Galaxy Harvester News

You may have noticed that advertisements were removed from the site recently. For various reasons that may be obvious, it wasn't a very good fit for the site. Think ads for agriculture equipment, and combine that with people who appreciate Galaxy Harvester, but really aren't interested in things that really aren't remotely related, and we had something that probably didn't work well for anyone.

For those who find the application useful, we've set up a new way for you to contribute to keeping us running. There is a button on the home page which you have probably already seen you can click to make a donation to the site. Your donation will help to pay for art, development, and hosting of Galaxy Harvester, keeping the lights on and new features coming your way. We appreciate any donation you can give, and if you can't, everyone appreciates your continuted contributions to updating resource information on Galaxy Harvester.

Thanks,

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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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I've got two main enhancements coming at you this time. First of all, you may notice an option up in the login box to "Stay Logged In". Check that box before you log in if you'd like to never have to log in again for the computer you are on (assuming you have cookies enabled). Tell your fingers they are welcome ;-)

The other big item is some fine tuning and a new option on the resource list page. When you are using the "By Type" view, the resources will now be loaded in chunks so you can start interacting with the page before it's loaded everything. You can also control what it loads first by collapsing sections you don't want it to load right away. It will remember what sections you left expanded, and populate those first the next time you go to the page. The new option available is a new view that lets you sort by a resource stat, or the average of all present stats.

Also, a small side note. A small bug was also fixed which was preventing you from being able to make a resource available by entering it again after it was accidentally marked unavailable.

If you find anything cool about the updates put in place today, it might be automatic correcting of mistyped resource names. Sometimes when a resource has already been entered, and someone else goes to enter the same resource, they might type it in with 1 character off or so, and it gets listed as a new resource. When entering resources on the Add Resources page, it will now check after you select the type to see if the resource you are entering has a similar name to any other current resources of the same type and prompt you if it finds one. If you click ok when it finds one, it will automatically correct the name and enter the stats if available.

A few other tweaks on this update are:

• Put in a fix when adding new resources to prevent stats that are not correct for the type selected to get entered
• Removed ∅ symbol from non-applicable resource stats on the resource list.
• Fixed ability to edit resource stats from the individual resource page.
• Added schematic - Mind Disease Delivery Unit - C

Rontos, Eopies, and Banthas are likely going extinct as everyone scours Tatooine harvesting this stuff. If you can take a break from harvesting Herbivore meat for a little bit, you might want to check out a couple new features available here today.

• Added option to collapse top level categories of resources on the Resource List. (Your view must be set to "By Type" to see the arrows on the right side that let you collapse the section.)
• Added text next to the inner groups on the resource list indicating what resource types within that group are currently unavailable or not reported. This should be handy to easily see what organics need to be surveyed or to quickly see what inorganics are not in spawn right now.
• Added option when viewing a schematic to exclude a group of qualities when determining the best resources. Just un-check the box next to group title, and the resource lists will refresh.
• Improved the way the algorithm determines best resources for a profession or crafting group. Resources that did not have all the stats utilized by the group were getting too much weight and being driven to the top.

I've manually added a few schematics today to help fill in some of the gaps for doctors and combat medics. They are:

• Advanced Biological Effect Controller
• Advanced Chemical Release Duration Mechanism
• Advanced Solid Delivery Shell
• Enhance Health Medpack - D
• Advanced Dispersal Mechanism
• Advanced Infection Amplifier
• Advanced Resilience Compound
• Mind Poison Delivery Unit - C

This brings the total number of schematics available to 686. There may be other schematics you would be interested in seeing available. If you are someone who is working on SWG Emu lua scripts for draft schematics and have some those completed scripts available, please let me know and I can use them to import the schematics to my site. Otherwise, please post here with the names of schematics you would like to see here on the site. If enough people want certain ones, I will do my best to get them added.

Yesterday Falceon reported 49 new resources throughout the day and today Goode is already up to 50 new resources in the last 4 hours! You guys are awesome!

It took some time to get this release put together, but today's update brings the beginning of what I hope you find to be a very useful feature. A tool to let you view crafting schematics and quickly find the best resources to craft with them. You will find the new schematics page here. The schematics available now are based on what is currently available from the SWG Emu project. As work progresses, more schematics will become available. In the meantime, you can usually at least find a schematic similar to the one you are crafting to get a top resources listing based on similar weights and requirements. Having the schematic information up also means that the profession drop down on the Top Resources widget on the home page is now enabled. Use it to find the best stuff out there based on the unique requirements and weightings of a specific profession.

Another major feature releasing today that some of the more hard core harvesters and/or site developers might be interested in is export files. When you are logged into the site, you should see two new links in the Other Links box on the home page. These will link to 2 files for the galaxy you have selected up at the top of the page. These files are updated at 5pm UTC time each day with the current available resources data. One is XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format which developers working on other community tools might find useful for incorporating resource data. The other is CSV (Comma Separated Values) format for those of you that like to dump the resource data into a spreadsheet and do some of your own manipulation.

There's always a few other odds and ends worthy of note as well, and here they are:

• Added Top Harvesters section on the home page showing top harvesters for current spawns.
• Made resource type names a link to other recent resource spawns of that same type.
• Added more user stats breakdowns to the Stats page as well as charts of the top 5 members in various categories.
• Some new graphics for top links and other UI polishing

The schematics feature is based on a large set of data which is not complete. In addition to the need to get missing schematics filled out, there's another job that anyone can help with if they are interested. You may notice when you are logged in that you should have the option to upload an image for a schematic. Anyone who wants to help fill out some of these images is welcome to help out. We'll want to stick to the same method to create a consistent look though. Have a look at an example that I already have an image on like Bone Armor Left Bracer or Ubese Armor Segment. You should be able to get the same look by following these steps:

• Open crafting tool and select the item schematic
• Make sure the item preview part of the window is pretty square and you have the window at full height, then take a screenshot.
• Crop the screenshot so you have just the item preview and background without any of the dark edge or light border.
• Make sure your resulting cropped image is square and at least 320x320. It will be automitically resized down to that when you upload it if it is bigger.

Also keep in mind that there is an option to just link up a schematic to use another schematics' image. This is handy because many schematics use the same image resource in the game. Using this feature whenever possible will make the tool run more efficiently, and be a little quicker for you than browsing to and uploading the same image again. If enough people chip in and do a few images, I bet we can fill out all of them before long. The same group effort that keeps track of hundreds of in-game resources at a time should do well at conquering this task as well.

These two major features may prompt questions and suggestions, and if so, I encourge you to send me any questions or feedback. Feel free to post a comment here on the blog and start a discussion, or send me an email with the contact link at the bottom of the page.

Those of you who are familiar with the awesomeness of RSS will be extra pleased with todays update. Head on over to the feeds page, and you will find a new way to keep up to date on the resource data flowing into Galaxy Harvester. If you're not already familiar with subscribing to RSS feeds, this may be your opportunity to discover something new that you may use in many ways. So do a little research and try it out. You might like it.

Besides the feeds, there's a few smaller goodies coming your way as well. Apex got a couple new themes whipped up for you, so now you can style your experience with Destroyer or Rebel Flight Suits. Here's a list of some other minor tweaks of note in this update.

• Fixed cookie so your theme sticks around when you're not logged in.
• Made resource edit form populate with existing stats on edit action.
• UI changes to Planet availability bar.
• Added prompt to remove old resource if it exists when adding a new creature or flora resource.
• Added link in resource list to verify a resource. Uses selected planet in search criteria.