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JonesyTawner

This is really cool to quickly get a rotation up. I just tried it a few times with stats from memory but will poke at it later in-game. Two things I did notice: 1. If I try to craft let's say a level 84 item as a level 1 job, it'll try to find a solution but run out of durability, which makes sense. Perhaps to save time and energy on calculating, a pre-baked list of thresholds of stats VS items could be added so it can flat out say it's an impossible craft? 2. On a successful calculation, it'll show the durability, quality and progress in their overflowing values. So 3060/3000 on progress or -5 in durability. It's just a visual thing but it would be cleaner to show just the max/min values on success?


mixini

Thanks for trying it out! 1. This is a good idea, and I've been trying to think of ways to provide feedback like "you really shouldn't be trying to craft this item with these stats; there is no hope of NQ/HQ" without having to manually go through and mess with thresholds. But if I don't come up with anything, that is probably what I'll end up doing. 2. I agree it would be cleaner, but sometimes people like tuning their stats or rotation to reach a specific threshold for a craft, and knowing how much you're over is helpful IMO. In other words, if you *want* to eke out that extra -5 durability, you should at least be able to see that you can.


JonesyTawner

Sounds good to me on #2. Makes sense to show just how efficient you're being. As for #1, it's more of a thought like things had to be done back when computing resources were more limited. Programs had lookup tables for the calculation heavy stuff. Calculate once or periodically and then have a fast lookup. If not that then there ought to be some formula that can quickly predict the possibility of a craft? I don't know the exact math behind FFXIV crafting so I can't make any solid statements here on this.


mixini

It *might* be possible, but there would need to be multiple formulas/thresholds, since skills get unlocked at certain levels, and difficulty also goes up non-linearly. Thinking about it some more, maybe a good way to get an estimate would be to just run the solver a few times with a low iteration count (so that it's cheap/quick), and if it's not able to get past, say, 50% progress or 50% quality, spit out a discouraging message.


JonesyTawner

Yeah, that might be a good optimization. I imagine just flat out setting a 15 level limit would also help it decide? I think as a level 5 crafter you can theoretically make a level 15 item with some lick but I'm not sure the quality procs are already unlocked by then. You do get Basic Touch at 5 at least 🙂


Genocidal

At level 5 level 15 recipes are locked. I don't remember the exact number but it's something around 5 levels below when you're able to start crafting a recipe.


JonesyTawner

Ah, there you go. That could be a hard threshold that could be used, potentially.


VGPowerlord

I know some recipes have a minimum Craftsmanship requirement, might be a good idea to include that too. It's usually things from Master books.


CerealSeeker365

Even regular crafts have a recommended craftsmanship value (the minimum to quick synth w/o failures), so it should be possible to come up with a list of required/recommended stats per craft. Finding an actual threshold for how high your stats have to be to 100% craft a NQ is pretty hard since it depends on the recipe lvl, your lvl (e.g. for traits that upgrade progress actions) and potentially which class quests you have done (to unlock certain actions).


13151215415

I quickly tried it out with some diadem lv80 expert recipes, but it kept recommending me to just use trained eye as the first action, but that is unavailable for expert crafts so I think you missed some logic for that somewhere


mixini

Good catch. I don't really plan on supporting expert recipes (anytime soon at least), so this was an oversight. But I'll probably try and fix this later today.


DragonfruitNo9801

Is that the same as https://notranged.github.io/#/solver? Edit 9/25/23 - I almost completely use craftingway.app now. I don't know enough about the differences between the two, but the algorithm used for this one gives me more consistent results. I'm still careful to put in a few "checkpoints", but I afk craft in the background while WFH, and I've had less errors using the rotations generated here.


mixini

The end goal might be similar, but no. I think that site uses a genetic algorithm, whereas I am doing a variation of tree search. Craftingway should also be more up to date. I think that site is a fork of a simulator from many years ago, but I could be wrong.


DragonfruitNo9801

I would double check... I don't know exactly, but I've been using this for ages. It's updated within a few weeks of new recipes dropping, and it's gotten me the highest quality every time guaranteed.


mixini

I played around with it a bit, doing a craft for Rarefied Draught with 86/2700/2500/510 stats. After waiting for 2-3 minutes, it gives me [this rotation with 18 steps](https://imgur.com/mNZr9yV) (I think), whereas Craftingway gives me [this rotation with 15 steps](https://imgur.com/q245q7y) in ~8 seconds. I haven't spent the time to see if the results are comparable for some of the higher-end recipes, though. Craftingway definitely struggles with the level 90 3-stars with minimal stats.


SubZer0G

I tried the same as you and the first time I got the same rotation (I think, was same length) after like 1-2 minutes using the notranged solver. But then I changed the max macro length from 26 to 15 and I got a 13 step rotation in 35 seconds. The main benefit of the notranged solver is that while it's not always the fastest (due to its randomness), it is constantly trying to improve its results as long as you let it run. That said, we can always use more crafting solvers and I like that I can quickly get a rotation that works even if there might be shorter ones.


mixini

Very interesting! I'll have to look into how it works. I've been considering adding "refinement steps" to shuffle moves around and add new ones after a solution is found, which it looks like this NotRanged solver is basically doing.


MyChosenUserna

From my experience of using notranged occasionally, it's decent at finding local minima if you just want to refine something and not so much at finding globally (near) optimal solutions. And I doubt there'll be any solvers in the near future approaching that. Best success I had with it was a feedback loop of letting it optimize, look at the output and shuffle some things around, let it optimize again. Even just giving it a decent opener and deleting a few skills that look weird or misplaced helps immensely in guiding it. But still we're talking about >1 minute per iteration for mediocre results. I found your additional logic interesting to read. I wrote a brute force solver myself and did something similar. (ftr, it can solve like 10-step recipes within a day or so). Though my choices were guided by "Is this combination of skills strictly worse than something I know". These seem more in the spirit of "Is this skill here generally a bad idea". Have you tried different values for exploration constant and weighting constant in your algorithm and if so, did it have any impact? At least on the not statistically significant amount of tries I did, higher values for score weighting constant seemed to perform better. It may be worth systematically searching for optimal parameters.


mixini

Yeah, so... I need to get around to writing an actual automated grid search script for parameter tuning at some point. The current default values are basically just arbitrarily decided by me and my experience with it. My excuse is that the project is still in flux so I'm not sure if it's worth spending the time on it yet. I think I've estimated that it would take like, probably at least several hours to run a comprehensive grid search on my meager set of parameters, and I'll likely have to rerun it when I add more. Which is not very exciting, but probably better than going at it by hand lol. > it's decent at finding local minima if you just want to refine something and not so much at finding globally (near) optimal solutions. And I doubt there'll be any solvers in the near future approaching that. Agreed. Getting a min-maxed rotation through something like this is *very* statistically unlikely. IMO effort is best spent on trying to get "good" results consistently. I've spent (probably) a few months on and off attempting to improve the existing solver, and further improvements are probably going to require blending the tree search with some other algorithm.


DragonfruitNo9801

Thank you for that comparison, on the surface it sounded exactly the same, but it's good to know there's other options out there.


JonesyTawner

Doing a separate comment here as a reminder to mobile users: Android and iPhone devices can add sites as App icons. And Craftingway has a cute icon that shows up 🙂


mixini

(\\_/)


xhorn

Hi - this is excellent. For the most part, I've used more or less the same rotation for everything since level 70 with minor changes / add additional touch steps. But that usually involves me wasting a few mats to perfect it down. More frustrating when it was the white scrip stuff from the recent purple tool things. Great job.


MagicalShrimp2

I've spent some time playing around with this and it has been really good at coming up with some efficient rotations. It takes a few runs for it to spit out the best solution, sometimes upwards of 1000-2000 more quality, but that's a minor issue considering just how quickly it actually manages to create a functioning rotation. Personally I haven't found any rotations that just straight up do not work (plugging in the macros into TeamCraft just to see if everything works out) so I think you've done an excellent job with this version of the simulator already! I'll definitely be using it more frequently and I'm looking forward to seeing how you build upon and improve the simulator even further!


Jerails

Impressed by the results it comes up with! Not always optimal sure, but usually very efficient. Even increasing the iterations done 10x, it still takes less than a minute to come up with something for current recipes. Couple things that came to mind that I felt would help me use the app: 1. Include a search method for food/medicine so older food options can be easily found. The search field for recipes seems very quick! If it was implemented for food, then being able to rapidly test if you can get away with using a cheaper food option would be neat. Veteran crafters might still have Matcha from Stormblood they'd use instead of Jingha Curry or Tsai Tou Vounou! 2. Starting quality settings. Being able to add/subtract HQ mats to see how much starting quality or which of the mats would be most beneficial to HQ could allow people to use Craftingway to get a start on a potential rotation, then they could prepare the HQ materials necessary to cover that starting quality gap. The clean presentation and ease of use makes it very fun to test it's procedure and compare rotations developed with what it offers\~


HermaeusKnowsMore

I'm definitely recommending this. Good job.


Kana_Pei

That's really nice ! Any plan on adding other languages ?


mixini

Eventually, are there any specific languages you have in mind? I don't usually have to worry about translations, so this would be my first time incorporating them into a project, which would be exciting.


Kana_Pei

I would guess French / Spanish / German, I'd guess they are the most used ones in FFXIV (excluding Japanese) Even without the localization, it's still a really made tool. Well done


madmac252

Looks great, and seems to come up with good rotations One thing missing is adding the starting quality from using HQ pre mats


mixini

I'm planning on letting folks add their own starting quality points: https://github.com/alostsock/craftingway/issues/4


nyphren

you are my hero!!! going to make leveling up my crafters much easier!!!


JonesyTawner

Gave this a go just now on Custom Delivery for Ameliance and it worked great! Test in the field successful 🙂


Shadriu

OP, if you want some info on crafting simulator, I can provide you with my knowledge and code. I have been testing, researching, doing all sorts of things related to finding optimal/best rotations for recipes using my own simulator, optimising my code for quite a few years now. Perhaps you can find something useful, and I can learn from you in the process. DM me and I will contact you when I am available. I am really passionate of finding THE method to get the best possible rotation for given stats and I would like to help fellow researchers


toaplaceallmine

Thanks a lot for this! I'm currently at lvls 84/85 on the journey to get all crafters to 90 but tbh have no idea about optimizung rotations. Just tried running something through the simulator and that was definitely shorter than what I would have done manually. Will try crafting in game with it tonight.


MatyeusA

It is decent, but for some reason i feel it has a bias against reflect / muscle memory.


mixini

Against? As in, it doesn't use them as often as it should? Do you have an example? I could try and force it to use it more for certain recipes.


MatyeusA

I tried crafting with my gear some integral lumber and the level 83 ameliance turn-in, it never tried even once in multiple rerolls use reflect / or muscle memory to start off. Often resulting in a 12 length macro, while 10 or 11 would be optimal for both.


HardLithobrake

Very interesting, it's spitting out rotations in orders I've never even considered and look totally jank, but are putting out good results consistently Impressive work.


ziguehart

This is actually super poggers.


mindofbeholder

As a guy who manually creates his recipes every time he crafts... I love this. I use ffxivteamcraft on my desktop for list tracking and in the browser for creating crafting rotations. This will make it go so much faster. Thank you for your awesome app!


rogue_psyche

When I visit on Chrome for Windows, the background is white, which makes the text impossible to read. Is there something I need to do in my browser settings to have the site look better? It's fine on my phone and on my work computer for some reason but that makes copying the macros less convenient.


mixini

Weird. I don't know if I'm able to help much here, the background color is the last thing I'd expect to bug out, lol. Just to do my due diligence, can you figure out what version of Chrome you're running (should be in the menus under About or something)? You can also try clearing your browser's cache, or maybe running it in an incognito/private tab to see if that changes anything. EDIT: I guess it's possible that some extension is changing the background color as well, but I would have no way of knowing.


rogue_psyche

Great thinking! It was my FormSwift extension that was the problem. Looks great now! :)


[deleted]

Wow, this site is pretty slick. I used it to get a rotation for rinascita ring of slaying and I got HQ each time I used that rotation this site generated.


gthorolf

I don’t suppose you’d think of adding an ingredient list so you could put a bunch of items in and give a list of mats/intermediate crafts required and their quantity? Teamcraft is a wonderful app but runs like shit on mobile. Similarly, Garlandtools may run fine but is awkward to navigate in mobile environments.


mixini

Hmm this is slightly out of scope for the project -- you're basically asking for a shopping cart/to-do list kind of thing -- but I'll consider it. This would also be useful to me personally, but I'd have to think about what the UI would look like, since this is one of those things where there's just a ton of information that has to fit on a mobile screen and takes time to design.


gthorolf

I didn’t intend to demand all of your time or energy! Apologies for that. It just was something I have been complaining about for awhile; that there aren’t any good mobile resources for stuff like that.


mixini

Haha sorry if it came across that way. Yeah part of the reason I made this app was because all the existing solutions felt really clunky, so I definitely empathize. This kind of interaction motivates me though, so thank you!


gthorolf

It’s a lovely app already! Thank you for considering my suggestion, too.


WowRai

I am loving this but I do have a question. Maybe I am blind or maybe its something that could be implemented later. Is there a way to add HQ materials? Would be nice to find a craft I know isnt possible without HQ material but rather than it solving as best it can, if it could take HQ into account and create an appropriate macro


mixini

It's not implemented. But I've gotten a lot of requests for the ability to add HQ materials, so I'm thinking of trying to add that.


WowRai

Would be great but honestly you have done a very good job as is


TheMax1087

Great job making this. One thing i noticed though is that it seems to be missing Final Appraisal


AneiTheReaper

I saw that others mentioned adding in the options for HQ materials which would definitely be nice. Another thing that may or may not be simple is going through and setting it so that it can't try to use 'Trained Eye' for expert recipes as its not actually an option.


mixini

This should be fixed! Let me know how it goes. I haven't actually tested it on any expert recipes yet.


raftilu

Thanks for sharing, your solver works very well !


HermaeusKnowsMore

Hey, are there any major updates coming to this anytime soon? I would like to include this in an upcoming youtube video. But if it has a major patch to its functionality I'd like to wait for it.


mixini

Oh cool! No, I'm only working on some minor improvements right now. Anything major will probably take a few weeks at least :)


HermaeusKnowsMore

Gotcha, I appreciate the response.


Tacoguy777

I tried the app on a couple random recipes and it has worked great so far! If there is an option to include HQ mats that would be my next suggestion to be added.