Question: How hard would it be to add a

#bot track [Target] --- Target bot, if druid or ranger, gives a list of all mobs on track radius.
#bot track (mob) [target] --- Bot turns to face (or even better, runs towards) tracked mob.

command?

Not super easy, but i'll put it on my list of future bot commands.

No big deal (or hurry), if you don't bother with it. I'll just stick with static encounters as much as possible, or level a ranger if I get desperate.

Hey I'd just like to say thank you for all the hard work your doing, it's an excellent mod with few bugs. Also I believe you run the Realm 1119+ Botnewspell server, if so I think it might be down seeing as how when I connect, it doesn't load to char and boots me to main screen I went to my log and found
I also tried to ping your server and
I love your server (assuming it's yours) so if you could take a look i'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
Dumplation

Additional information
The server went down after Ikeren and I teamed up our bots to kill Garudon (not realizing he had been modified) so in that zone there were about 110 bots. We killed Garudon and then the server crashed that was approximately 2:30 Thursday August 14th EST.
I can get to other servers just not this one, so I'm assuming that it's crashed or down

How do I go about setting this up on my server? I have the current release and the database tables seem to be there, but I can't use any bot commands, is there a variable I need to add?

I have to say that this project is amazing! I have allways wanted to build a more solo friendly version of EQ and I've been using perl to do most of it. All we need to do now is add some random back and fourth /ooc chat from npc's and we'll be set :)

There's a release thread next to this one that has the latest available version. You could use that version or merge the #ifdef EQBOTS sections into the current source and rebuild if you like.

Oh I saw that, but I thought these were part of the release now? and I have the latest.

not part of the emu, this is custom code. you need to add the cpp and h files to vc2005 and add EQBOTS to the preprocessor as well.

The last half of that sentence read like this blahblahblahblah :) sorry, i'm just at the beginning stages of understanding code and compiling it. I'll wait for a release. Thank you very much for your help.

I have mine up and running with the bots, all you have to do is download and play But is all custom and uses my custom database.
You're welcome to it all.

I followed your database quite a while back, but when I recently started over it just seemed easier to jump to PEQ... I remember you had many special components that worked together to make spawns rare and more live like. I especialy loved your work on Yekesha and I stayed with every update back then :)

I downloaded everything, maybe ill give it a go

The next Everquest Live expansion due out Oct. 21 2008 "Seeds of Destruction" will have BOTS!

I wonder where they got that idea from ? :)

That's correct, warrior does not taunt undead
But this will fix the Warrior Bot to taunt undead;
In special_attacks.cpp at around line 1010;
What's in red is what was changed (used to be !=).

I've already fixed this, it will be in my next release when I'm done with the new spell lists.

You're posting releases? thats nice - where are they posted at?

I've been posting releases in this thread since emu build 1090, but since this thread has grown too large it's a pain to read every post so it's easy to miss. There's a new release thread set up now in this section of the forums, but I haven't made a release in it yet.

I've been working on new spell lists for each class and it is a tedious and long process(I think you made the npc lists so probably know this) so during that time some other people have made a release or two with some of the code submissions that were not in the emu build at the time. I only have Beastlord, Bard and Ranger spell lists left to do and once done maybe a bit of tweaking and debugging before I make a new release with the latest emu source. I have 1127 now but it has a group bug in it that is supposedly fixedin 1128 but that download doesn't seem to be available.

I may have missed this among the 47+ pages of posts, but i was curios to know if there was a way to spawn bots and group them with 1 or 2 macro buttons. so far i have all bots spawning with 1 button, then i have to target each one and group them, backing up and moving forward between each add so that i could target the next bot. kind of a pain when you zone and the bots go bye bye.

maybe like a #bot group add <id> or #bot group add <name>?

I've used up about 8 pages in the socials buttons for macro's using the bots. There's a place for the name of the macro and five lines you can use for your bot commands. Here's an example I use for adding a Necromancer Bot to my group:
I copied this from the [Socials] section of my <charactername>_<servershortname>.ini file (Condar_Realm.ini)
The /pause 's are needed to give time for the game to spawn the bot and for targeting lag.
Don't forget the three zero's Necromancer000 at the end of the name, because if you ever have to resummon bots to reform a group after a battle, you will target the pet instead and that macro wont work. I've never looked too deeply at why the 000's are part of the bot names, but they are.

For the second group of bots you create you will need to form a raid. The first two macro's for the second group are used to create the raid and add the first two bots:
There are some other macro's i've made for raid targets. Some bosses get ENRAGED ability so I use this:
This stops all bots attacking (the ones that continue to get whacked will retaliate). To make them start attacking after the enraged attack, you must make them follow you as a leader again using(this works for the whole bot raid):
For encounters with multiple targets there's a way to make "offtank" groups attack a different target than the main target. Just select the new target and use:
The bot command structure needs to be refined, here #bot offtank WarriorFive00 would be sufficient.
This will peel WarriorFive's group from the main assault and they will attack your new target.

I'm including my entire Bot summoning, grouping, raiding and general stuff to make it easier if you don't have a problem editing the [Socials] section of your INI file. The Names and ID's you will need to edit to your information but the command structure is the same. These commands inlcude the max number of bots in a raid commands (71 + You = 72 Max):

Dude that is AWESOME. Thanks!

and by the way - the Bots rock! Thanks for continuing this project!

I don't suppose you'd be convinced to return to 1119 on your server until that happens?

Yeah, I saw that on another EQ forum I follow still. Made me laugh. They definitely won't be done in the same way, though.

Regarding hotkeys, I have:
Attack, Summon, Guard, GroupSpawn (spawns my group), invite, update, inventory. I invite the entire raid by hand, but I'm thinking about taking the time to do the full hotkeys. Make sure you include pauses, otherwise it will get butchered, fast (tried to do it without pauses on an alt, and the bit of lag screwed the hotkeys up big time).

But yeah, I love this stuff.

I will be downloading the fix direct from sourceforge since this website seems to be broken as far as build updates go. I only have the Beastlord spell list left to do and I'm still debugging the level 44 enchanter zone aggro issue. Before I start the beastlord spell list, I'll get the fixes to The Realm.

New Bots Release!
 

I've posted my latest bots release in the official release thread, check it out!

I merged the spells into PEQ.

Thanks Cavedude!

Thanks for the update Congdar...the last one was kind of crashy and the group bug was a pain, so my guild and I have just been using a previous version for the time being.

We'll get right to playing with this new version tonight.

Since you are nearly done with the spells, I have a request for your next priority, along the same vein. We need to get the bot info into it's own table, rather than npc_types. Every time I update peq, I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to ensure that player's bots aren't lost...which is a pretty big deal as players put effort into equipping their bots.

Previously, it wasn't THAT bad, I just had to be sure to backup the rows from npc_types that were bots before sourcing in drop_system. But recently, the peq guys have been adding more entries to npc types, the ids of which overlap with the ids of the bots. This means I have to not only assign the bots new ids in npc_types, but also update the botinventory and botowners tables.

Again, thanks for the update!

Cavedude made a batch file that backs up the bots to a sql file you can source in with a new database. The id's are supposed to be in a range that doesn't conflict with existing or new npc's. Not sure why you are having issues there. The inventory and owners tables are not touched during a drop_system.sql (is that the name?) so only the npc_types needs to be backed up with CD's batch file.
I'm not sure moving them to their own table would work with the spawn code. CD?

Yeah, like I said, it's just recently I started having trouble.

Basically, I started having problems when npc_type.id 999137 (#Xegony the Quenn of Air) was added into the database, as 999137 was the id of the first bot I made. Obviously, they can't have the same id, so I just changed the id of my bot to 999237 before adding his row back to the npc_types table.

Since then, as npcs have been added, I've had to manually bump the ids of my bots higher. right now, the last one was 999145, Ragrua Protector. Each update, I only have to fix a few bots.

And yeah, the botowners and inventory aren't dropped, that's not the problem. I just have to manually update the ids in those tables to match up with the id change I have to make in npc_types. So again, using my first bot as an example, when I changed his id to 999237 from 999137, I had to update all the entries with the bot.id 999137 to 999237 in the bot inventory table so that he still had his items, and in the botowner table so I could still summon him.

I wonder who is adding those npc's. They are not following the npc id format for zone id and npc id. Really, those npc's are being incorrectly added to the database as I understand it.

From the wiki:

npc_types table
So, first things first. Since we are working on the tutoriala zone, we are going to add Arias. So with Navicat already running, open up the npc_types table. Now, we are going to assign him an id. To do that, we need to make sure that we give him an id that is not in use. Here is a good way to come up with an id for a npc. I would create a 6 digit id for my npc and break it down as follows:


The first 3 digits, I would use the zone id. That way, if we are working on a zone, we can easily search for what npcs are in a zone by using the begin with filter in Navicat.
The last 3 digits would be there sequential number for the npc.

So, for this example, we know that we are going to add a npc to the tutoriala zone. We know that the id for the zone is 188 so the first three digits of his id would be 188. And since we know that this is the first npc we are going to add, we will number him 001. Therefore the complete id for Arias would be 188001. Now, we need to make sure that this id is not in use, so go ahead and perform a search and see if there is an id of 188001 in the npc_types table. If all is well, you should not get anything to pop up.

Recently i've noticed my bots are getting alot of 'tries to slash a <npc> but an <npc> is INVULNERABLE' message.

they're equipped with magic weaps - this has happened in Burning Wood (pretty much every mob fairly consistently), Necropolis (only tried phase spiders), in Sirens Grotto (every single Molkor)

i never got to Sirens or Necropolis in live.... but why would they be invulnerable? giants and skels never were that i can remember in bw.

my current tank is equipped with 80664 (sparkling short sword of magma) and (80674) scimitar of the damned

happens to my wiz too - 15867 (wand of impenitrable force)

my berserker can hit them (69297) steel rod of the knight.

client problem? bot problem? my problem? =)

Those NPCs were given incorrect IDs. I'm pretty sure the team member who put them in forgot to follow the ID formula and just let the editor assign them the next available ID. I'll have it fixed with the next CVS update. Sorry about that!

I could have a typo in the new spell lists... do you have any other data that might suggest what is happening? Is a bot casting invulnerability on the npc? Is the npc casting invulnerability on itself?

This can happen when the Bot or PC has a weapon that is above its level, but I thought that the bots prevented giving them equipment they couldn't use. Maybe a bug in the equipment stuff?

I don't think the bots/npc are casting invul - my pet is able to hit them, the berserker can hit them. it seems to be the warrior and wizard that this happens to when they are meleeing.


Bots were equipped using Georges' Item Editor - which i don't think checks for level when equipping an item.

it could be a level thing as the bots are 52 and the weaps are for 65, and 75. I never thought about a weapon above its level.

i'll try lower lvl weaps and post back.

Congdar, you are THE MAN.
1. The server is no longer crashing constantly.
2. Bards: Not only is the spell list perfect 60+, but bards now TWIST. That's INCREDIBLE.
3. All casters are using their nukes, roots, and dispells intelligently now. Or at least randomly. Anyway, mages are no longer chain dispelling, and wizards are no longer chain rooting...they actually mostly nuke, only casting the utility spells occasionally.

Bugs:
There's something goofy with groups:
1. if you summon the bots, and then invite a player, there's something wrong with group chat...if you try to use it, it says you aren't in a group.
2. if a player leaves a group, all the bots leave too (or the group disbands, not really sure). The interesting thing is the bots don't die as soon as they leave the group like usuall, so you don't have to respawn them, just reinvite them.

Another bug:
There is still something wrong with the melee dps of bots. If anything they just seem to miss a LOT.

The best way to check this out:
Make a monk, completely unequipped, level 60, and use setallskills 250.
Make a monkbot (who will also be level 60 and completely unequipped).

#zone chardock, and you'll see 2 equal level sniffers right in front of you. Sick the bot on one of the sniffers, and you attack the other. Youll be able to solo yours no prob, but after you've already killed yours, the bot's sniffer will still be above 80%

A thought about bot owners - what about making the account id the owner of the bot - rather than the character id? that way the same account could use the bots across different characters?

Tested the melee bug for a bit:
Equipping weapons makes the problem less severe, but doesn't really fix it.
In each test, I would equip the player monk and the monk bot with exactly the same weapons.
I tried low end and high end 2hders, as well as dualweilding one handers.

But no matter which weapon configuration I tested, the bot's dps was roughly half of the player monks.

Just observing the combat logs (I haven't gone so far as to damage parse) it seems like the monk is using flying kick as often as it can, so that's not it.

Bots should be the last group members added after regular PC's

I wonder what the monk bot skills are at

I like this idea, would keep the number of bots down. I'll see if it's possible.