Category - TSM4

Announcing the open Beta and the TSM Task List

We’re very excited to roll out the next version of the TradeSkillMaster 4 Beta.

We’re so excited, that we’re inviting EVERYONE to check it out! As of today the TSM4 Beta is accessible to everyone as soon as you sign up for an invite as part of the TSM4 Open Beta. This will begin our final steps towards the official release before Battle for Azeroth, and we’re looking forward to have as many of you participate as possible to help iron out the final issues and bugs.

Please note that TSM4 is still not yet a fully finished product and there is a small chance you will encounter issues or bugs that we are looking to resolve from your feedback and reports. If you’re not ready to get involved in that kind of process you may be more interested in checking out the public release coming Soon™.

If you’d like to dive right in, you can sign up right now and download the TSM4 Beta immediately!

Bank UI

 

The first major update in this Beta release is the Bank UI which has been given the TSM4 treatment. You’ll notice it has the familiar structure from TSM3 but with added TSM4 functionality including a more robust Group Tree and added search bar, plus a progress indicator when moving items between your bags and bank or vice versa.

Handling your items and moving them when you need them is an important aspect of your gold-making strategies so we’ve gone under-the-hood to speed everything up. Depositing and withdrawing is much more efficient in your personal and guild banks, despite the known issues on Blizzard’s side.

We hope you can make use of the various shortcut buttons such as moving everything in a selected group to your bank or bag, moving everything not in the selected group, moving items that are missing from the Auction House according to your Auctioning Operation to your bags or even depositing all of your reagents to your bank. Whatever your desired move strategy, we’ve got you covered!

Mailing UI

One of the final aspects of the TradeSkillMaster interface to receive a face lift and be brought in to the new design environment is the Mailing UI.

We’ve made sure to maintain the lightening-quick responsiveness of the mailbox, and keep things familiar with the structure of the interface. However with the added TSM4 functionality and quality of life improvements you’ll get a much better idea of what’s in your mail at a glance. The interface is also re-sizable and move-able!

You can now filter the mail on the first page, to find the specific item you’re looking for plus the new TSM4 Group Tree is also introduced when you’re selecting the items you want to send to your alts. Amounts paid for purchased auctions and gold earned from auction sales are also much more clear, with color-coded highlights indicating when your mail is set to expire completely.

In addition, we’ve also made it possible to send regular mail through TSM! This has been a long time coming, so we had to make sure it was done properly. There’s now a really handy ‘Contacts’ address book, which allows you to quickly select an alt, friend or guildmate without needing to set up a Mailing operation for a one-time postage.

Task List

 

We’re super excited to introduce a brand new tool to the TSM addon suite called the Task List.

As the name implies, this new feature will help you manage your daily, one-off or recurring tasks such as Profession Cooldowns, gathering for your crafting queue and shopping to restock some items. The Task List will combine the functionality of Smart Cooldowns and Gathering from TSM3 in the first iteration.

This is a very early version of what we envision to be a powerful aspect of the TSM tool set, and we hope the introduction of it now will form a solid foundation to build upon and introduce more functionality in the future including multiple character task tracking, or other ‘reminders’ based on your Auctioning or Crafting Operations.

We would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the Task List, what kind of tasks and activities do you track for your gold-making strategies and how can the Task List help with that?

Ledger Release and Beta Invites

The Ledger section in TSM4 has been in it’s temporary TSM3 placeholder mode until now. We’ve done a lot of work on the section and are proud to share with you the progress we’ve made on the powerful new tool that became of Accounting. The three updated sections you will find in the new Ledger are Revenue, Expenses and Failed Auctions. You will find they feel similar to their TSM3 counterparts, but with the much better look of TSM4.

Ledger

You’ll find that the Inventory viewer isn’t finished yet. We hope to bring it to you soon. Until we do, we hope that you explore the Ledger update, and let us know what you think.

Hopefully you are as excited about the changes we are making to the Ledger in TSM4 as we are. To give these changes in the hands of more goblins as soon as possible we are also sending out a massive new wave of TSM4 beta invites every day this week. If you’ll be one of the lucky goblins joining us in the TSM4 beta, you’ll receive an email from us at the address associated with your TradeSkillMaster account. In this email, you’ll also find a link to an article on our knowledge base that explains how to setup your TSM app to access the beta and how you can join the #beta channel on discord, which is the dedicated place for feedback and questions pertaining to the TSM4 beta.

If you’re not already signed up, go ahead and sign up for the TSM4 beta here. If you like what we do and would like some extra functionality, please consider becoming a TSM premium user. It includes priority access to all of our betas, including TSM4.

Database

This is another very technical blog post which provides a look into the new database library which has been added to the TSM codebase with TSM4. This is an internal code library which makes it easier for us to implement new features in TSM4. This new database library is made possible by the class library which I discussed in a previous blog post.

Structured Data

Our main motivation for creating this database library was to make it easier to represent large datasets in a very structured way which could easily be consumed by the higher-level application logic. Another goal was to be able to connect UI elements to underlying data in a standard way which would allow the UI to update itself automatically when there are changes to the underlying data. Let’s dive into how our database library accomplishes these things. Read More

New TSM4 Beta Version and Invites!

The TSM4 beta is always evolving and today we have some updates to share with you. We’ve been working hard to get TSM4 closer to release. While there is still a lot of work to be done, we’re excited to share our latest progress. There are a few big new features that we’ve been focussing on and will go through in this blog post.

New TSM4 Beta Features

Export

Moving functionality from TSM3 to TSM4 is a big part of the massive project that is TSM4. Importing and exporting of groups and operations are features used by many of our users on a daily basis. There are many enhancements planned for the export feature in TSM4, and we’ve made great progress towards implementing our vision for an awesome export feature. With this latest update, we’ve implemented the brand new TSM4 export UI which makes it as easy as possible to export groups and operations. This is a feature which we will continue to build on and improve as we get closer to the release of TSM4. Read More

Classes

This will be a very technical blog post which provides a look into the new class library which has been added to the TSM codebase with TSM4. This is an internal code library which makes it easier for us to implement new features in TSM4. This new class library is the base for many other internal code libraries in TSM4 such as our UI Builder, Database, and FSM libraries. We will go into more detail on the other libraries in future blog posts.

What is a class?

A common feature of a programming language is being “Object-Oriented”. This means that the structure of the code is based around complex data structures called objects. The type of these objects is generally referred to as their class. The class describes the structure and features of the objects. Read More

Deployment System

In this blog post, I will be giving a behind-the-scenes overview of the new deployment system we have created and been using throughout the development of TSM4.

Why did we create this new deployment system?

The primary goal of all this was to make it quicker and easier for us to get new changes into the hands of our users, and give us the ability to control which sets of users get which changes. Let’s talk about the latter goal first. We currently split our users into 4 separate release channels: Internal, TSM4 Alpha, TSM4 Beta, and TSM3 Release. The ‘Internal’ channel is used primarily for TSM team members for testing the very latest changes. The ‘TSM4 Alpha’ channel was used during the invite-only alpha phase of TSM4. The ‘TSM4 Beta’ channel is currently being used for everybody who has access to the TSM4 beta. The ‘TSM3 Release’ channel is one which all of our users have access to, and gives all of our users access to the latest version (of TSM3) we push to Curse. These release channels can easily be changed and adapted as our needs change (i.e. as TSM4 goes from internal-only to alpha to beta to release). So, the goal of our deployment system is to make it as easy as possible to release new versions to the proper channel. Read More

The Design of TSM4

The TSM Team has been hard at work for a very long time to bring you the TSM4 beta. We wanted to give you some technical insights on what goes on behind the scenes. Today we’ll be taking a closer look at the Design of TSM4. H3ggers will be joining me to answer some questions!
I asked him three questions, and he’s been so kind as to offer detailed answers to them.

On a high level, what goes into setting up a UI from the ground up like this? How much of the old UI gets taken into account, and how do you decide what is best from a user experience standpoint?

Great question. So for any UI/UX work, it’s always good to start with research. Whether you’re working on a brand new product or something that has been around a long time (like TSM), you always want to start by investigating. You focus on what has been done, is being done, what’s working and what isn’t. Read More

TSM4 Deep Dive: Logic Functions & Value Sources

Logic Functions

Many users have become somewhat aware of the check() function in TSM3 thanks to the popularity of BilisOnyxia’s sniper string. In my own personal experience, check() is definitely something that at times can be hard to wrap your brain around. I’m pretty sure I used TSM for over a year before I fully understood it!

To quickly explain check(), you can feed it 2 to 3 values in the format of check(a, b, c) where “c” can be optional. These 3 values can be any value TSM recognizes, from custom prices to flat gold values, to simple price source references like DBMarket. The check() function then takes a look at “a”, and looks to see if it is valid and greater than 0. If “a” is not valid, the custom price returns invalid. If “a” is greater than 0, the custom price will give you the value of “b” back, otherwise it gives the value for “c”. If you did not supply a value for “c” and “a” is not is not greater than 0, then the whole thing is treated as invalid. Read More

TSM4 Deep Dive: Sniper

Sniper has long been a very popular feature of TradeSkillMaster, with many goblins even setting up a second, dedicated sniper account. The Sniper feature allows for snatching up deals as quickly as possible once they are posted on the auction house by constantly scanning the most recently-posted auctions and comparing the buyout price with user-configured maximum prices at either a global or operation level.

In TSM4, we’re making Sniper a first class feature by adding new Sniper operations and a top-level Sniper tab to the Auction House frame. We’re also adding an entirely new type of sniping in the form of a new Bid Sniper. Read More

TradeSkillMaster 4 is Here and it is Better Than Ever!

Over the past few weeks we’ve kept you all in suspense. If you’ve been paying attention, then you know by now that TSM4 is coming. Here, we’ll go into a bit more detail on what TSM4 will bring.

Making TSM Better for Everyone

The main focus with TSM4 is to make TSM less intimidating and easier to use for newcomers and experienced goblins alike. To this end, we’ve completely rebuilt the UI from the ground up to be simpler and more intuitive to navigate. Even though ease of use was one of our main goals, we’ve not forgotten about our power users, and have plenty of goodies in store for them as well! Read More