ResourceCalculator.com is a website that can calculate required resources from a list of final requirements, and tell you how to get from the raw resources to the final resources.

Creating or Updating a Calculator

If you want to add a new resource list to the calculator, you will only need 4 things:

1. A folder in resource_lists/ for all the files to live in (eg: resource_lists/minecraft)
2. A 460px by 215px thumbnail of the game you are making a calculator for (eg: resource_lists/minecraft/icon.jpg)
   • These are the same dimensions as the thumbnail in the Steam store.
3. A set of rectangular images of uniform size for each of the resources (eg: resource_lists/minecraft/items/)
4. The list of resources and what is needed to obtain them (eg: resource_lists/minecraft/resources.yaml)

resources.yaml

The resource list is a yaml file that contains all the recipes for each item in the game. Here is a minimal example of what he yaml syntax looks like for a list of resources.

resources:
  - name: Lithium
    raw_resource: true

  - name: Small Battery
    recipes:
    - output: 1
      recipe_type: Backpack Printer
      requirements:
        Lithium: 1

  - name: Medium Battery
    recipes:
    - output: 1
      recipe_type: Printer
      requirements:
        Lithium: 2

Other optional fields are also available.

# All "Resource" Fields

# String - the display name of the item
name: Lithium

# Specify the simplename of the resource, this is used for the image
# path the url encoding. It must be unique between resources.
custom_simplename: lithium1

# Indicates if the resource is a currency or not.
# currencies will be scaled uniquely from items as 1 currency is usually a lot
# less impactful than 1 item.
currency: false

# A note that will be attached to the recipe in a parseable manner. Comments
# should not be used in the resource list because it cannot always be properly
# parsed by automated tools.
note: "I am a note"

# A boolean that indicates if the resource should be considered a raw resource
# by default. If it is set to false or absent then users can still select it
# as a raw resource but it will not be set as one by default
raw_resource: true

# A list of all the recipes for this resource
recipes: []

# Overlay values for the global stack_multipliers chart. This lets certian
# resources have different stack sizes when doing the calculations of how many
# stacks of an item are needed. EG: in minecraft you can normally have 64 of an
# item, but some items can be stacked to only 16 instead. While others can only
# be a stack of 1.
custom_stack_multipliers:
  Stack: 16

Important

Comments should be avoided within the resource list. This is because comments cannot be easily parsed programatically and will get easily stripped away by automated tooling without warning. If notes need to be left on a piece of data then the note element should be used.

items/[itemname].png

For each item in your resources.yaml file you will need to have an image for that resource. If an image is missing, then the build process will submit a warning and fill that space with a purple color, indicating it does not have an icon.

The icons can be any size, even rectangular, but they all must be the same size as each other for a given calculator. The file names of each file should be the resource name in all lower case with no spaces or punctuation.

For Example:
"Pink Stained Glass Pane" becomes pinkstainedglasspane.png
"Jack 'o Lantern" becomes jackolantern.png

Note

If the names of two or more items would conflict, custom_simplename must be used to define an alternate "simple" name for a given item. The item's image must match the new custom_simplename, the display name does not need to be changed.

For Example:

• name: Health Mix* uses healthmix.png
• name: Health Mix+ with custom_simplename: healthmixplus* uses healthmixplus.png

icon.jpg

The icon needs to be 460px by 215px to fit in with the other calculator links. It also needs to be a jpg, not a png or other image file. If a game is on Steam, the Steam page for a game uses a jpg thumbnail with those dimensions. Simply downloading it to the appropriate directory and renaming it to icon.jpg should be all that is needed.

Prefer images that only contain the title/tagline (first example) rather than ones for a specific event and/or with reviews (second example).

See Thumbnail Examples

The first URL below will show the current header, while the second URL can be used to browse all historical thumbnails by changing the number.

https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/{SteamAppID}/header.jpg
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/{SteamAppID}/header_alt_assets_1.jpg

SteamAppId can be located by opening the store page for any Steam game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/{SteamAppID}/Game_Name/

Compiling The Calculator

Linux

The primary method for building resource calculator is via a native linux environment. On Linux, you will need to have installed Python 3.8 or newer, nodejs 12 or newer, as well as all the python and node dependencies found in requirements.txt and package.json. Additionally you will need the program pngquant to perform the png compression stage of the build process.

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip pngquant npm
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install
python3 build.py --watch

Docker

The secondary method for building resource calculator is using Docker and Docker Compose. As long as you have Docker Compose on your system you should be able to run the ./run.sh command from any terminal that can run a shell script. This will start two docker containers, one which will build the calculator and one which will host the calculator output so you can easily access it via a web browser. It is recommended to use the ./run.sh --watch flag, this will tell the build script to automatically re-build any changes you make without needing to relaunch the build script.

The docker container will install the node and python libraries into the node_modules and venv_docker volume folders.

Note

The ./run.sh command assumes that docker compose is run via docker-compose up however newer versions of docker compose is run via the docker subcommand docker compose up. If you are running into issues with this please open a ticket.

Windows

On windows it is recommended to use the Docker runtime. However if you do not wish to use it you can install the dependencies manually using native versions, cygwin, or wsl just like on Linux.

Important

For Docker on Windows you may need to allow the docker container to access the repo files. This should be prompted to you the first time you run it but if it does not prompt then this can be done via Settings -> Resources -> File Sharing

Note

For Docker on Windows file events are not always shared with the docker container, meaning that the --watch option will not always catch errors. To workaround this you can attempt to install and run docker-windows-volume-watcher however this does not seem to work with newer versions of docker desktop.

MacOS

On macos it is recommended to use the docker runtime. If you do not wish to use it you can install the dependencies manually.

brew install python3 pngquant node
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install
python3 build.py --watch