Maybe we could write a program that uses OCR to detect messages in the chat that contain the text "WTB" and "WTS". The content of these messages could be uploaded to a database, and then we could do all sorts of cool things like:
- Create a website where people can search for things
- Find intersections between items being bought and sold
What do you guys think?
Bopp raises a good point. Maybe the search algorithm would have to do a spellcheck somehow before storing the stuff the database.
Of course, there's also the issue of having abbreviations. For example, it will need to know that "DA & GF Recipes" == "Recipes for Gran Faust and Divine Avenger." To be of any use, this system either has to learn or has to be programmed with a bunch of different possibilities.
Hmm....maybe this is not as easy as I hoped. A great idea, otherwise.
Why not just have a site where people can list what they want to buy and search for stuff like TF2Outpost? Is reading from the in game chat that important?
Haha this is a fantastic idea which will never be implemented for the sole reason that it would devalue the AH and the AHs crown sink. If a player did this I'm sure it would be allowed but I simply can not see this happening from Sk's side
Bazaar.tf somewhat supports SK items but no one uses it. All they ever did was list useless mats and untradables. Dumb kids.
As far as OCR goes, it's an easy example of the problem. This isn't text written by humans or scanned from paper. It comes from a computer program, that renders the text exactly the same way every time. There won't be any noise in the data. Any competent programmer, given a screenshot of Spiral Knights, would be able to extract the text that you want.
The difficult part of the problem is parsing that text into something useful. Players don't always spell an item by exactly its official name. They use abbreviations, mis-capitalizations, etc. So there is some work to be done, to figure out what the text means. So think more about how automated and searchable you want your site to be.