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the power of usersettings

O

odarn

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Jun 20, 2013
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If something is clear from the use of bots, that is their lack of versatility in real time. Profiles, with their linear execution, do not make things any better. The user setting page of HB is a typical yes/no frame. You want to kill mobs between hotspots? Check this square. Same for gathering ore and herbs. Either you want to do it, or you don't. And if you do, don't complain if your toon makes a detour in an enemy camp to gather an herb or an ore. Never mind that it aggroes half the camp doing that! Nobody made you check that, right?
Still, the settings page could be a very powerful programming tool for everybody, not only profile writers. But then, instead of yes/no. or check/unchek items, there should be pull down menus for each item: the equivalent of AND and OR conditions.
Let us take the previous example: toon in enemy camp. How can you keep it gathering ore and herbs only when it is convenient?
Well, the question is really: when would YOU gather, and when would YOU refrain from doing it?
The problem is of course, what is called "situation awareness". A very fancy expression that means nothing more than this: a series of conditions must be present before an action can take place.
For instance:
- more than 3 mobs close to item? OR
- off the path of quest? OR
- ...
THEN forget it.
That is all there is to situation awareness really. And without pretending to be able to give to a bot the same SA as a human, imagine what you could do with user settings that would be so flexible.

edit: I just realized that it already has been done for kiting. So, what I am advocating is certainly feasible.
 
my friend, i do believe you are confusing A.I with (ro)bots. situational awareness is what defines humans as, well... humans. a bot will only work with predetermined functions. profiles are designed for one set thing, whether it be farm a mount from stone core to or gather herbs in a set area, all these profiles have <blacklists> to avoid certain areas and/or mobs. if your using a profile with problems, contact the author or mod the profile yourself to include set mobs/towns in the blacklist. i do welcome your idea but i dont think we (as a society) isnt even remotely close to A.I. tech
 
highboi said:
my friend, i do believe you are confusing A.I with (ro)bots. situational awareness is what defines humans as, well... humans. a bot will only work with predetermined functions. profiles are designed for one set thing, whether it be farm a mount from stone core to or gather herbs in a set area, all these profiles have <blacklists> to avoid certain areas and/or mobs. if your using a profile with problems, contact the author or mod the profile yourself to include set mobs/towns in the blacklist. i do welcome your idea but i dont think we (as a society) isnt even remotely close to A.I. tech
Click to expand...
I do not think I am confusing anything with anything. The whole point is to have better bots. For that we have to look at the way humans do things, and see how much of that can be put into program instructions. And botting can be considered as an area of AI. A very practical one. There are many scientific articles on the use of gaming environments in the study of A.I. Botting and A.I belong together.
 
I am still learning C#, so it will be a while before I could do it. Still, my goal would be to do away with profiles altogether. Instead i would have a user menu where you could chose many different settings, but also which quests you want to do.
Like Morpheus would say:

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
Quests in each zone
quest items and mobs
flight paths (once you can control the number of times the toon visits the flightmaster to update nodes, you need to do it only once)
settings for each quest, quest mob or item (Interactwith, kill, gossip, etc)
SOME THINGS DO
user preferences: loot, harvest, skin, grind.

All this could be programmed by any newbie with the right tool.
Maybe i would keep profiles for quests overrides, list of vendors and mailboxes.
After all, xml is not a programming language.
By using C#, but mostly the user interface, we would avoid the biggest problem of all: the linearity of profiles.
 
Sounds like you need to get familiar with the Honorbuddy API and C# and write a botbase =)
 
C# isn't that hard to learn with a little time and patience invested.
You can download Visual Studio Express for free from Microsoft, which will get you started.
Also there are plenty of resources on the interwebs that will help you along.
 
solo1420 said:
C# isn't that hard to learn with a little time and patience invested.
You can download Visual Studio Express for free from Microsoft, which will get you started.
Also there are plenty of resources on the interwebs that will help you along.
Click to expand...
it was no problem getting to know the basics, i already had experience in programming in assembler and C (++). But it is another story altogether to write the code of such a program. That will take a little longer. But maybe a more experienced C# programmer will rise up to the challenge?
 
I have just had the chance to look up Highvoltz professionbuddy: it is a very nice piece of work and certainly a big step in the right direction!
 
It's fully doable to code it, you can do it with a plugin of your own, get to it.
 
There is a fine balance between speed and utility. We want speed in any bot and utility. Once you start making a bot more user programmable placing conditions then it needs to think longer and sacrifices speed.
 
BubbaDad said:
There is a fine balance between speed and utility. We want speed in any bot and utility. Once you start making a bot more user programmable placing conditions then it needs to think longer and sacrifices speed.
Click to expand...
That is of course right. More choices mean more computing time. But that does not mean that all choices must be denied. The user can certainly decide what is an acceptable overhead, just like he gets to chose the graphical settings of a game and be satisfied with the corresponding image quality and frame rate.
 
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