KipeeCraft pre 1.2 is here!

It's been about 2 years again, since the last release of KipeeCraft. The project is currently on hold, but still alive. The current version is a preview of a possible upcoming 1.2 version. The main reason for this release is a false positive detection of KipeeCraft as a generic banking trojan. The folks at www.virustotal.com weren't certain, but about a third of the scanners claimed KipeeCraft to be *some* sort of generic trojan aswell.

I was able to track this issue down with the help of many testers across atys and finally found an optimization library to be the cause. It is not needed to compile KipeeCraft, but it managed to make Evolver and Jeweler faster by about 20%. Due to the false positives I had to remove it again.

While these two tools are slower now, it is important to me to have an Application people can trust. I also updated the tool "CDS Edit" which can be found in the \DB directory of KipeeCraft and removed this library from the code. I checked the new versions on www.virustotal.com and they passed all scans.

Update: I had to completely remove the database editing tool, it kept triggering false positives with anti virus and I have not a clue why... all future releases will be without this tool. It is not needed to run KipeeCraft though.

What else is new?

KipeeCraft has a homepage again. Molly was kind enough to host it on her domain, the new url is mollylovescake.de/kipeecraft, please update your bookmarks and spread the word. To migrate your old version to pre 1.2 just copy your kc.ini file and your Recipe directory over to the new one (and your Databases, if you made any changes to it). Please refer to the Changelog for a complete list of changes since the last release.

Where can I get it?

You can download the latest version at the official homepage at mollylovescake.de/kipeecraft or use the official mirror at box.com. KipeeCraft is distributed as zip, 7zip archive and as self extracting archive.

Does it run on Windows 10?

Yes it does!

Does it run on Linux / Mac OS?

KipeeCraft is a native Win 32 Application, it needs the help of another tool called "wine" from the Wine Project. Once you have set it up, KipeeCraft runs really nice on those systems aswell. See the homepage at mollylovescake.de/kipeecraft for more details.

Update: See this post http://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=post/view/167669 for a premade winebottler bundle for mac from the user Fateciy.

Special Thanks

Thanks to everyone who helped and encouraged me to continue with the project! A big shoutout this time to talkirc who undertook the enormous task of cleaning the material database and adding minimum and maximum Quality to every material!


Please contact me for questions, bugs and suggestions - you can reach me via mail (Feedback link on the page or inside KC) or post in this thread.

arc

This is exciting news. I was going to send you a message today aboy teeny tiny differences between KC and IG results but I figured you had had enough frustrations with KC. Thanks again for your extraordinary efforts and, as always, let me know if i can aid in any way with anything.

KC has an accuracy of +/- 1% usually it is spot on. I'm aware of some cases where it is 99 ingame and 98.9 in KC which gets cut to 98. I leave it to the experienced crafter to solve those mysteries, KC is never intended to replace crafters or crafting. It should aid those who already know their stuff.

arc

I really don't undestand why you don't do a linux/mac version, there are plenty of linux mac users, and wine is not a solution.

So, bad news for me.

I'll have to quote from KC's homepage to explain:

"KC started as a small part time project when I was quite young and new to programming. I learned Turbo Pascal at school (MS DOS, yeha!) and later explored Windows programming with Borland Delphi 5. KC was my first attempt to start a sort of large project and my abilities as programmer grew with the project. This said, there is alot of sourcecode inside which solved problems in a way I would never do today."

Now what does this mean? The program uses many proprietary components from Borland Delphi which aren't available in Lazarus to create a portable version of KC. Back then Ryzom was only available for windows and KC was never written with portability in mind, nor did I know about this issue 10 years ago. The current codebase uses platform specific code, controls and registry calls to get everything working.

Porting this "coding mess", which has grown over 10 years, is futile. KC needs a proper rewrite, a clean start with portability and free components in mind. I would solve many problems differently today and design many features alot more intuitive and user friendly. This said, I don't have the resources at the moment to make a version of a future KipeeCraft which I will be satisfied with.

Keep in mind, a material database and some craft mechanics only make up a small portion of this project's features. I kept adding on to it and I believe it is a very powerful tool for the task. I get asked from time to time, why not release the source and let the community do the rewrite?

I did my best to support the community with databases and tools (RZDB, arcDB, KipeeCraft, Molly's Materials, Molly's Recipes) and articles on Materials, Colors and the Math behind crafting. I'm proud of the results Evolver, Jeweler and Recipes come up with however I don't plan on releasing the code to the public.

I hope this helps to understand it's not a simple recompilation for a different target platform and everything just works out of the box. I personally see KipeeCraft as a useful but dated tool from ~10 years ago, being updated from time to time to fix problems or in this case provide an inspiration for future projects made by future homins.

Everyone is welcome to build new apps for android, iOS and many other platforms. I'm supporting any projects I come across, if time allows.

arc

And the same goes for zyroom too for example.

And rewriting those app in a cross plateform langage or in a webapp version will mostly cost time too.

Yes it can be sad the code isn't open but it's understable knowing the time and effort it take to make such software.

And if you don't know delphi (like me^^) it can still be hard to port it and time consuming too ^^.

And i think personnaly even with the code open i would probably make and think it from scratch if i had time to make a cross platform version.

Except for the game mechanic part maybe.

That is the way I look at if, it it gets me close, I'm there. For example, I'm sure you remember the, then deemed impossible, 7x84% amp (Zood). Well I revisited that with Evolver last week and Evolver came up w/ 4 new recipes ... and w/o looted mats which is much easier. So yes, it takes the drudgery out of the thousands of ciombinations and then ya gotta use the old noggin for the final tweaks.

Where I was goin tho was since you had a wisp of energy / time to do the upgrade, all I'm saying is that **if you so choose to do so** and wanna attack those algorythms again ... I'm here, ready, willing ... if perhaps (being 10 years older) a bit less able :).

I've never had a problem running KC with Wine on my Mac, although at some point Quartz stopped being a default part of the os and needs to be downloaded seperately.

Just a heads-up; the self-extracting .EXE trips Avast, but the .7z file does not.

Thank you for the heads-up. Downloading executables from the internet usually triggers an anti virus software, avast for example is contacting the cloud / reputation services (if enabled) and checks how many other avast users have downloaded this file. In case of KipeeCraft I suspect it would be a very small number. This leads to a low reputation and very likely a warning or depending on the configuration even to quarantine of the file. The same happens for example with the chrome browser, I frequently get the message [file] is not commonly downloaded and could be dangerous.

The warning is correct and so is the cloud service and avast. The only question would be, what the exact message was like. If it tells you something precise, then something might indeed be wrong. If it is a general warning, it is usually just because of reasons mentioned above.

The .EXE is the same as the .7z just with the "create self extracting archive" option checked inside 7zip...

I usually check with virustotal.com and here are the results for the 7zip file and the kc.exe inside. It seems some anti virus programs consider even a standard self extracting archive suspicious.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/7db5de5fa7df35a889bb74ff0ea9c3 b67d713586bb26dc6328119b0bdc1dba6b/analysis/1458639087/
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/231d16359f237d89e957db0876f2a5 e857e8d7560c63bf1cdeace6b66c3d5496/analysis/1458639117/

arc

In regards to running on Mac. There is a program called WineBottler. it take the windows exe and puts it in a stand alone wrapper. Once done it behaves just like a normal app on the Mac.

With your premission Arcueid I could create the Bottle and up-load it.

I tried it once with my ancient macbook (snow leopard r.i.p.) and wrote a guide http://www.mollylovescake.org/kipeecraft/macos.html. I don't have any modern macs, you are welcome to create a bottled version and test it on the current mac os. Crossing fingers it still works.

arc

I have packaged KipeeCraft in a stand alone app for MacOS.
It worked fine on 4 test machines

KipeeCraft pre 1.2 for MacOS

EDIT: YOu may have to force quit on occasion after using the normal quit cammand. Doen't seam to affect anything.

Fateciy for President of Atys!

My old webhoster died, so I had to move KipeeCraft (and Molly's Apps). The change is as follows, please update any bookmarks you might have. Sorry for the inconvenience!

old:
MollyLovesCake.org

new:
MollyLovesCake.de

arc