robotbob

IMHO its this piece that would cause the delay. A very rough blocking sockets way to poll for incoming data. I imagine it will miss things, since you have recv timeout + 100 ms.

I logged in to talk to markusweck and logged back out and then could never log in again. I have been working on a bot for doa and have been a helpful and kind player, but then i read and read and found that my info reports this: I am really confused? I try to help out new players by giving them things. I am polite to all I talk to. I was trying to log on to give a player name shrinkz a couple of free helms and have been able to do so. I feel bad because I try to keep my word. I think my password is lonng enough to prevent me from account from being attacked. I am basically blown away about this. Robotbob

Thank you sir. I am an older player who remembers the quake aim bot days and totally deplores the use of a game client for lazy purposes. Thanks again for a great game. robotbob

perhaps this is it. I looked through my logs for the last 24hrs and they are rather boring. mined 11k coal for marcusweck, did several bags into hyper. pm'd him and he paid me in the bag. stay around so he could close the iron bag. added 536 iron to it. i ended up forgetting and left with a pickaxe. pm'd to confirm he new the bags position. and thanked him. try a little german with him but it was probably terrible and with poor grammar. I know I messed up a few wordd orders. Helped a new player named aylis, sold s\he fur cheap and taught s\he how to make thread. pm'd a guy shrinkz to sell him leather helms, but I was taking too long at the coal so I offered them for free since this is the first time he bought from me. sold iron swords to a guy in IP named Gensisx for 120gc each. sold a player name Ctrain leather pants for 70gc, he asked about a fur cloak, i have several so I gave him one on the *new buyer* gift notion. said hi to morabelon a good friend and offer to buy some silver. hung around eternalylost in votd, like i have done for several days and colllect his leftovers with his permission. sold puma to shadowwalker, he accidently overpaid by 3300 gc, I told him and gave him his money. sold 800 wolf furs to celticlady the last pm from ermingator, saying hi, i accidently replied in german, but apologized and said hi, the phone rang and I had to disconnect... talked with BarronNeverMore sold to darkenedauras, gave her 500 bone because of the coal delay, sold her 100 rbt and 150 hes. did a book run for liddda into naralik. I may have missed somethings. i can go back over. alot of this is from memory. I have a really strong one. I don't think any of these people think I am a bot or something. I love this game

the bot is another thing. robotbob is my regular and only player char. the bot i am developing is only on the testserver called robotbobs_bot and one the test server I use an account: dev_bobsbot to talk to him. robotbob, despite the name, is entirely human. It is name I have used for years. I made an autonmous robot (with microcontrollers) and named it that. Then i started using it as an online name. i still get one "inv" pm and hour, despite being quite human. Do you think this is the source of the confusion ?

Ok yes. i just realized the client code itself references the protocol with decimal. (I packet sniff most, so intitally I saw this in hex) Just a personal wish, I never use decimal values in cmps. But for this project, it differs from the design of the app itself. I understand. Ok, then I'll make sure the examples I present use sdl. At least a generic non-langauge, non-platform data types are going to be used. robotbob

Hello all, Great! After speaking with vegar about a wiki, in the neighborhood of 24-48 hrs ago, the doc is coming to life! Some ideas and wishes: I would like the data type to stay in the byte, word, dword ; instead of the C-sque data types. Like a format specification for a file fomat. Personally I prefer seeing the protocol byte listed as hexadecimal, instead of decimal. But perhaps decimal is the best to prevent confusion. Here is a blurb from a rar spec doc: Each block begins with following fields: HEAD_CRC 2 bytes CRC of total block or block part HEAD_TYPE 1 byte Block type HEAD_FLAGS 2 bytes Block flags HEAD_SIZE 2 bytes Block size ADD_SIZE 4 bytes Optional field - added block size Declared block types: HEAD_TYPE=0x72 marker block HEAD_TYPE=0x73 archive header HEAD_TYPE=0x74 file header HEAD_TYPE=0x75 comment header HEAD_TYPE=0x76 extra information HEAD_TYPE=0x77 subblock HEAD_TYPE=0x78 recovery record Just my first thoughts over coffee, robotbob

Hello, After an hour of work, my bot now log ins, and can respond to pms. The whitepaper is coming right along side it. (Its logins, has a message que and sends heartbeat packets) And now for my question: Is the bot required to send replies to ping requests do you have to send a version packet (I assume the same as the current client) I need for both the bot and an the whitepaper, the expected behavoirs of the bot. I am assuming I must fully emulate the el client short of the graphical handling. I have read the el client source in depth, but obviously it can't answer this question. Thanks in advance, robotbob (eric)

Yes. I was able to log in without a problem and persist the bot's connection without it. Good. I am glad to hear its not needed. I presumed it was only used for keeping client version up to date and disconnect and redirecting old version of the client. So it seems I only need to login and send heartbeat packets (I am using the clients numbers of 25 second intervals) to keep them bot alive. Perhaps I could implement the ping section to judge the bot's latency. robotbob (eric)

Hello all, I have begun creating a bot (in assembler) and have examine the very nice example bots available and the current source tree of the el client. My question is there a *Bot Protocol Whitepaper* I could get. Granted I will create and finish the bot with the client as my only example, but it would make the task easier if I had something similair to an RFC for the expected data sent and received. I've created POP3\SMTP clients and grocery list of socket apps, and all of these where made quite easy with an RFC. (and btw once done, ill port it to several languages and GPL it) Thanks in advance, robotbob (aka Eric Asbell )

Ok. I understand. its just a language thing. What a C programmer sees as a struct, is a linear chunk of bytes to me. Its just faster (for me) to see the raw bytes instead of a language abstracted data type. I'll look at both, and I will make available the docs I make for those who are used to the approach I take. In C you array[0][1] things, but I need to think in terms of index and displacement as in ( packet is has a dword header 4 bytes, second dword pointer to an ascii buffer, etc...) (Sidebar: I am comfortable with C, the first language I learn 15 yrs ago, but I am a much faster guy in assembly for parsing any sort of data) Thanks for your help learner Hopefully the contributions I make are helpful. robotbob (eric)

its actually easier for me at least. Instead of wading through a ton of sprintf and other c calls. The main reason is the language I use, the raw data is far more useful than the C blobs of ascii formating. Much like creating a Unrar program but you told "everyone just looks at <name> unrar client" instead of reading a format doc for the rar file format. The way i will handle the bytes to send and parse is far different than a C programmer will do. Ok fine enough, I just do it as I planned. Eric

Well a shame. I will then need to create one during development. It strikes me as odd , given the: *number of bots *length of time the project has existed. I'll just use a packet capture to ensure I am emulating the client properly. robotbob