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Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Hello,

Given I more or less know how a bot like that should be built, I still have cpl problems with getting past some parts of it. Namely, how can I attack one mob at a time in a room when there's more than one mob present? Let me give an simple example.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

If anyone's able, please help. Basically I think I know how I'll fix a predetermined route on which the bot will travel (use #SLOW, and when a line with mob's desc will appear, it will attack and #PAUSE the #SLOW and once the fight is over it'll pick it up with #STEP again, least thats how i understand it). My problem is that how do I determine that the bot should only attack one mob in a room at a time, triggers shouldn't fire for every mob in room in any case. And as I said earlier, same would go if someone's already killing one/or more mobs in the room - bot just shouldn't try to attack those at all and either move on or attack the mob thats left in the room untouched in case there's any. Thats my problem here. Have thought a lot about it but I have no idea how to make it attack mobs in a room one by one (Mob line would trigger the attack, so if there's several mobs in room, it'll just attack to try every mob at once).

I really need help with this, thanks in advance.

Prog

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Ok, you have a couple of things to try.

First, you can create a trigger to test for a FIGHTING state. IE if you are in a fight already a trigger will not attempt to fight again.

Example.

#trigger {A mob is here.} {#if (@fighting=0) {fighting=1;kill mob}}

That will stop further lines from the mud from starting more fights.

Then you would need.

#trigger {You have slain a mob.} {fighting=0;look}

This would tell your bot that you are no longer fighting and to look in the same room for more mobs to kill.

#trigger {You have been slain by a mob.} {fighting=0;curse wildly}

This unfortunately sometimes happens.

The easiest way to deal with other players in the room is to simply LEAVE the room if there is someone there.

A lot of muds use ansi colors for player names. If your mud does you can use a trigger to set a variable that tells you to go to the next room. Or even just uses the #step command.

Another method is to create a string list of mobs in the room.

#trigger {A mob is here.} {mobs=%additem("mob",@mobs)}

Then when you get your prompt attack the first mob on the list and set your fighting variable to true.

When the mob dies.
kill %pop(mobs)

These are only meant to be GENERAL help. I'm not going to clarify or code any more examples here. Botting is illegal on many muds and can get to be a real bugger to code regardless. There should be a few examples in the finished scripts forum. Though I admit I haven't looked in there in years I think I saw a few.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

OK...

First question I got is that how do I make sure I'll only attack one mob in a room when I go to that room. What I mean is, when I trigger the attack based on mob's desc, it'll just fire the commands for attack to every mob in the room. That means it'll generate a lot of spam commands I don't like to happen. Of course, it will attack only one mob (though spamming commands for every single mob desc in process) so generally i could add look to check fighting status but imho then its too late because the spam is already over, anyway. Let me give you an example:

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 6:52 pm

#trigger {A mob is here.} {#if (@fighting=0) {fighting=1;kill mob}}
#trigger {You have slain a mob.} {fighting=0;look}

These triggers mean that the following will happen:

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Nope... Doesn't work.

I did the exact triggers for mob descs with the info you gave me.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

No one has any ideas how to accomplish this?

Prog

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Okay, as I can see I haven't gotten any help/feedback yet, I figured I'd throw out some ideas I have gotten along the way by myself and by going through finished scripts threads for like 100th of times...

First off,
http://forums.zuggsoft.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=17006

Thats Asm's script posted while back. Won't paste it here to avoid spam/long msg, so if there's anyone at all who'd feel like helping me out here, just use the link I gave. Anyway, I had a number of problems while playing around with it a little. Firstly, I couldn't get the trigger to resume walking after mob's dead to work at all. I do have different as that of Asm's for mob's death msg (Namely, lets say You receive 343 points of experience) and I did the same trigger using that syntax but nothing. As the same line is used within several other scripts I figured that could be the case and disabled everything else where its used and tried again. Still nothing. Tried with cpl of msgs that aren't in any use at all and still nothing. So I basically just ran out of ideas to try.

Anyway, now I started to wander around the zmud commands and trying different things myself (Yes, you're allowed to say 'I told you to research things on your own' :P) and ended up running into cpl more problems :P So here I go:

The experience line I mentioned before. I built

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Basically its nothing big at all so most of you programming buffs know what it means anyway. But here's my problem. At the moment, this trigger is firing after one mob in the room is dead which itself isn't bad. As this trigger makes it step only once in a random direction I made precicely same one for Exits line in my mud. And thats not a bad thing either. Based on those 2 triggers, its just wandering off itself after a mob in a room is dead. Anyway, herein lies my problem. I know that in general I can put that trigger into a different class (other than the class for my combat triggers) and disable it for the time I'm in fight. But what if there's more than one mob in the said room I want to kill? I know simple 'look' after a kill might solve the problem but how am I able to 1) make sure it always looks after a kill without wandering off 2) wandering off once there's nothing more to kill in a room. Those 2 problems bug the hell out of me at the moment. And I clearly lack the knowleadge to overcome them.

There still stays the third problem I have mentioned several times before, though. If there are several mobs in the room (to whom all I have made attack triggers via their desc) then how can I program it to only attack one mob at a time?
I know most of my questions might sound really stupid, but I'm trying to learn here, and most of the time I'm being hit by a brick wall, even here....

Thanks in advance.

Prog

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

I said above that I wouldn't elaborate, but I can see you are trying so here we go again.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Hopefully by the time you reach this post you have actually done what I said in the previous one and you fully understand the #IF command. This will help you with the next problem.

You want to kill ALL mobs in a room before you move on to the next room, and you do not know how to keep your bot from moving on.
Again I am not going to give you the simple answer and I am going to point to something I gave you in that first post.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Thanks a lot for the help, I really appreciate it. Now, I'm getting few problems with all the stuff you suggested me. Most likely my tireness has hit tho (had a long day) and I can't think straight enough, hence I'm more than certain that I went wrong somewhere but just in case I'll paste something I got together atm and then I'll tell about whats working and what isn't.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Okay...

Tried something else now (didn't work tho, but oh well...). I triggered the variable entry trigger with 2 'words' out of mob's desc, ie "A bodyguard". For the fighting trigger, I used whole line - "A bodyguard is standing here, looking all bored". By doing that, I basically created 2 different kinds of triggers from well, one line. So I figured it might work. And half-way it did - it created the @mobs variable with to "A bodyguard'-s in it. But that was it. The second trigger didn't fire any attack at all. The thing is that everything worked as you told it would with aliases you suggested me to make, but when I write all the thing into triggers, fighting variable seems to have stopped working. I really don't know what to think anymore. Have used more or less anything I understand/can wrap my mind on ... if there's some trick somewhere, I just don't know it... with all my very limited knowledge.

Prog

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Your code looks pretty good. You still have a few misconceptions about triggers though.

First trick. You can use the aliases I showed you inside of triggers.

Second trick. COMBINE the ideas I showed you separately

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Nods, thanks for pointing out the combing part, I clearly aint thinking clearly enough to realize all the options in my disposal yet (knowing too little etc...) :) However, basically the same thing happend that happend last time I tried my own coded I posted earlier and which was a lot less sophisticated. I turned 'show triggers' option on just to see how all the things are reacting and there it was...

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

Look at the help topic for #add It is for addition NOT adding items to a string list.

You may have been thinking of #additem But that is wrong also as it does not let you have more than one thing. IE only one bodyguard, only one rabbit in a list.

And finally TURN OFF THAT OPTION.

It will ALWAYS show you the same thing. It does not change based on which way the if went. If you have seen it once, you have seen enough.

You MUST use:

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Hello again!

So, I finally figured out why the fighting didn't work at all, and its a silly newb error for me as more or less always :P namely I didn't add #VA fighting into the bot class when I wrote it. Now all the fighting part is working 100% and only lacks some minor upgrades and such (some I already made tho) but nothing worth enough to mention.
Anyway, now I'm facing a new question as you figure I might :P Its about further movement. As I have posted earlier, I could use random directions based on info from a variable via %item etc but that idea doesn't really appeal to me to be honest. I know that the Asm's script I have also mentioned above posts uses #SLOW walk option with predetermined path and basically I'd like to use something along the same lines but at least at the moment, I can't figure out how I could get the whole thing working with it.
I tried though, added simple #PAUSE into the code for each trigger to make the #SLOW stop, do everything that needs to be done in a room and #STEP on with the mork alias. Makes sense, I figured. But it didn't work at all. It just ran the walk without doing nothing in rooms full with mobs at all.
Ideally, I'd like to move it within a set predetermined path that would start and end in one place and kill everything along the way. I guess there might be other options than using #SLOW (maybe mapper-based?) but as I already mentioned only idea I got and to be honest I guess only idea I know is the #SLOW walk one.

I'd be really grateful for any suggestion you're willing to make, thanks in advance.

Prog

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Hi again,

gonna write about one other issue I'm getting now, though. Its somewhat complicated to explain, but I'll try. Lets say I'm having a room with several mobs who have exactly the same desc (lets use the good ol' bodyguard example again). There's no problem to kill them all off with the current setup in case I'm the ONLY ONE in the room. Problems surface when there's one or more people in the room, killing the same mobs. Let me write that down to clear it up a little.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

#trigger {The bodyguard is already in a fight} {#gag;#gag;backstab bodyguard;#gag}

I hope you get the idea.

Give that a try

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Ok ... I'll give it a shot but unlikely it will work and I'm going to try to explain, why.
When there are several, letsay bodyguards in a room where I want to kill, they're keyworded all the same. Meaning I could ideally #GAG the lines where they're in fight, but doubtful it will change anything. Mobs variable will still catch the only bodyguard not in fight and fighting part will issue a 'backstab bodyguard' and MUD will still read it as me trying to backstab the first bodyguard in the room (The one already in a fight with someone else, as the one I should be killing is letssay second or third etc). I might be utterly mistaken though, but that was just my first thought I got.

Now, I hate to bug people a lot as it has turned out now, but during some parts my own knowleadge albeit slowly growing isn't enough. Thus I'm coming back to that movement part. Any ideas in that regard? (As I wrote earlier, only idea I'm getting is making it via #slow walk option but as I guess you can't just stop it when it encounters a line that should issue a fight, you need to pull #alarm in someway tho, I'm still pretty much in the dark of how those 2 should work together for the thing to actually work tho. )

Loads of thanks in advance, I really appreciate it.

Prog

oh one more thing regarding the #gag'ing part and all that. One idea I got pretty much during today. Is it possible to somehow use the #pick command to pick the correct mob off the list in case other mobs are in fight. I have no idea how to accomplish it tho because mobs can be in fight very randomly thus making it impossible to make some solid thing out of it. I don't know.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

I'll look back into the movement stuff later tonight...
See problem is I've made more than one of these things and if you look back I keep telling you the same thing over and over different ways until you understand them. Given the situation you have explained there are THREE possible ways to handle it.

First one.
LEAVE THE ROOM
Second one.
#GAG the lines telling you that someone else is fighting that and resend the backstab command.
To cut down on the spam you can also use the #send command.
#send {backstab bodyguard}
Note that you don't see the command get sent.
Third one
type a command in the mud that tells you the info number of every mob/object in the room or one that tells you the info number of the mob you are wishing to attack. Then target the one that is not fighting. The most complex one of the three and the most unlikely to work. Also it would create more spam than #2 and would thus cause you to need to gag more lines.

That's it. Pick one cause there is no more. Speaking of #PICK yes it could be done but if you haven't done #3 then you cannot do #PICK.

I've been coding all day elsewhere. Later tonight I'll look at the movement issue.

Newbie Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 8

Just a quick observation, I'm not sure if it's been covered already (I am definitely not reading all the blahblahblah on here,) but here's an easy out to for the spam kill;

#T- killtrigger {You backstab %w}

or {you attack}

or whatever your MUD uses. Then, include (along with the look command)

#T+ killtrigger {You slay %w}

That might work fairly well, but maybe you've solved that problem already

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

This post will summarize things up to this point and add in a method of walking about automatically. It will NOT handle players in the room fighting other mobs.

Everything in this post once pasted into the command line creates itself inside a class I named WalkBot.
Once all of the examples have been pasted in you will have a bot capable of walking from one point to another and stopping along the way to have scraps with bored bodyguards. ;-)

I will start with the triggers, as you should be able to understand them right away.

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

aristotle,
Heh, yeah I am a bit long-winded aren't I? *looks at the last post*

Unfortunately I DO already have that handled and turning off the trigger with T- at this point would not help. He's complaining about different spam.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

OKay... first off, let me express my biggest gratitude :)
Whole thing is working PERFECTLY! :) Have thought a lot about actions though I need to think for the occasions when someone's in the same room and perhaps leaving the room all together really makes the most sense. Haven't really had a good enough shot to try gagging idea though, but my belief is that even if I gag several lines, then send backstab mobname etc, MUD might still read it as backstabbing the first mob in the room. In that case I'll just get the "that mob is already in battle" msg. There is the idea to make a leaving trigger via that line though. Because clearly sometimes you have a lot of mobs killable in a room where's someone else is killing just one and in that case just leaving without doing a thing can seem pretty silly. So maybe triggering "that mob is already in battle" -> with morK alias could work, or something. Haven't really thought about it more deeply yet.
As I already mentioned before, all the movement is working perfectly. There is however, only detail left which I don't know even is possible to make but I figured I'll write about it. At the moment I put shortID's to every room I need to move in order to kill things. Let me clarify it with an example: