konaras: forum

Hi, everybody!

Allow me to introduce a simple Android app to monitor the stats of your TORN game and receive notifications for things like new messages, events, or bars being full. The app is can be found on Google's Play Store and its called "TORN Feed", alternatively you could just click on the link bellow:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aidanas.torn_feed

As this is the very first version of the app user's feedback would be highly appreciated. As I am quite new to the game there is bound to be something important not yet included in the app. Therefore feel free to provide your suggestions and, if possible, the features might be included in following releases.

The app is provided absolutely free with no strings attached. No Adds. No In-app purchases. No subscription. No charge. It was developed as a spare-time summer project by a small team of independent developers.

Please note: the app IS NOT an official TORN app but rather a third party helper tool for the convenience of players. It does, however use the official TORN API!

To login you need to provide your API key (found under "Preferences->API Key") and your player ID. The app never asks you any personal details such as passwords or emails.

Any questions, please feel free to PM me in the game or email to [email removed].

Enjoy.

Hi, just a quick question regarding the API. Is there a way to obtain body (contents) of messages using the API? At the moment I could only find the title, name and few other attributes but not the contents of the messages using:

https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=messages&key=[my_api_key]

Thanks.

Just a quick question about the cooldowns/timers in the game.
Is there any way to remove/reduce timers, say drug/cooldown or bank investment term end?
Or are they final and always run to completion once started?
Also, as much as understand at the moment there are 6 possible timers: 3 for cooldown (drug, medical, boost), traveling, bank investment and education. Does this look about right?

Hi, not sure if this is by design or just a bug but the API returns null for a field containing non-ASKII character.
such as:

https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=icons&key=KEY

{ "icons": ...
"icon9": null,
...}

This is an icon for a faction a "Ð" character.

However, the following query:
https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=profile&key=KEY
returns the name as expected. Although with what appears as a normal "D"

... "faction": { ... , "faction_name": "D..." }, ...

Just not sure whether I should leave my code as it is and hope that icons will return the faction name in the future or use some workaround for it.

It would be great if you do that, especially the last part. It might convince some more sceptical people it coming from someone else than me :)

P.S: If you have means, and while you at it, check how doing 'Logout' even purges all the app's local data.

Ceb, thanks for the comment. We already have a number of users pointing out the same thing that sound is played each time regardless of notification already present. The main cause for this is that we have, initially, chosen to support old versions of android down to the Jelly Bean Android 4.1. In a while we found out that some framework features are not available on those old versions and this requires some hackish workarounds in order to be implemented. Nevertheless, this is yet another item on our todo list.

I see. Set timer design model then fliies out the window. Meaning we gonna have to use the same server check frequency as for other notifications. Thanks.

Just a quick question about the cooldowns/timers in the game.
Is there any way to remove/reduce timers, say drug/cooldown or bank investment term end?
Or are they final and always run to completion once started?
Also, as much as understand at the moment there are 6 possible timers: 3 for cooldown (drug, medical, boost), traveling, bank investment and education. Does this look about right?

Hey man, we're really glad you liked it! More over you've got a valid point saying that there is a bit too much info displayed which is not very useful to begin with. There is no need to be reminded about your gender every time you launch the app is there? :)
On the other hand there might be info fanatics which would like to see all the possible info they can get. Well, OK, maybe not the gender one, but that is only one in the list of many. If we remove one, say items in bazaar, some might miss not having it there. Ignoring something which is shown is easier than seeing something which is not.

"...having booster/drug/med status bars..." yes, absolutely! As a new player to the game you must forgive me for not realising the significance of cooldowns and travelling timers. Otherwise they would have been included in the v1.0 :)

However we're not designing them as "bars" but rather as "countdown timers." Whey are going to be shown bellow the status bar container, above the "current status". You also will be able to specify in the settings of the app which timers you would like to monitor. When a timer runs out you're will receive a notification. That is the conceptual design of the behaviour of the feature for now.

HandsomePants, thanks for the heads up and great info! Many of the things listed in those examples are already being considered in terms of design behaviour for the app. With exception being the "Efficient Play Tracker", we've never heard or thought of it and it really seems like a nice idea. That many of the possible notification will be present in the later versions of the app it is highly likely and its not even debatable at this stage. At the moment we are tying to think what would be the way to provide all this, as setting menus are already getting crowded and there is no need to hide the most useful features deep in there to begin with. So, yeah, there is a bit of head scratching now. :)

I see. I'll just use the profile one for now until they change icons also. Thanks.

Just released an update (v1.9.1) to the app.
Changes:

1. For those like NZSAS with bleeding edge technologies Android 7.0 crashes fixed.
2. null - faction name issue fixed.
3. Added options to enable sound, vibration and light for app's notifications. In case you really want to hear that your happy is full every minute.

Hi, not sure if this is by design or just a bug but the API returns null for a field containing non-ASKII character.
such as:

https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=icons&key=KEY

{ "icons": ...
"icon9": null,
...}

This is an icon for a faction a "Ð" character.

However, the following query:
https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=profile&key=KEY
returns the name as expected. Although with what appears as a normal "D"

... "faction": { ... , "faction_name": "D..." }, ...

Just not sure whether I should leave my code as it is and hope that icons will return the faction name in the future or use some workaround for it.

While we at it, are there any chances to get those four icons also?
[image: s11.postimg.org]

Thanks man, appreciate that!

NZSAS,
The good news is we've tracked down the problem with Android 7.0 crashes to its exact cause. It has to do with what parameters can be passed to the notification part of the app or rather which can no longer be passed. :/
The bad news it does not seem that there is a "proper" way around it. We'll try to think of a some hackish way around it but there is no guarantee that it might not be even possible. In that case we would have to restrict it up to Android 6.0 or disable the notification feature in Android 7.0.

Thanks for all the feedback. The TODO list is growing quite fast and to go properly trough all of it would take me a considerable amount of time. In any case this our little project is moving forward slowly but surely, as they say. As I mentioned a before our priority now is to add notifications for travel/cooldowns and various other in game countdown timers. While thinking how to approach this problem we thought they it might be handy to be able to see the 'icons stats' as you do in the dame above the stat bars. Bellow is a screenshot with a prototype implementation, let me what you think about it. Should it stay or should it go? :)

[image: s15.postimg.org]


EDIT:
We have pushed the update (v1.8) so you can try it for yourselves.

Thanks for the heads up. Sadly I just have managed to memorise it.

It would be great if you do that, especially the last part. It might convince some more sceptical people it coming from someone else than me :)

P.S: If you have means, and while you at it, check how doing 'Logout' even purges all the app's local data.

No. I'm a completely independent developer. This project was an idea of friends of mine who has been playing the game for a while now. It is done on our spare time, free of charge, purely for the sake of satisfaction of creation and to improve development skills for the Android platform.

Traveling, investment, education and effects timers and notifications are next on our list.

Thanks!

Hi, is there a way obtaining or referencing those icons listed in the querry bellow?
https://api.torn.com/user/?selections=icons&key=APIKEY

Say one of the fields is "icon50": "Drug Cooldown - Under the influence of Cannabis - 00:57:20 " and I was wondering is there other query to cross reference to get a link to that "icon50"? Similarly like https://api.torn.com/torn/?selections=items&key=opNIqUBN have "image" fields with a link to actual images of the items.

Thank you all for your support! Thanks to you all the bug has been fixed. Please reset your keys now.

Just a quick update. For the past few days I have received a number of suggestions and feedback in regards to what players would like to see included in the app. Many thanks to all who expressed their support and even reviewed the app on the PlayStore! Great stuff!

I've compiled the ideas given into the short list bellow:

1. Travelling/Landing times visible and notifications. This will be looked at as soon as my user gets to that level 15 so I can use the feature myself and thus test it while developing. It was bad enough experience with all that "merits bought" situation.
2. Stock price alarms/notifications if bellow or above some set price. Sounds like a good idea only need to figure out how it works and how to implement it.
3. Exact figures for the bars. Done.
4. Current status. Done.
5. Smaller bars. Restyled stat bars so they together take much less vertical space.
6. Cleaner more professional feel. Now wearing suit, glasses and white gloves while coding. Hope it helps. :) But seriously, no idea where to begin with this.

Few screenshots of the new update (v1.7):

[image: s17.postimg.org]

[image: s10.postimg.org]