Feature Spotlight: Research!

Hello again all users of Meowth! Today I'm excited to show off what I've been working on for the last week or so. It's the revamped research reporting feature for Meowth 3.0! I'm very happy with how this one has turned out and I think you all will be too. It's a bit different from what you're used to, but in a good way!

On the (Silph) Road Again

One of the best features of The Silph Road is coming to Meowth thanks to a shiny new integration! Meowth 3.0 now has access to the list of Field Research tasks and rewards painstakingly researched and verified by the Silph Road Research Group. If you guys haven't been using this, you have been missing out. Thanks to Marco and company for helping out with this!

So how does it work? Let's take a look at the new command in action.

First, let's look at the command itself. The new syntax is 

!research <description of task, wrapped in quotes> <name of Pokestop, not wrapped in quotes>

Meowth attempts to match the description of the task you supply with the list of known research tasks collected by The Silph Road. If it finds a match, it gets the list of possible rewards and lets you select from the list with a reaction as shown in the picture. If there are more than one possible Pokemon encounters as a reward, it includes an option for "Unknown Encounter", in case you picked up the task but did not complete it yet.

Once you select a reward, it builds the message and sends it like so, deleting the previous message with the options. It includes a Google Maps link to the Pokestop (also matched against the Pokestop data from your server, if you've uploaded one). It also includes the name of who reported the task and the expected time the research will expire. Users who complete (or obtain) the research task can hit the Research Stamp reaction below the message, and the number of users who complete the task is added to the score the reporter gets for having made the report!

OK, so what about the unknown encounter? Is there a way to report the Pokemon later once the task is completed? Yes, there is! If a research with an unknown encounter is marked completed with the stamp reaction, Meowth will ask that user if they know what Pokemon appears. Again, Meowth will display the possible choices and let the user select with a reaction.

That's all great, but what if Meowth can't make a match for the task description, or if it has multiple possibilities? Let's take a look.

Meowth asks you to type a description of the reward if it can't match the task. If it recognizes your response as an item or a Pokemon, it displays an image as above. If it doesn't recognize your response, it just takes it as an unknown item. Occasionally you can get some silly looking messages, but it roughly preserves your response if it doesn't recognize it as an item or Pokemon.

The End of The Betaginning

This is the last big feature I knew had to be in Meowth 3.0 before I felt comfortable calling it a release, so as of this moment, the current "beta" bot has had its status upgraded to release candidate! Please keep an eye out for more details about the transition from 2.0 to 3.0. I'm excited to finally be out of beta and hope everyone likes the new research. I'm sure it will be a while before people get used to the new syntax but I strongly feel that it's an improvement over the old system. I hope you agree.

Lastly, keep in mind that though this is a release candidate, it is still highly likely there will be bugs. Those of you in the beta know that though it's been buggy, the new code base is much easier to quickly deploy fixes for. I'll do what I can to address issues as they arise as quickly as possible.

Don't forget to let me know what you think of the new feature in our support server!