Tritous

v11.09.21 up. Changes mainly around making it easier to put in a whole list of members and just adding in values for those who have reported their contribution (improvement in how it handles the "none" category)

new version up. one bugfix, and made it compatible with autofilter now so you can more easily find things

perhaps not, maybe it's just that it's too big (600kb), but google seems to not be able to convert it even after 15 minutes. it isn't the most simple of spreadsheets. It doesnt accept templates at all, so all that happens is it becomes a file host (although not a bad one). Cheers anyway

hah, forgot that thing existed. Do you know if google doc accepts tempates?

Hello all, I've developed a simple tool in excel to make it easier to track the efforts made by your clan. Input their contributions and names, input your clan totals and targets, input your choice of thresholds. The output is a table of contributions; members categorised by contributions, the totals calculated for each group, and formatted nicely for a bbs forum I will be using this tool for my clan, I'm sure other leaders will find this useful for keeping track of theirs. Citadel Contribution Calculator v11.09.21.xltx I'm sure the forum admins will have to add a disclaimer that they are not responsible for 3rd party tools. It is free from macros (I'm just good with formulae), excel 2007/2010 compatible, and simple to use If someone can test with 2003 i'd be grateful. There are no advanced features, but 2003 has a lower limit on max number of cells used. Instructions: Fill in current clan progress and your targets (optional) at the top Fill in how much each member of your clan has done (including those who have done none). Fill in target thresholds at the top (optional). The output page has a grey box. select this, copy, and paste it to the text editor or forum of your choice. The format is designed for bbs forums Sorry for the lack of instructions in the tool, I did make it for myself originally Enjoy

The randoms topic brought back some good laughs. I used to make a habit of killing strange plants (it could be done, it required guthans because a full invent of sharks wouldnt last the 9 minutes it took to kill, but it could be done), I had a friend who had a collection of 130+ evil chicken meat, and I always wanted to one day kill a drunken dwarf (only possible with 3-4 rings of recoil, sadly I never got one at the right time). I even had the immense laugh of someone try to copy me in killing a plant, only to get an evil chicken part way and then another strange plant. It took so long to deal with them the first plant despawned before he could finish it, a fun lesson that randoms could happen together. I never saw a random successfully kill a bot, only a couple of players with less intelligence than a bot: but for a few of us they were a source of completely pointless entertainment. Randoms only got 1xp per 10 damage, not 4 per 1 but that never stopped us!. Good old days!

yeah, this wasnt something targetting rs. This actually locked my our of task manager, registry, and most of explorer, disabled all security and tried to start copying my files. Step 1 was pull the network cable out. Step 2 was use hijack this to get registry access back, and then it was a fight between me deleteing it and it trying to rewrite itself in. In the end it took 4 days solid to recover...and i was in a bad mood. Always have a backup. a registry entry can cut your access to regedit, but there are some tools that let you recover that.

binary passwords lol, I like it Interestingly, the biggest fault in these "how secure is your password" calculations is they assume people know how LONG your password is. I could have a password of "." and it's just as secure as a hundred letter chain simply because it is still just 1 possible combination, just as "YoudOnTspEllT3hasT3hunlessYouusedToSayTehLots!!!1!!1!" is just one combination. if every brute forcer was going to start with every 1 letter combination first then yes it's very bad, but do they start with 1 because it's easy? do they start with 5 because it's common? It's not only about the security of your password, but of all passwords possible. As for your pc security: don't get complacent thinking you are secure. I run 2 (good) antispywares and a decent antivirus, do regular manual checks in key locations, registry and process checks, and I knew more about computers 15 years ago than most will know in their lives. Even I get something breaking through sometimes, it just means I'm much better equipped to deal with it before it becomes a problem. The last 2 major ones i had, believe it or not, came in through microsoft update (they arent 100% secure either and they have more resources than me), and being a microsoft product when the antispywares tried to stop it the windows defender decided that the antispywares were a threat and killed them. I was lucky enough to notice it real time (first thing I did was pull out the network cable and go standalone) and I was lucky to be able to fight it off but it does happen. I had a friend who was less lucky: swore blindly his Norton 360 said he was clean. After much bullying and getting some antispywares that were actually worth their binary he turned out to have 74 different spywares. Never trust a single antispyware fully: there are more people writting malicious code than are writing defensive code. In this age where we have increasingly powerful PCs (except for you laptop users) it is worth the tiny performance impact to have that extra layer of protection

I hate to be a troll, but the second part of the melee bias series has as many faults as the first (I suspect they were submitted together so I don't blame that the feedback from last week hasn't been included) I was quite annoyed that you said there wasnt a decent breakdown of how magic damage or accuracy works. There is a very good breakdown and has been for 8 years on how it works: each spell has a max hit, while accuracy is determined by mage stat and mage bonus. More recently mage damage is modified by mage damage % bonus (which DOES increase with several of the higher staffs, as well as potiont). Mage defence is 70% mage stat, 30% def stat, and is increased by mage defence bonus: unless you also have a good mage level just wearing ranged armour isnt enough (there is also a link between agility and ranged defence, but I've never heard of anyone reliably measuring it; i suspect is is less than 10%). Still, agreed melee armour is a clear advantage in most cases, especially with prayer. As for the imbalance of the potions: Ranged potions make more difference than att or str pots, in spite of being a smaller boost. while strength only moderately increases your damage, the relation between damage and ranged level is much more closely coupled. One small note (one that has been missing from the manual since they started showing ranged str): the type of bow ALSO affects damage. The manual used to say as much, but the proof lies in the almost unused longbows. A longbow has identical stats to its equivilant shortbow but hits harder. I'm hoping in the next releases you address two of the biggest reasons WHY melee is biased: The fact that you can wear all the armour in the world and still run as fast as a mage or ranger; and the fact that rangers and mages have such a short range that you can rush into melee range faster than they can fire 1 shot. the real power of bows over armour in real life was the ability to fire from 100s of yards away, with unaimed volleys of skilled longbowmen capable of firing as far as a mile away from a castle wall, shots with enough power to go through even plate armour. In the time it took even a horseman to close that distance, you could have fired a dozen shots or more and be thoroughly tired. The cross between videogame logic and real world logic as you rightly put it: the stats are balanced for a long ranged shooting sniper: but the actual range is so short I can (and have) throw a shotput further than my handcannon can fire it. As promised last week: I'm not all talk: if you agree that melee is biased there is a suggestion that may help improve things on [qfc]185-186-110-62880600[/qfc]. Whether Jagex actually pays attention is a different matter, but I've had suggestions accepted before: it's down to getting the attention of a Jmod :P

Regarding the melee bias topic. Not to be a troll but the examples given are very poorly thought out. You failed to note some very key points: Godsword is hell of a lot slower than ranged. This more than unbalances it's so called advantage. Dragon scim is about as accurate as steel crossbow. the damage isnt the only factor. I'm not doubting that melee is biased, but it's not for the reasons you give. The reason is weapons like the whip which combine speed and accuracy with a heft damage, the lack of recurring costs, and the melee armour. Plate armour protects from 2 styles: melee and ranged, and very well. In comparison ranged armour gives only moderate protection from mage and not much else, and mage armour is only moderate against mage attacks and very poor at anything else. A meleer praying against mage is quite a tanked opponent, there isnt the same risk. Sure melee has the hardest hitting weapons but they are extremely slow. Ranged has the fastest weapons but they are extremely weak. Mage has weapons with complex secondary effects but has neither speed nor raw power...but the real unhinger is melee has something others dont have: weapons that are very fast, reliably accurate and very powerful in combination. Not the fastest or strongest, but the mix of the three is what has made the whip (and more recently rapier) the staple weapons of moderate to high level players for years, never ranged or mage. We talk about mage and ranged having an advantage because they can attack from a distance. but unless we are talking about hitting fally from varrock, that means very little. For what it's worth, you have given me an idea for a suggestion. I'll think about it today at work and this evening probably post it on the RSOF. if you do care about this topic you'll probably find it an interesting idea Edit: Done. If you agree that melee is biased there is a suggestion that may help improve things on [qfc]185-186-110-62880600[/qfc]. Whether Jagex actually pays attention is a different matter, but I've had suggestions accepted before: it's down to getting the attention of a Jmod :P

Article on integer sizes: Conceptionally a long is still a restricted set. While your article some valid points on the client end of the changes it ignored the technical end completely. No, a long is not just a bigger int, and cannot just be replaced for it. Firstly java is a strongly typed language. While longs and ints have a level of interchangability it's not just about changing what variables you are using, but changing the variables you are passing too. All string manipulations would have to use a long conversion rather than standard int, all functions passed need changing, and most difficult of all there are some library functions which you cannot change so you have to make conversions to and from int and long every time you call them. In a huge chunk of code that becomes as hard as rewriting the whole thing, take it from someone who has done far too much retrofitting of code in the past. Secondly: a long (aka a 64 bit int) is one of the few poorly supported standards in programming. Remember that runescape has more than just java, but will have C code hosting the core functions on the servers too. Java defines it's long as a 64 int, but doesnt enforce it. C defines it as 32 bit (although a long long int is supposed to be 64 but is not reliable). Only on a 64 bit machine is this the case, on a 32 bit it simply cannot be done. Some compilers will use compound maths, some wont, but as you can guess: any calculations that means breaking the number into two pieces and then trying to use both at he same time is complex. Incidentally, there is a classed called the BigInteger class that is truly limitless. It internally stores large numbers as a series of integers and has all the complex maths functions built in. Would be great for exp, but is fairly clumsy and inflexible to work with sometimes: you have to convert formats for a lot of functions. last (and least): you are talking about adding a huge amount of size onto every account, and slightly increasing access times. To be honest: even rented servers are cheap for extra bulk storage and the server end isnt really the limiter: it's the bandwidth.

The 99 depreciation topic is something that was part of a massive thread i ran in 2007 that hit over 7000 posts (ok, probably half was flamers, but the rest was interesting). The conclusion we reached even back then was that the level cap needed to be lifted. Skills devalue, achievements saturate and fade, its not fair on all. The difference is we didnt look at 120. we were looking at levels far past that, uncapped. even 200m exp isn't going to get much past about 135? After that the difficulty to level goes far beyond sensible. when you are talking tens of millions per level, there is no way you can sensibly focus on more than one skill. No general skiller will ever reach 140 mining, but someone who does nothing but mine might. They become the first person to be able to mine (or even know about, it wouldnt' have to be in the manual) a new ore. Then you need to find the 1 smith who can work it to make something. Bring back a meaning to being the best. Make it a tradeoff: do you keep training to be at the top or do you cash in your level, go for this new content that only you have unlocked and risk someone else overtaking you in order to get rich? These are things that could take a year to unlock, need the cooperation of several specialists and days of work to make 1 masterpiece of armour...that still only limited numbers of people can wear. A hard ramp in maybe, but can you imagine getting that level up message and being told you can fish something that neither you nor anyone else has heard of (don't put it in the manual until 5+ people have unlocked it)? You'd have to explore and find the spot yourself at first, who would be the first person to eat it to test its effects? what if the cook burnt something that took you 10 minutes to fish with a complicated method? Exploration and teamwork would be the long term result, something this game has increasingly lost

you've missed a fairly important problem with urns in that they intentionally dont support the preferred methods for many things. Their low capacity means that you need to carry 4-5 on a slayer task making them unusable. They don't work for gold smelting (seriously, that one hit a sore spot for me since i mine my own gold), and for LRC you cant carry enough mining urns to last more than 20 minutes of your 6 hour trip (1 sum pot and 6 summons). when you look at the surface, it's one hell of an overpowered exp boost: getting a considerable percentage of extra exp, and balanced by being quite impractical. Realistically I think many would be happier to have a slower fill rate, but a much large reward. if it took 15 times longer to fill and only got 8 times the exp, I'd probably be happier.

there are several important points you miss: firstly bots can not only destroy the income of skills for honest players, but also destroy the abiltiy to do certain skills. what is the averge time a yew stands up at fally yews now? an honest player cant get more than a couple swings when the bots are in full force there. fishing and gold mining have had prices crash because they have longer lasting resources, and many non skillers are starting to realise there are bots camped at many combat areas and slayer spots. second, and a big one: RWT can destroy the game completely in a way most players don't realise. If gp can be traded for real money then legally it becomes a currency with an exchange rate, Jagex are obliged to report ALL cash earnt in runescape for income tax reasons as you are effectively gaining real money. Then we get into the world of anyone playing rs at all being obliged to deal with tax forms since if you have multiple incomes you have to do it yourself, and then underage working laws....and labour law limits how many hours you are allowed to work per day...If Jagex don't stop it the game is destroyed. luckily rwt is more easy to control and is relatively minor. the hard part is the mass bots, dozens or more owned by each main. In old days jagex was banning 30k accounts a week, yet 35k more were being made. Bots have been forced to get more advanced and tracking them is getting harder. I've seen many of the jagex bot ban sessions where a jmod goes to one of the hotspots, logs any suspicious names, then goes to trace the bots to their mains and any other bots: sometimes 1 name can stop 50 bots...but it needs a lot of manpower

agreed, it's one of the few things really missing from here. rune wikia has them, not seen any there that are wrong yet but it is a wiki, it's got more risk of that happening. One snipit that I believe isn't mentioned on there is the actual speed formula: att time = 0.6*(10-speed) where 0.6 is the game heartbeat. quite valuable for calculating weapon damage rates relative to one another

It's a database tool. You put in the names of players and their questpoints and it builds it into an automatically sorted database, and saves it in a nicely formated arrangement for having a QP list on a forum. It makes updating someone's QP instant, automatically reordering there database rather than having to go through it manually, and it makes it easy to add, remove, or rename entries. For any clan that wants to promote questing, or any fansite who wants a database for showing off, it's an ideal tool that will save you hours. Hell it even saved me hours with my clan, even after you count the time it took to write and test the program. As it says in the original post I use Xp64 so there is a fair chance people would have to recompile it to use it on another machine that isnt xp64, but as I stick to standard ASCII C getting a free c compiler is very easy even for an amateur.

there are people who have used this with sucess for their clans. The reason I'm the only one posting is because the sort who download it do so quietly, or occasionally contact me in game about it. I know another fansite has a big quest ranking being run using my program, so at least someone is using it nicely. I could do with finding a new file host though, this one keeps dropping the hosting after a time

uploaded v5.3.1: Changes: loading function now autoparses to capital which helps with compatibility and helps work with boards that default to lower case markup. should improve ease of use for shared forums.

I don't remember doing summations of polynomials, it was an area that was rarely of value to my degree. I can say that i did try fitting of exponential formulae without sucess, it's not that simple. I'd also point out that the "doubles every 7 levels" is not accurate, especially for the majority of the lower levels where it doubles around every 5 or the very low levels where it's obviously highly skewed

If you look again you will clearly see the 200,000,000 mark is just before level 126 (the column labeled Intermediate), not level 149-150. You are misplacing your commas. I admit I could have formatted that a little better. The Level label is a bit misleading; as the XP matches to the points for the next level (i.e., 83 gets you to 2, 13034431 gets you to 99) I didn't come up with the formula, but it matches every level from 1-99; I have no reason to believe it's different above 99. Ah, so it's offset by a level, meaning the true formula XP(L)=XP(L-1)+FLOOR(X-1+6.1224*(x-1)^2)/4, or rather that the xp difference is FLOOR(X-1+6.1224*(x-1)^2)/4. being a function of X-1 rather an X definately would break the lagrangian formula. Kudos to the one who developed it For the record, i meant that from 149-150 there is a 200m exp difference. 149 = 2,033,749,558 ; 150 = 2,245,441,392

I've seen the formula online somewhere (a long time ago) and put it in my omnibus spreadsheet. I put it on Rapidshare if you want to look at it (MD5: CB979BDEA574A8CA91BE18C318318122). While I appreciate the effort, you are quite a long chunk off. I can guarantee it is not a polynomial less than order 98 as the langrangian method i used will get a guaranteed perfect formula for any power less then the number of items. I did try various exponentials and iterative formulae too but cannot make as bold a statement as to guarantee it's not one, just that it's not a simple one. as we are looking to extrapolate values, we have to be very careful with formulae to be accurate. One thing we can say is the levels past 99 require huge exp! You have your lvl 149-150 needing 200m exp, can you imagine the thrill of being the first to get lvl 150 and discover a new item to be made, or a new ore to mine (which takes about a day per ore ;))

specialisation: "Runescape doomsday 2009", an old RSOF topic run by Kaiser Alan and myself was a look into economic inflation / price depreciation. At least it started that way, when I got involved I put a twist on it with the concept of value depreciation regardless of gold inflation or deflation, and to that added the points of intangible values. What is a 99 worth now? You see a lvl 99 cook and think "even a legends cape is harder to get". that 99 fletcher just used it to trim his str cape. 99 combats is virtually the norm and as far as items go, what sort of loser doesnt have barrow armour? (the best non pvp armour for defence). Remember when Guthans was 15m? When bowstrings were 200 ea? How you'd be impressed by people with a whip? The value of these things is now next to nowt to image. The GE only made it worse for tradable items as they are only more and more heavily harvested.... but people never pay attention to skills again... The only solution after this 7000 post thread (had to be remade 3 times) was to cut off the level cap. Keep 99 capes, but allow it to go past it. I've not yet found a proper formula for the exp per level (and I did a big analysis as practice for maths at uni), but we can estimate a few things: anyone with 200m exp probably wont even reach lvl 110. To get to lvl 120 you are probably into multiple billions for exp, dont ask about lvl 130.....So what good is that? Imagine someone who gives up on all other skills except cooking. Trains cooking 24/7, is a few hundred million exp ahead of second place. Now when the first lvl 110 fisher stands proud in the game and gets a message that they can harpoon Shenfish (and it's not in the manual, it's a complete surprise hidden waiting in the game until enough have discovered it to be common knowledge) they find out only one person in the game can cook it and while the competition is zero these two form a partnership of the elite. Imagine being the only person in the game who can mine a new level 110 ore, having 4-5 smithers in a price battle begging to be able to smelt it. You know you'll never have time to get the smith level yourself' you are a miner and nothing else!. What about when they find out no one yet has the defence level to wear it, and people are racing to be the first person to wear this new insanely strong armour and stand temporarily immortal compared to others. You see before you the only person in the game with some new 3 handed, 10 bladed, mace-swordhammer and you just run, you don't even bother trying to fight because you know they have 125 attack and will never miss you, but if you can get a chance to range them with your 115 ranged knowing what their def is like... What we are missing is the ability to truely be the top. hiscores are just numbers when they could be status, ability, uniqueness. Who seriously cares who has the highest total level, it's the true masters we want to see, not the jack of alls. Once people get to a majority of 99s they'll have to start thinking: what is the skill I want to devote my character to? What is it I want more than everything else combined? And there will not be enough time in the world to master more than one...

I haven't yet updated it for sw cape no. I need to do that some time soon. As for veng/deflects: no surprises, but cheers for the confirmation, I'll probably add that in when I next revise this guide At some point it would be nice to test if the new max on them is dead on 250 or if it's slightly off. I've not been back to vyres in quite a while (been busy lol)

had a strange bug, someone who had a purely numerical name had their name come out as a quite bizarre string. If anyone has any similar experiences please tell me so I can try to trace this bug. It seems to be an isolated event so far, but more data is always welcome

I dont know how on earth you think bandos is better? It's minimal strength bonus, too little to make a difference worth commenting is destroyed by it's having 25% less defence than barrows. With the exception of crush (rare) and ranged bandos is also a fair bit weaker than dragon. It's only for people so obsessed about hitting high that they forget the importance of living long enough to hit