syaopup

Here's a list of stuff I tried and got me enough skills to code simple programs. Not all are from Universities, but they are still decent for those who prefer hands on.

Code Academy
This is an interactive step by step tutorial where they teach you the basics of programming, then gives you tasks to complete, with immediate feedback of the code you type in from within the browser. If you are stuck, you can look at the forums and there are bound to be people who have met similar problems and have their questions answered. It's great for learning simple coding concepts like while loops, functions, etc.

Stanford School of Engineering
I love Stanford. The online lecture Programming Methodology CS106A (Programming experience not a prerequisite) was the lecture that put everything I learned about programming together. If scripting a working program is like writing literature and the programming language is like English (or any other languages), this course teaches you literature first before jumping into the details of syntax and such, as the main aim of this course is to teach you how to write beautiful code. In the first few lessons, they throw you some working functions, tell you not to fret over how they are made, but just know what they are supposed to do, and then make a robot do something. In a sense, it's like giving you some ready made sentences and asking you to piece it together to form an essay. (As opposed to 'this is how you form a sentence, now go make an essay') The teacher is really good too, he makes the class lively with the funny jokes and examples he makes when teaching, and because of that, it's easier to understand some of the harder concepts.
I'm not sure if most other programming courses are taught like this because I have not checked them out, but the courses I took irl paled in comparison and I learned near 0 from them. This is the single course that made me realise I'm not so stupid that I can't get programming concepts, and made me decide to go pursue a CS/CE degree.

Free video lectures
I think this is more of a directory or some sorts, it lists all courses found online for a particular subject you are interested in. It includes a couple of youtube series that are not full fledged lectures, so it might not be your cup of tea.

thank you. Where do you learn all these notepad++ symbols and all? Seems really useful even outside of neopets

I lawled. Those are regular expressions. : )

Sorry, I laughed too. xD Like what Inkheart said, those are regular expressions (aka regex).
It'll be a lot more fun if you can try it out and see for yourself what gets filtered out from what you type by using online regex testers.
The one I'm using is this, but it's more .NET-centric, so you might want to find a different tester online.
Regex cheat sheets are useful too, most of the info you need all in one place. There's one at the end of this post.

Sorry, but now that I've tried it, I do not know how to format it properly in notepad++. I only know how to format it when I copy paste it from the neocodex item db. Can you help please?

First, make sure that the list is generated with the checkbox for "Show Book Images?" unchecked.

- cntrl + h
- find " - r\d+" (without the quotes) and replace it with nothing. Select replace all
- find " - approx. [0-9,]+ NP" and replace all.

Make sure that the Search Mode is Regular expression, and you'll end up with all the books on each line without a space (or whitespace) behind it.

Main features:
- Import item list from text file
- Checks SDB for amount of different items and items already owned
- Buys just enough to reach 1000 items in SDB
- Deposits items whenever inventory is full
- If option to check SDB isn’t chosen, it’ll just buy everything on the list
- Waits for shop wiz ban to be over before continuing*

*For shop wiz ban, I wasn’t able to test it out myself but it should work, theoretically. Bought over 300 items in one hour and hit 1000 items before I was banned.
It's scripted in VC# so.... sorry non windows users. :x

 Packrat buyer.zip   46.97KB   417 downloads


Instructions:
- If you choose to use a proxy, only login after testing it to make sure the program registered it and that it is working.
- Import a list of 1000 cheap items. You can find Neocodex’s here, or you can use the one included in the zip file. (Note: The item 'Misdirected Sign Post' should be named 'The Way to Adventure Sign Post', the itemdb needs to be updated.)
- Make sure you have at least 15,000np on hand before starting (30,000np to be safe), as the program will stop if you run out of np.
- Check the checkbox if you want to check through your SDB for the number of different items you have and already own, and the program will only buy just enough items that you don’t have to hit 1000 items in the SDB.
- The program won’t visit the SDB and get the avatar for you. Figured that some of you might want to take a screenshot or see it for yourself.
- If you want to stop the program, close it. I may or may not implement a pause/stop feature in the future.

While testing with a delay setting of 1000ms - 2500ms, it took about an average of 7-10 seconds for each item to be bought. That means the estimated time needed to buy 1000 items is 2hrs 20min+, assuming no shop wiz ban. I did not use any proxy, but I live in Asia so I don’t know how much that affects loading speed.

If security of accounts is an issue, I wouldn’t mind zipping up the source code and have someone check through it.

Lessons learned coding this (ignore unless you are interested in reading the thoughts of a newb programmer and her experiences. )

Special thanks to
Inkheart for showing me the way of the Regex, and
Adam and his unfinished packrat grabber script, it showed me a rough idea of how to go about implementing it.

This sounds like a great idea. Just one suggestion though: is there any way to match the list of cheapest books with a list of books your pet has already read, to make sure you don't buy books you've already read?

Don't know if this is a difficult task or not, but it would be a great addition to this wonderful idea if possible. Thanks again!

That feature isn't in the program, although I hope Neoquest is able to implement it.
There's a workaround for it though.

Tips on how get a list of books that your pet has not read from the cheapest to the most expensive:
http://items.jellyneo.net/books/ for Book list
http://items.jellyne.../booktastic.php for Booktastic Book list
Sort by Price Ascending, do not show book images.
Copy and paste into a txt file, and format it using similar tactics used in creating AB lists.
Using this method, you won't buy books your pet has already read. Not sure if the program takes that into account.

Also, thanks for the program, the release was really timely, I have been manually doing this for the past few days!

Happy Easter.
We had a public holiday last Friday to celebrate it, but most of us in my country do not actually celebrate it.

Something Has Happened! You are now eligible to use 'Pteri - Darigan' as an avatar on the NeoBoards!

Aerophore is of age today, grab the avatar while you can.

So far, from what I've seen when someone shares their own programs, they either post it in
http://www.neocodex....t-general-chat/
http://www.neocodex....ming-chat-area/
or maybe even
http://www.neocodex....mber-tutorials/
which makes it hard to keep track of them all.
Will it be a good idea for there to be a subforum for posts like these?

With rules that go something like
- this forum is for all non official programs made by members of Neocodex
- users should only post programs they've made, not programs from other forums
- as the programs are made by members, direct the questions to them, not Neocodex staff

etc

The best way is to play the games your own while timing yourself.
That way you can
- find out the minimum amount the score jumps by (aka mod score) e.g. spellseeker always increases your score by 100, so if you send a score of 1001, it's obvious that you cheated
- find out the max score possible for a game and don't go over it e.g. 300 for fashion fever
- get a rough idea of the amount of points you get for a given amount of time, then translate to get a time and score that gives you 1000np
- but provided that the score to get 1000np isn't something unobtainable or high enough to get you into the top score list.

You can go ahead, if it makes the community better, there's not point stopping.
If it'll make you feel better about 'stealing my thunder', I'm actually happy that someone better is interested enough to make something similar to what I've done, because it shows that the idea/concept of the program is good enough to be expanded on.

There is this option. In the program, choose "Web Settings".

Aww shit Syaopup got fucking TOLD!

LOL, ok, now I feel like an idiot or not checking thoroughly enough.
I was using the Autoplayers and not AB and didn't realize that AB's the only program in Program Manager that allows that.

Based on this topic and this topic, just that it automates the process.

What it does: You give it an unformatted copy and paste text file, it gives you a properly formatted text file ready for use with AB.
 AB List Maker.zip   4.94KB   217 downloads


The format it requires for each item
[item name]
[price]
[profit]

The number of blank spaces in between each item does not matter.
Other than that, it is stupid and does not know if you are giving a txt file proper format, so it'll output garbage if you try to format other txt files that does not follow that format.
Done in Visual C#, which means you need the .net framework for it to work.

Be lenient on me, it's my first application published on the net, ever, and I'm self learning how to script. Do inform me if there's any bugs!

Tips on how get a list of books that your pet has not read from the cheapest to the most expensive:
http://items.jellyneo.net/books/ for Book list
http://items.jellyne.../booktastic.php for Booktastic Book list
Sort by Price Ascending, do not show book images.
Copy and paste into a txt file, and format it using similar tactics used in creating AB lists.
Using this method, you won't buy books your pet has already read. Not sure if the program takes that into account.

Also, thanks for the program, the release was really timely, I have been manually doing this for the past few days!

Question, which achievement do you want to unlock by doing a suicide run?
Fastest freeze ever,

or slowest freeze ever?