Since we're all on cooldown waiting for the new version of WoW to be available, I thought I'd mention my experiences with HonorBuddy, and make some suggestions to the authors.
I've had HonorBuddy for about 2 weeks now. The only bots I can get to work, are 'PvP' and 'Questing - Beta'. When I choose 'grinding', it just sits there and does nothing, and displays no error. So, I've been using these two bots exclusively.
It crashes a lot. And by a lot, I mean every time, and usually I get about 1 hour of playtime out of it before it does. Does this happen to everyone else? It's always a memory error in WoW that caused the crash - 'memory could not be read'. My machine is up to spec - it's got 8 gigs memory, Windows 7, and was built by me last year.
Still, I love this program. It's the best screen saver ever. :-D But it does NOT run unattended, and after 2 weeks, I'm only level 40, because of all the crashes and my day job.
On my day job, I'm a computer programmer, with 23 years experience. I've been writing my own custom class, because the custom class provided for the hunter, is insufficient. My bot will eat any eligible food from my bag, so if I run out of one food, it can switch and keep going. If it runs out of ammo, it will look for and equip any appropriate-level ammo it finds in your bags. It puts the potions on a cooldown timer, so it won't try to repeatedly drink potions in combat. It will use bandages in combat. It has a custom spell database and manages the cooldowns on its own, because the information you get when you examine the spell using the Spell class is faulty. The default class provided was trying to cast the same spell too often - either drinking potions every round and causing WoW to generate hundreds of error messages, or casting 'revive pet' over and over because it won't wait for the 10 second cast time. By managing it myself, I can tweak the cooldowns from their actual setting, so I can do things like set the cooldown to a minute instead of 10 seconds. This way, it lets me control how often I attempt to feed my pet, so when my pet is unhappy and I'm out of food, it won't just sit there, feeding my pet until I die. It will attempt to feed my pet only once per minute, ignoring the happiness meter in between.
I got it tweaked to my satisfaction, and trotted it on out to the battlefield, and saw it needed more tweaking. :-D In the end, I was very pleased with how it was fighting, but it doesn't make me an automatic winner - rogues still kill me in 2 seconds flat, despite stealth detection, 'track hidden', and using flares. The only difference between using my bot, and playing by hand, is I can 'keep up' with them - I play as fast as they do now, circling as they circle to keep them in front, and can sometimes get in a hit or two before I die. I thought maybe it was my gear, so I have been sure to keep fully equipped with whatever latest battleground bit I can buy, but it could just be that the rogues are overpowered. Anyways, making my own custom class was quite fun! I considered putting it out there as a new custom Hunter class for people to use, but then I thought - why would I do that? Other people would just use it to "pwn my face" in the battlefield. :-D How many others out there have a custom class they've written, that they're keeping secret? ;-) But I might release it anyway, because in the end, it wasn't so overpowered after all.
Regarding the programming of it - I can tell whoever made this MUST be quite clever. I've made bots before (for 2D programs), but this bot looks quite advanced, and nothing like I'd want to tackle on my own. But can we talk about documentation? You know what I'm talking about.
'Ooh, what does THIS function do?' 'Who knows, nothing comes up in intellisense.' I shouldn't be forced to examine other people's code to figure out that there IS a way to do a manual click for an AOE spell, for instance. There really should be documentation for the functions, so Intellisense would give us a clue, at least. If there was, we'd have an easier time of it making custom classes
The questing beta will sell items from your backpacks that it needs to finish quests, such as 'hunk of boar meat', and you have to go manually finish those quests. It sells items it ought not to, such as 'Spider Silk', and items that are bind on equip, that I would normally auction. However, since the grindbot dropdown doesn't work for me, I use it anyway. Many times it would attempt to turn in the same quest over and over again without the items, or pick up a quest that didn't exist, and I had to either manually go get the quest item, or edit the XML file to remove the quest. Can you put that inside a safety loop, and stop trying after 10 attempts or so? And blacklist the quest automatically when that happens?
When I start up the program, it almost always says authentication failed. I try again, and have to click it about 10 times before it lets me in. One night, I had to click like a hundred times, so I quit the program, restarted it, and did it some more. It never did let me in that night, and I finally gave up in frustration. However, it DID manage to spew out the 'license count exceeded' message, which was bogus, because I'm the only one using it and I have 6 licenses. You shouldn't mark an account as 'in use', until they've successfully completed the login process.
We need a new bot - one that does combat for you only, but lets you steer it and pick the fights. I've modified the battlefield profile and removed the hotspots as a hacky way of doing this, but it fills up the log with 'no grinding or hotspot set' messages.
So in short - it's great, it crashes a lot and so can't be used while AFK. It needs documentation, even just internal code comments that are exposed to the developer would suffice. The program as a whole needs documentation - you shouldn't expect users to guess their way through it, like this. The GrindBot doesn't work, or is so insufficiently documented that a power user can't figure it out. The authentication servers need hardening, or you need a better algorithm for switching between them - don't make us see that 'authentication failed' message EVERY time and force us to click again.
Great job, guys! It's the best screensaver ever. :-D It lets you fight as fast as young boys with twitch reflexes, even though you're older. I hope you get the crashes figured out and fixed with this next patch. And yes, I saw your "gtfo" cartoon - here's the log from the latest crash. As you can see, it ran about 50 minutes before crashing, which is typical.
--Kamilche
I've had HonorBuddy for about 2 weeks now. The only bots I can get to work, are 'PvP' and 'Questing - Beta'. When I choose 'grinding', it just sits there and does nothing, and displays no error. So, I've been using these two bots exclusively.
It crashes a lot. And by a lot, I mean every time, and usually I get about 1 hour of playtime out of it before it does. Does this happen to everyone else? It's always a memory error in WoW that caused the crash - 'memory could not be read'. My machine is up to spec - it's got 8 gigs memory, Windows 7, and was built by me last year.
Still, I love this program. It's the best screen saver ever. :-D But it does NOT run unattended, and after 2 weeks, I'm only level 40, because of all the crashes and my day job.
On my day job, I'm a computer programmer, with 23 years experience. I've been writing my own custom class, because the custom class provided for the hunter, is insufficient. My bot will eat any eligible food from my bag, so if I run out of one food, it can switch and keep going. If it runs out of ammo, it will look for and equip any appropriate-level ammo it finds in your bags. It puts the potions on a cooldown timer, so it won't try to repeatedly drink potions in combat. It will use bandages in combat. It has a custom spell database and manages the cooldowns on its own, because the information you get when you examine the spell using the Spell class is faulty. The default class provided was trying to cast the same spell too often - either drinking potions every round and causing WoW to generate hundreds of error messages, or casting 'revive pet' over and over because it won't wait for the 10 second cast time. By managing it myself, I can tweak the cooldowns from their actual setting, so I can do things like set the cooldown to a minute instead of 10 seconds. This way, it lets me control how often I attempt to feed my pet, so when my pet is unhappy and I'm out of food, it won't just sit there, feeding my pet until I die. It will attempt to feed my pet only once per minute, ignoring the happiness meter in between.
I got it tweaked to my satisfaction, and trotted it on out to the battlefield, and saw it needed more tweaking. :-D In the end, I was very pleased with how it was fighting, but it doesn't make me an automatic winner - rogues still kill me in 2 seconds flat, despite stealth detection, 'track hidden', and using flares. The only difference between using my bot, and playing by hand, is I can 'keep up' with them - I play as fast as they do now, circling as they circle to keep them in front, and can sometimes get in a hit or two before I die. I thought maybe it was my gear, so I have been sure to keep fully equipped with whatever latest battleground bit I can buy, but it could just be that the rogues are overpowered. Anyways, making my own custom class was quite fun! I considered putting it out there as a new custom Hunter class for people to use, but then I thought - why would I do that? Other people would just use it to "pwn my face" in the battlefield. :-D How many others out there have a custom class they've written, that they're keeping secret? ;-) But I might release it anyway, because in the end, it wasn't so overpowered after all.
Regarding the programming of it - I can tell whoever made this MUST be quite clever. I've made bots before (for 2D programs), but this bot looks quite advanced, and nothing like I'd want to tackle on my own. But can we talk about documentation? You know what I'm talking about.
'Ooh, what does THIS function do?' 'Who knows, nothing comes up in intellisense.' I shouldn't be forced to examine other people's code to figure out that there IS a way to do a manual click for an AOE spell, for instance. There really should be documentation for the functions, so Intellisense would give us a clue, at least. If there was, we'd have an easier time of it making custom classesThe questing beta will sell items from your backpacks that it needs to finish quests, such as 'hunk of boar meat', and you have to go manually finish those quests. It sells items it ought not to, such as 'Spider Silk', and items that are bind on equip, that I would normally auction. However, since the grindbot dropdown doesn't work for me, I use it anyway. Many times it would attempt to turn in the same quest over and over again without the items, or pick up a quest that didn't exist, and I had to either manually go get the quest item, or edit the XML file to remove the quest. Can you put that inside a safety loop, and stop trying after 10 attempts or so? And blacklist the quest automatically when that happens?
When I start up the program, it almost always says authentication failed. I try again, and have to click it about 10 times before it lets me in. One night, I had to click like a hundred times, so I quit the program, restarted it, and did it some more. It never did let me in that night, and I finally gave up in frustration. However, it DID manage to spew out the 'license count exceeded' message, which was bogus, because I'm the only one using it and I have 6 licenses. You shouldn't mark an account as 'in use', until they've successfully completed the login process.
We need a new bot - one that does combat for you only, but lets you steer it and pick the fights. I've modified the battlefield profile and removed the hotspots as a hacky way of doing this, but it fills up the log with 'no grinding or hotspot set' messages.
So in short - it's great, it crashes a lot and so can't be used while AFK. It needs documentation, even just internal code comments that are exposed to the developer would suffice. The program as a whole needs documentation - you shouldn't expect users to guess their way through it, like this. The GrindBot doesn't work, or is so insufficiently documented that a power user can't figure it out. The authentication servers need hardening, or you need a better algorithm for switching between them - don't make us see that 'authentication failed' message EVERY time and force us to click again.
Great job, guys! It's the best screensaver ever. :-D It lets you fight as fast as young boys with twitch reflexes, even though you're older. I hope you get the crashes figured out and fixed with this next patch. And yes, I saw your "gtfo" cartoon - here's the log from the latest crash. As you can see, it ran about 50 minutes before crashing, which is typical.
--Kamilche
