Copyright (C) 2009 Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Copyright (C) 2009 Clare Boothby
+ Copyright (C) 2009 Naath Cousins
YARRG's client code etc. is covered by the ordinary GNU GPL (v3 or later).
The YARRG website is covered by the GNU Affero GPL v3 or later, which
</%doc>
-<html lang="en"><head>
-<title>YARRG (Yet Another Revenue Research Gatherer)</title>
-</head><body>
-
-<a href="lookup">YARRG</a> -
- Yet Another Revenue Research Gatherer
-|
-<b>introduction</b>
-|
-<a href="docs">documentation</a>
-|
-<a href="devel">development</a>
-
-<h1>Introduction to YARRG</h1>
+<& docshead:head &>
+<style type="text/css">
+<& style.css &>
+ body { margin: 0; color: #000000; background: #c5c7ae; }
+ div.emph {
+ margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1em; padding-top: 0.01em;
+ margin-right: 1em; padding-right: 1em; padding-bottom: 0.05em;
+ background: #ffffff;
+ }
+</style>
+<div class="navoptbar">
+<& navbar &>
+</div>
+<div class="docs">
+
+<h1>Guide to YARRG</h1>
YARRG (Yet Another Revenue Research Gatherer) is a third-party tool
for helping find profitable trades and trade routes in Yohoho Puzzle
<p>
-The system has two main parts: this website which maintains a
-searchable database of commodity prices, and an upload client, which
-screenscrapes the commodity data from the Puzzle Pirates game client
-and uploads it to the database.
+Information about commodity prices is collected by pirates like you
+and uploaded to the YARRG server, using the special yarrg upload
+client. You can then query and search on this website for commodity
+prices and good trade routes.
+
+
+<p>
+
+<div class="emph">
+<h2>Quick start for experts</h2>
+
+<h3>Straight to the commodity prices database</h3>
+
+If you already know about trading on Puzzle Pirates, understand what
+the YARRG website is for, and just want to get down to playing with
+it right away, simply select your ocean:
+
+<p>
+<div align="center">
+% my @oceans= ocean_list();
+% my $delim= '';
+% foreach my $ocean (@oceans) {
+% my $uri= URI->new('lookup');
+% $uri->query_form('ocean', $ocean) if $ocean ne 'Midnight';
+<% $delim %><a href="<% $uri->path_query() |h %>"><% $ocean |h %></a>
+% $delim=' | ';
+% }
+</div>
+
+<h3>But before you start ...</h3>
+
+If you are going to use YARRG seriously you will almost certainly want
+to upload your own data. See <a href="upload">Uploading to YARRG</a>
+for details.
+
+<p>
+
+You will also probably at some point want to read the
+<a href="docs">Documentation for Experts</a> which covers some
+features of the website which you might not guess just from using it.
+
+</div>
+
+<h2>How to use the YARRG website</h2>
+
+YARRG is designed to help pirates make profitable trades. It is not
+designed as a trading tutorial and some familiarity with trading in
+YPP is assumed. <a
+href="http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Trading">yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Trading</a>
+contains some advice on trading basics.
+
+<h3>So how do I use it then?</h3>
+
+<p> First look at the top of the page. You need to select your Ocean,
+the sort of Interface you would like and the type of Query you wish to
+ask.
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>Selecting your Ocean</h3>
+
+<p>
+
+Which ocean do you want to trade on?
+Just click on that ocean's name.
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>Selecting your Interface</h3>
+
+<p> You can choose to enter commodity and island names by typing them
+into a text entry field or by selecting them from a drop down menu.
+The "select from menu" option allows only a restricted number of
+options to be entered into each field.
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>Type of Query</h3>
+
+<p>
+
+There are currently four types of query available which answer
+slightly different questions.
+
+<p>
+
+<h4>Trades for route</h4>
+
+<p>
+
+<b>For pirates who know where they are going.</b> Trades for route allows
+you to enter a route that you are planning to sail and find out if
+there are any profitable trades you can make along the way. This is
+for pirates who already have a definite sailing plan for some reason.
+Under "Enter Route" you need to type (or select from menus) the names
+of the islands or Archipelagoes that you plan to visit. If you wish
+to know about arbitrage opportunities at an island you can enter just
+that island name. If you enter only one Archipelago then you will get
+arbitrage opportunities in that archipelago; if you enter the same
+archipelago twice you'll get trades within that archipelago.
+
+<p>
+
+<h4>Prices for commodity</h4>
+
+<p>
+
+<b>For pirates wanting to sell or buy a specific commodity</b> prices for
+commodity returns the best buy and sell prices for the selected
+commodity at each island where trades are available. Type (or select
+from a menu) the name of one commodity at a time. This is useful for
+pirates wishing to purchase or sell a specific commodity and wanting
+the best price.
+
+<p>
+
+<h4>Offers at location</h4>
+
+<p>
+
+<b>For pirates wanting more details about commodity prices at specified
+locations.</b> Offers at location returns all the offers to buy and sell
+wood at the selected location(s). Type (or select) a commodity and the
+islands (or achipelagos) you are interested in. This is useful when
+the best buy or sell offer is for only a small quantity: you can check
+what the others offers are like.
+
+<p>
+
+<h4>Find Profitable route</h4>
+
+<p>
+
+<b>For pirates just wanting to make some poe moving commodities about.</b> Find
+Profitable Route finds you a profitable trading route: first select
+either "open-ended" (which might take you anywhere) or "circular"
+(which takes you back to where you started) then type (or select) your
+starting point (or points - you may for instance have two ships in
+different locations either of which you could use).
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>Data age</h3>
+
+<p>
+
+Data age tells you how long ago data was uploaded from each island in
+your ocean. Data changes very quickly and trusting old data to be
+accurate is unlikely to be rewarding.
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>What do the results mean</h3>
+
+<p>
+
+"Prices for commodity" and "Offers at location" give very similar results;
+there will be two tables: the first titled "Offers to BUY" your
+commodity, the second "Offers to SELL" it. The tables can be sorted
+as you wish by clicking on the arrows in the headings.
+
+<p>
+
+"Trades for route" and "Find profitable route" both return voyage plans.
+"Find profitable route" has an additional step to get at your results -
+when you enter your query you are given a list of 15 good routes for
+total profit and 15 good routes for profit per league which visit
+different islands. Select your preferred route: perhaps you will choose
+to take the best profit or perhaps you need to miss out one island
+because it is blockaded or another because you don't have the charts
+to get to or from it. If you have asked for a trade for route or
+after selecting the profitable route you prefer you will get a Voyage
+trading plan - this provides you with instructions for what to do (buy
+this, sell that, sail there).
+
+<p>
+
+Sometimes no useful trades are available. In this case the results
+section says simply "No profitable trading opportunities were found".
+
+<p>
+
+After this there is a table reporting the age of the data used. And
+then a table of "Relevant trades" which lists just about everything you
+could want to know about each trade the plan suggests you make (yes,
+this table is fairly complicated). The ticky boxes down the side of
+this table allow you to choose which trades you like the look of -
+untick any that you are not interested in (for instance you may be
+uninterested in trades with a low profit margin).
+
+<p>
+
+<h3>What are the Advanced options</h3>
+
+<p>
+
+These options are very useful, and not very advanced, but not needed
+for searching the data.
-<h2><a href="lookup">Market prices database</a></h2>
+<p>
-The <a href="lookup">lookup page</a> gives access to the uploaded data;
-there is also <a href="docs">documentation</a> to help with using that
-website.
+<h4>Capacity</h4>
-<h2>Uploading from Linux</h2>
+<p>
-The YARRG upload client uploads both to YARRG and to the
-<a href="pctb.ilk.org">PCTB testing server</a>.
+You can't trade more than fits in your hold. If you don't say
+anything YARRG assumes that you have infinite hold space (perhaps you
+will go over the route many times). You can enter a ship-type, a mass
+or a volume; additionally you can subtract quantities of commodities
+from a ship-type (for instance 'sloop - 10 grog' gives the capacity of
+a sloop that has 10 grog already on board); click the ? by this field
+to get a full description of permitted entries here.
<p>
-The current official version of YARRG for use as an upload
-client can browsed here:
- <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/ypp-sc-tools/master/">http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/ypp-sc-tools/master/</a>
-See particularly the
-<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/ypp-sc-tools/master/yarrg/README">YARRG README</a>.
+<h4>Capital</h4>
<p>
-To install the client, install the `git' version control system
-and the other dependencies listed in the `Installation requirements'
-section of the README and then run:
-<pre>
-git clone http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/ypp-sc-tools/master/.git ypp-sc-tools
-cd ypp-sc-tools
-cd yarrg
-make
-</pre>
-this will download the code into the directory <code>ypp-sc-tools</code>,
-and build the software.
+
+How much poe do you have? If you don't say anything YARRG assumes you
+have infinite poe to spend, but you probably don't. Enter the amount
+you are willing to spend on commodities for trading with.
<p>
-When new versions of the upload client are released, you can:
-<pre>
-cd .../ypp-sc-tools
-git pull
-cd yarrg
-make
-</pre>
-to fetch the new version.
+<h4>Expected losses</h4>
-<h2>Uploading from Windows</h2>
+<p>
+
+How much do you expect to lose to the dastardly brigands? Enter either
+a % (as eg - 1%) or a fraction (as eg - 1/100) of the goods you
+expect to loose to Brigands. Brigands take 10% if they defeat you,
+but only you know how often you are defeated. Note that this doesn't
+include rum-consumed so you will need to account for that
+seperately.
+
+<p>
+
+<h4>Max distance</h4>
+
+<p>
+
+How far are you willing to sail today? The default is 20 leagues, the
+maximum supported is 35. Are you willing to sail all the way across
+the ocean for a profit? Or would you prefer to go only a short way?
+
+<p>
-There is not currently an upload client for Windows which feeds data
-into YARRG. It would probably be straightforward to modify the
-Windows PCTB v5 upload client to upload to YARRG as well.
+<h3>Other fairly useful information</h3>
<p>
-See our <a href="devel">Developers' information</a> page.
+The search information is encoded in the URL - you can bookmark pages
+for searches you want to perform a lot and go straight to them without
+re-entering you data (or you can copy the URL and tell your hearties
+and crew mates if you want to). There's no need to come back to the
+introductory page each time.
+
+<p>
+
+Javascript magic: when you type things into the text entry fields
+YARRG will try to guess what you meant. If you pause for a moment then
+beneath the text entry field you'll see what YARRG thinks you meant.
+If it's got it correct you don't have to type any more of that
+commodity/island name: just go on to the next one.
+
+<p>
+
+You'll probably want to upload data to ensure you have fresh data
+available. Unfortunately YARRG only has a Linux upload client at
+present (a windows one is in the works). You should <a
+href="upload">read about how to upload</a>: particularly the linked
+README page for information about the client which contain
+easy-to-follow instructions to download, install and run it in the
+form of a few comand line instructions that you can copy and paste.
+
+<p>
+
+It's all free, both free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-speech. If you're
+interested, read the <a href="devel">Development pages</a> for more
+info about how to contribute or how to run your own website using
+YARRG data (perhaps you don't like our colour choices)
+
+
<h2>Contacting the YARRG developers</h2>
Email Ian Jackson ijackson (at) chiark.greenend.org.uk. Or talk to
any Fleet Officer or above of the crew Special Circumstances on the
Midnight Ocean.
+<p>
+</div>
<& footer &>
~yarrgweb / ypp-sc-tools.db-live.git / blobdiff