Grouping Issue - Bot Doesn't Rejoin Group After Zoning
 

Just a heads up for anyone who may have seen this...


Apparently, there is a minor grouping bug when it comes to bots and zoning.

Any bot with the same (database) id as someone in their group (i.e., their owner) will fail to rejoin the group after zoning.

Camping and re-inviting the affected bot resolves the issue..but, this will not keep it from re-occurring the next time a zoning action is taken.

This probaby will affect mercs as well once they are 'better' implemented, since they require a group slot as well.


The chances of this occurring to any one person are astronomical under normal conditions (over 1 in 4 billion, plus...)

I only happened to stumbled across this because I reset all of my auto-increment fields in the database back to 0.


I have no plans to fix this singular issue because of its rarity and the conditions required to reproduce it - the code works, otherwise.

It should, however, be addressed in any rework of the grouping/raiding code.

I was about to post a bug thread about this, but found this. You mentioned it being 1 in 4 billion, but there is something else going on because this happens all the time on my server Descent of Darkness.

The hub zone is pok, and it happens to almost everyone when they zone back to pok. They go to the buffer, but the bots are not in the group and stand still at spawn loc unless you disband the group and re-invite them. Strange thing is it doesn't happen when you are in the zone solo, but when there are several players in pok with bot groups out, this happens almost every time you zone back to pok with a bot group out. Any ideas how to fix? Its a minor annoyance but would be great to be rid of.
Thanks

The bug I mentioned is very specific to a bot id matching a player's id already in the group.

It also occurs with every zoning into any zone.


If I had to guess, based on your use of pok as a 'hub' zone, and knowing some of the issues with groups using bots..

..I'd say that the group object was never consumed when they left pok and the bots and/or client is being assigned to an old group object because
the zone hasn't shut down since their last visit - one that doesn't match their current group id.


I've tried to add code to 'consume' the group object in several places..but, that ended up causing server crashes and it had to be removed.

I'll make sure this is on my list..but, I can't promise anything since it may take a complete re-write of the group code to fix it.

Its not a major issue, more of an inconvenience so there is no real rush for a fix, just something I had been wondering about for awhile. I appreciate all you have done to improve bots over the years, Thanks!

Is the bug yet there if make a bot same name a player makes player go LD if spawn it i know that used be used as a way get traders offline on a server a person used do ages ago.

I ran into this issue. For me, the easiest solution was just to ensure they didn't have overlapping indexes. If you haven't created bots, it is as easy as...

ALTER TABLE bot_data AUTO_INCREMENT = 1001;

to ensure bot ID started at 1001 (or whatever other number is above the number of players you will ever have).

If you already have bots, it is a little more tricky. Just be sure to delete all the bot buffs and stances so that you can renumber the existing bots into the new range. Then be sure to replace the stances. The bots will obviously rebuff themselves so you don't have to worry about trying to save that data.