Delve helper - Lailloken/Exile-UI-Legacy GitHub Wiki

Feature Overview

• NOTE: this is an experimental/proof-of-concept feature, but still fully usable

• helps you find hidden delve-passages by suggesting which checkpoint is the most likely to be connected to hidden nodes

• normal mode: user marks the hidden nodes and surrounding checkpoints on a grid-map, and the tool suggests possible solutions

• advanced mode: user marks the hidden nodes, and the tool reads the in-game delve-map and suggests possible solutions

User Interface & Settings

• main UI-elements:

  • delve button that can be placed anywhere within the client-window by dragging

  • grid-map overlay: needs to be resized in the settings menu to match the in-game delve-map

• general inputs:

  • clicking the delve button will show/hide the grid

  • pressing TAB will reset the grid, ESC will hide it

  • pressing the omni-key will scan the in-game delve map (advanced mode)

• this feature has its own section in the settings menu, with UI and sub-feature options

Initial Setup

• open the delve-map and find a large area with chambers

  

• max-zoom into the delve-map, and open the LLK settings menu (by clicking the LLK-UI panel or typing .llk into chat)

• go to the delve-helper section and enable the feature

• a sample grid will open with which to calibrate the grid size

  • it's NOT click-through, so you have to get used to moving the map underneath by clicking the side-edges that are not covered

• align the borders of the chamber-area with the grid and resize it until they match more or less (also use the borders of biomes/tiles to double-check)

  

• close the grid by pressing ESC

• optional settings:

  • the delve button can be resized in this menu as well

  • 'only show button while delving': enables scanning the client.txt-file generated by the game (may impact performance) to only show the button while you're in the azurite mine

• once everything is configured, close the settings menu

Normal-mode: inputs

• important: only mark paths in sections (squares) that contain a node/checkpoint

  

• marking paths: each square in the grid has an invisible 'd-pad'

  

  • click a direction to set a path leading to the node/checkpoint

  • click the center to toggle between all paths and zero paths (this also saves a click when setting three-way nodes: click center to make it four-way, then remove one path)

• marking a node/checkpoint as hidden: right-click the center of a section to mark it as a hidden node/checkpoint

  

Normal mode: limitation

• this mode has one limitation: it cannot account for pathing because it's not provided with all the information

  • this means it may highlight certain nodes green even though there's no possible way for it to connect to the hidden node:

    

  • C is marked green, which is incorrect because the node is 'boxed in' by the surrounding paths

• so the only delve-rule one has to keep in mind in this mode is: the hidden path cannot pass through squares that already have a path

  • the script should be able to handle the rest (unless it's a very rare edge-case)

Normal mode: general usage

• align the map with the grid so that the hidden node/checkpoint is near the center

• set the paths for the nodes around the hidden one

• right-click the center of the section with the hidden node/checkpoint

• the most plausible nodes will be marked green, the next-best yellow, unlikely/impossible ones red

• make sure to only hide the grid (instead of resetting right away) as you might need this layout again

• in case the only green node doesn't lead to the hidden one (which should be rare if pathing was set correctly):

  • sometimes a fractured wall is right on the edge of the loaded chunk and therefore has not been loaded yet:

    • use the delve map to trigger a loading screen by traveling to a distant node

    • go back to the node that was marked green and check if the wall is there this time

  • if loading was not the problem:

    • click the green node to override its highlighting with red

    • this will recalculate the grid and highlight the next-best node green

    • repeat until you find the hidden passage

    • in case you override green highlighting by accident, you can toggle the hidden node off/on to restore the initial calculation

Recognition mode: setup & (re)calibration

• image recognition can be enabled in the delve-helper section of the settings menu

• once enabled, there will be additional options and information underneath the grid:

  

• once set up correctly, the delve-helper will essentially become a delve-solver

  • it can detect if it's physically possible for a node to connect to the hidden one

  • since in this mode it has all the pathing information, it can also detect pathing collisions

• NOTE: at this moment, there is no way to calibrate it on Windows versions older than 10 (I may implement one if there's enough demand -- steam survey suggests the user base is lower than 4%)

• as preparation, you'll need to find a long vertical straight path on the delve map:

  
  (this shows an example, but don't use the main-shaft that is automatically generated as you level up)

• then open the grid and click the 'calibrate' button underneath it to trigger the Windows snipping tool

  • you have to screen-cap the middle part of the passage by clicking and dragging:

    

  • a tooltip will show to indicate that the image recognition is being calibrated, and when it's finished

• the grid will refresh and, if calibration was successful, will show the total pixel-sample count

Recognition mode: general usage

• in this mode, you simply scan the grid and mark hidden nodes by right-clicking them

• then check all green highlights and override empty sections/squares by clicking them (as shown in the video at the top)

  • this step is important since the scanner cannot check (yet) if nodes are empty or not

  • the hidden passage cannot start in an empty node, so override it immediately before you search there in vain

• to scan the grid, press the omni-key (default: middle mouse-button)

  • make sure the cursor is positioned over the map, otherwise your character will do whatever action is bound to the middle mouse-button (or the custom key)

  • but make sure not to hover over a node (this will show a tooltip over it which blocks the delve map) and keep an eye on the bottom-left of the map, where biome information is displayed:

  

  • it's also very important to adjust the grid and its size correctly because this will affect scanning accuracy

• in case the only green node doesn't lead to the hidden one:

  • sometimes a fractured wall is right on the edge of the loaded chunk and therefore has not been loaded yet:

    • use the delve map to trigger a loading screen by traveling to a distant node

    • go back to the node that was marked green and check if the wall is there this time

  • if loading was not the problem:

    • click the green node to override its highlighting with red

    • this will recalculate the grid and highlight the next-best node green

    • repeat until you find the hidden passage

    • in case you override green highlighting by accident, you can toggle the hidden node off/on to restore the initial calculation

Recognition mode: troubleshooting

• if the scanner misses a few paths, try re-aligning the map and grid to see if that fixes it

• if that doesn't work, you can feed more pixel-data to the calibration by repeating it with additional paths

  • it often helps to take the biome into account, i.e. if the scanner doesn't scan a path in a lava biome correctly, try screen-capping pixels from a vertical straight passage in that biome

  • it may help to screen-cap a path with a yellow line (the one that indicates a path has been cleared)

• if the scanner starts detecting many paths in an empty section/square, you should delete the calibration data by clicking the delete-button because too much bad data has been captured, and start from scratch

Remarks

• I started working on this after seeing this reddit thread and the general confusion about delving in the comments

• this started as an experiment out of curiosity about whether something like this would be possible and how difficult conceptualizing it would be

• creating the GUI took most of the work because it has so many segments (up to 64 squares, each with a 'd-pad' made up of five individual squares), and I also had to make sure it scales correctly across all resolutions

• considering delve and its rules are quite straight-forward, creating this feature was not really worth it by itself, but the things I found out while working on it made up for that

• v1.27.3 added an optional recognition mode as proof-of-concept (for a proof-of-concept delve-helper -- talk about double-dipping) and to test the limits of doing ridiculous shenanigans with screen-reading