Bazaar bots

provocating · #1 01-02-2011, 11:22 AM

Has anyone ever done an auction bot ? I was just asking because i also run a Trinity Core server and there is an AHBOT that someone created. Pretty damn cool since it buys and sells items. I got very positive reviews when I added the code to my server. I was thinking this should not be too hard to implement in the EqEmulator server. There again I would not want to recreate the wheel if someone has already done it, or may even be able to build off of existing code. The most I have come up with is someone has created merchants that sell gear in the bazaar.

Secrets · #2 01-02-2011, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by provocating

Has anyone ever done an auction bot ? I was just asking because i also run a Trinity Core server and there is an AHBOT that someone created. Pretty damn cool since it buys and sells items. I got very positive reviews when I added the code to my server. I was thinking this should not be too hard to implement in the EqEmulator server. There again I would not want to recreate the wheel if someone has already done it, or may even be able to build off of existing code. The most I have come up with is someone has created merchants that sell gear in the bazaar.

I've been thinking about implementing something like this in perl for a while now.

Wouldn't be *that* hard with perl's DBI module.

Just gotta make a table to store items you hand to an NPC, and then have someone who can buy the items search like they do normally in the bazaar, just with mysql queries in perl instead of C++. Table doesn't have to be complex either; just id, itemid, sellername, price, sold (this will be one or zero.)

Hopefully that lets you brainstorm a bit,

provocating · #3 01-02-2011, 02:05 PM

I am going to get started on this. I have taken PERL classes years ago and have about 20 PERL books around work and my house. It will just take me a while to get back into the groove of things. In fact since I have learned other languages since playing with PERL, it should make more sense to me now.

What they do in Trinity Core is have the BOT buy items in intervals until he reaches his MAX, then he quits. Same with buying, in intervals he will buy auction items for a random price with a min, and max amount. One thing that does pose a question, do all items in PEQ have a buy / sell price and are they realistic ? If not that is going to be the hardest work for me.

provocating · #4 01-03-2011, 02:47 PM

The more I think about it, I am not sure this can be done in Perl alone, maybe someone can tell me if it can be done in Perl.

I do not want your standard NPC merchants that I have seen implemented in the past. I want these to have trader satchels with items and the NPC's actually put the items up for sale. This way the player could actually use the Bazaar window to find items, like in live. The NPC's would give random calls pulled out of a table, maybe pull the item names from the table and the asking price, this would be done with variables. The call would be at random times, with the text also being random and pulled from a large pool of possibilities. The merchants would also need to buy the players items if he auctions them, at random times. This would force the player to actually use the auction system and the NPC auctioneer would buy the players items at a lower cost than what he would sell it back for. This sounds like it would be hard to do, but very possible. I am just not sure if I will have to edit the zone file or I could do it all in Perl.

Huppy · #5 01-07-2011, 04:23 PM

I would love to see something like that implemented on the server/db.
On live right now, they have a couple of npc's in the pok selling defiant
gear for various levels, which is something I thought about doing for my
server, but it would be kewl to have some bots in Baz, with items that
are searchable with the /baz window.

provocating · #6 01-10-2011, 09:32 AM

So my first step is going to be to have them equip the trader satchels, is this possible ? I am going through each and every Perl object under quest, and also some of the other objects but not seeing it yet. I plan on doing a more exhaustive search at lunch today.

provocating · #7 01-10-2011, 11:10 AM

I am thinking that the whole idea of an NPC holding a traders satchel, and moving items in an out of a database may not work. I guess the whole bazaar trader deal is client side correct ? So even if I could get an NPC to equip a satchel, and put things in it I still could not get them to actually turn on the trader function ?

If all else fails I could rather easily just do this. Set up a spawn point, make that spawn point randomly spawn maybe 10 vendors, each with a 10 percent chance of being spawned. Each vendor has different items. The vendors have player names instead of npc names, makes it more real. Have them do random calls, at random times. This would give an element of randomness. That vendor stays there for an amount of time then despawns at a random time, then it repeats. Do this for maybe 50-100 spawn points would be a start. It is not what I want though. What I actually want are the items randomly generated. As far as getting the items in the database and random items that seems easy with MySQL DBI statements in the vendor Perl file. It is getting that NPC to do the trader things I am getting stuck at.

**Akkadius** · #8 01-10-2011, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by provocating

The more I think about it, I am not sure this can be done in Perl alone, maybe someone can tell me if it can be done in Perl.

I do not want your standard NPC merchants that I have seen implemented in the past. I want these to have trader satchels with items and the NPC's actually put the items up for sale. This way the player could actually use the Bazaar window to find items, like in live. The NPC's would give random calls pulled out of a table, maybe pull the item names from the table and the asking price, this would be done with variables. The call would be at random times, with the text also being random and pulled from a large pool of possibilities. The merchants would also need to buy the players items if he auctions them, at random times. This would force the player to actually use the auction system and the NPC auctioneer would buy the players items at a lower cost than what he would sell it back for. This sounds like it would be hard to do, but very possible. I am just not sure if I will have to edit the zone file or I could do it all in Perl.

Yes, it could be done in Perl. Infact I was just thinking about this once again because I wanted to get to this months ago, but wasn't something I wanted to attack right now. I could have something functional in a short while.

provocating · #9 01-10-2011, 01:09 PM

Just the code to make an npc hold the satchel and equip it, then turn on trading would be enough. I am just stuck at this part. Maybe there is some undocumented functions I am not aware of.

**Derision** · #10 01-10-2011, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by provocating

Just the code to make an npc hold the satchel and equip it, then turn on trading would be enough. I am just stuck at this part. Maybe there is some undocumented functions I am not aware of.

All the bazaar code assume that the Trader is a client (e.g. when you buy something off a Trader, the server sends packets to it to remove the item from it's inventory, add the purchase price, etc.).

As it stands right now, you can't make an NPC a Bazaar trader ... you'd have to cook something up using NPC merchants as you suggest.

provocating · #11 01-10-2011, 02:46 PM

That is what I needed, a definitive answer is cannot be done. I will just code up boatload of bots with different gear as merchants, but have them doing random stuff. Random is good.

provocating · #12 01-11-2011, 01:59 PM

I am sure this will take a while for me to complete. I was going to go for 5 different NPC's for each spawn point but that really seems counterproductive. Instead I am going to start with 100 npc's with 50 spawn points, 50 percent chance per point. After I look at the Bazaar I may bump it up to more spawns if it looks empty. This is going to take me quite a while to complete. Even after the spawns are complete I will need to script each and every NPC with some type of shouts in the bazaar, random ones. I am thinking a small amount of the bots have a proximity say going, or maybe emotes.

I have a question for everyone though, where does the PEQ database get it's pricing for items from ? I have never paid any attention to the prices of items till now but looking at something as simple as Centi items, I notice two items can have a drastic difference in price.

Chanus · #13 01-11-2011, 02:19 PM

I believe pricing is attached to the item itself, and then the variance on vendors is a field on the merchant itself... and then there's things like CHA modifying prices, but that shouldn't come into to play in the Bazaar.

provocating · #14 01-11-2011, 02:31 PM

Well I know that

I need to know where the data was gathered from ?

Chanus · #15 01-11-2011, 02:37 PM

Oh, you mean like what determines the price of anything?

I would guess it was just mined off Lucy ( lucy.allakhazam.com )