared here, or via email using the contact link at the bottom of the page. I'm sure some great ideas on how to tweak it will come up after some of you try it out.

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Well, the people have spoken and today we bring you the top voted suggestion so far. Suggested by jmatt, the new survey verify tool brings you a new easy way to check for resource changes. Just select a planet and survey tool to bring up a list of current available resources as listed on Galaxy Harvester for easy comparison to what you see in game. You can then use the verify or remove checkboxes and the buttons at the top of the list to clear out the old, or verify what is still sticking around. There is also a quick resource add box below the planet and tool selection so you can add in those new ones without leaving the screen.

Thanks again for the suggestion jmatt! If you haven't already voted or submitted your suggestions, be sure to head over and put in your 2 credits here. It looks like favorites is the current leader of the pack now, so that will most likely be the next thing to get done.

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I sometimes find myself searching old websites trying to find which creatures drop a certain type of hide, meat, or bone. Now we can get the information right here on Galaxy Harvester. Click on a resource type link to go to it's page and you will now find a list of creatures that that resource type can be harvested from. Here is an example Dathomir Carnivore Meat.

A few other updates are listed here:

• Resource Group ID is now included in the xml and csv export files.
• You can now do a quick search by resource type from the home page.
• Other basic resource type information such as Min/Max stats have been added to the Resource Type pages

Today, not only have the number of schematics available to view here more than doubled to 1,366 - the tools for finding them has been refined a bit. If you head over to the schematics page, you can try out the new Schematic Finder which now lets you choose either a resource group or specific resource type and find schematics that call for it. Just to be helpful, the tool will also bring up related schematics in a list next to the primary ones. The related schematics will be either schematics that call for a specific type under the group you picked, or ones that call for the generic group or any type under it for the type you picked. If that is as clear as mud, give it a try and it should be a bit more clear.

There's also a few smaller changes of note live now:

• A new resource type page will be shown when you click the name of a resource type or group somewhere in the site. Instead of just displaying recent spawns of the type, it will also provide the best spawns of it, and a list of schematics that use it. Here is an example: Intrusive Ore.
• Internet Explorer users should be able to see the View controls at the top of the Resource List page now.
• Internet Explorer users should be able to stay logged in and have other cookies persist after closing your browser instead of your preferences being lost every visit.

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