v1.0.0 screenshot
Pal Calc is a Windows program for calculating the optimal steps to breed a specific pal with a specific set of traits:
- Can detect and read from your local game save files, based on palworld-save-tools by cheahjs
- Supports local Steam saves and Xbox saves
- Xbox saves are synced to your PC by downloading the game through the 'Xbox' app on Windows and running the game at least once. Save files are synced when the game is run.
- Provides time estimates on each step, based on probabilities and mechanics derived by /u/mgxts in this Reddit post
- Gender probabilities
- Probability of directly- and randomly-inserted traits
- For directly-inherited traits, probability of getting the desired traits
- Offers the optimal path
- Determines "path efficiency" based on calculated probabilities, not just the total number of steps
- Handles single-root paths, where you successively breed children with another pal you own (one "starting point")
- Handles multi-root paths, where two children are bred (multiple "starting points")
- Flexible search process
- Allows wild pals
- Set a max number of undesired traits if you're ok with imperfect pals
- Set limits on the number of breeding steps
- Choose which pals you want to include by filtering by guilds and players
- Efficient
- Low memory usage and fast load times
- Relatively fast path-solving process, searches take under a minute
- Distributes path-solving work across all available CPU cores
Pal Calc currently has some outstanding pieces that need more information to resolve. Some of these need some level of reverse engineering, but some can be figured out through experimentation and statistics. An issue has been created for each item, where more information can be found.
- Is there a formula for how long breeding takes? Or is it a constant five minutes? Issue
- What's the probability of wild pals having a specific gender? (Namely for pals which are known to have different gender probabilities from breeding) Issue
- What's the probability of wild pals having exactly N traits? Issue
- Do child pals always inherit at least one of the parent's traits? Issue
- How is data mining performed to extract the pal stats necessary for breeding calculations? Issue
- Has the trait inheritance calculation changed since /u/mgxts reverse engineered it? Was their reverse engineering accurate? Issue
- Assuming the trait inheritance calculation is correct, is Pal Calc's implementation of those probabilities correct? Issue
- How can we derive the map coordinates for a base from its world coordinates? Issue
- What's a good way to estimate time needed to capture a wild pal of a certain type? e.g. Chikipi would be much faster to find + catch than Paladius. Issue
Visual Studio Community 2022 is required. The .CLI projects act as test programs which can be ran without involving the whole Pal Calc UI.
The list of pals, traits, and stats are stored in a db.json file embedded in PalCalc.Model. This file is generated by the PalCalc.GenDB project. Running this project will update the db.json file in PalCalc.Model which will be used by the rest of the projects. The input files for this, stored under PalCalc.GenDB/ref, can be manually modified to include entries for new pals and stats if needed.
The db.json file should not be modified manually. It should be modified by changing the contents of PalCalc.GenDB and re-running the program to regenerate it.
Pal icons are scraped using the FetchIcons/fetch.js program which can be ran using NodeJS. This will use https://palworld.gg to collect the high-resolution version of each pal icon as a separate file.
Save file parsing is in PalCalc.SaveReader, which is a partial C# port of palworld-save-tools. By default this will not preserve the full parsed data of a save file, but this can be changed by adding the ARCHIVE_PRESERVE build flag. See the project's README for more information.
Data collected from Palworld or a save file are represented by types in PalCalc.Model. Instances of an owned pal within the game are represented by PalInstance.
The solver logic in PalCalc.Solver wraps this type with IPalReference types, which can represent owned, wild, and bred pals. The IPalReference types are returned by PalCalc.Solver.BreedingSolver, but you can use OwnedPalReference results to fetch underlying owned instances.
The general structure of the PalCalc.UI project is somewhat messy. The application uses WPF and (weak) MVVM for handling its UI. MVVM was largely followed for convenience and it was not strictly adhered to. There are various hackfixes since many features were unplanned and added through the path of least resistance. Refactoring is planned and gladly accepted.
Entries in the Resource folder are set to the Resource build action and embedded in the final program.
The Community Toolkit library is used for the viewmodels, which provides the ObservableObject, ObservableProperty, and other utilities. These use code generation to automatically implement private fields annotated with [ObservableProperty] as public properties with the appropriate INotifyPropertyChanged logic.
GraphSharp, a defunct library preserved after the Codeplex shutdown, does not have any documentation. It was added here by referencing hollowdrutt's implementation of a useful overview/walkthrough of its usage by Sacha Barber.
- Notify when a pal involved in a breeding path is no longer available in the source save or has been moved
- Allow filtering of which wild pals may be included
- Update PalDB reference data for recent game updates
- Figure out reliable process for updating DB.json with latest pal + trait info (where can I find a frequently-updated source of all required info?)
- General UI/UX improvements
- Optimize app startup time
- Seems to largely be due to JSON deserialization overhead
- Avoid the current default behavior of clearing out old files if there are incompatibilities, ignore and/or preserve a .bak file instead
- Automatically detect changes to save file + reload
- Option to auto-recalc all target pals when changes are detected
- Allow specifying custom db.json
- IV inheritance + solving
- Attack skill inheritance + solving
- Figure out how the data miners do their thing and read Pal DB info straight from game files?
- Allow solving for multiple pals at once
- Add a sort of "pal search" feature, listing all owned pal instances which have some traits / pal type
- Implement proper graph diffing for the built in GraphSharp animations