EQEmu Bots question...

[Draugr]

Hi All.

I used to visit these forums a lot and I played on a few of the emulated servers years ago. Today, I was curious to see how the project is going and I'm glad to see it still being developed and plenty of people still playing.

I just noticed that EQEmu now supports bots. This is great because for players like myself who liked to run their own PEQ DB LAN servers, the addition of bots makes playing EQ a bit more ballanced. I did read through the bot posts on these forums, but I had an idea and was curious to see if the bots were just there to assist a player in a party/group, or are they possibly fully independent NPC players that can go about their own business emulating a real life player.

Can anyone tell me whether the bots are just simple group assistants for a real life player, or are they also able to be used as individual players in the world that have an extremely advanced AI where they emulate almost all the things a real player would do.

While reading about the bots, I had the following thoughts come to mind.

"If these bots are or can be actual independent NPC players that emulate real players, it might be neat to have some spawn at all the starting locations and then let the server just run for a week or more. Then login with your GM character and go about trying to track down the bots and see what they have done, or accomplished over the past week. How much wealth and loot have they gathered, what level have they obtained. Did they complete any important quests, how far have they ventured from their start location, ect...

I know that making lifelike bots even at a basic level has got to be difficult, but I could just imagine the fun one might have running a server with fully independent bots that can do all or most of what a real player would do. Is there any bots like this in EQEmu, or are there any plans by anyone to try and attempt this?

When I say independent bots, I mean bots that can...

1. Adventure alone or in groups with/without other bots or real life players.
2. Travel about the world solving quests. Zoning, etc...
3. Gathering loot.
4. Gaining Levels.
5. Buying and selling items.
6. Going to the Bank to store items, or deposit/withdraw gold as needed.
7. Casting and learning spells.
8. Group with others, or deny grouping with certain others depending on each bots race/alignment, level etc...
9. Grouping with actual real life players
10. Accepting and completing quests.
11. Binding at bind points if they travel far enough from their current bind point and then begin exploring their new locales.

Ok, now I know that creating the AI for such a bot is probably very difficult and probably requires lots and lots of coding and time. Not to mention a person, or persons with great logic and AI skills. I just wanted to ask about this because it could add some great features to running a large or small real player server. If this is not something that is possible yet, has there been any thoughts on this type of project and if so, is there anyone working on such a project?

Sorry, for the long message, but the thoughts of being able to create these type of bots in game and just let them run free is kind of interesting to me. Might add a totally new aspect to running a server. Think a EQ life simulation, or EQ SIMS! LOL!!!

Thanks,
John

[narcberry]

They are there to make single players able to play with a group or even a raid. The idea of making them advanced in ai and pc-like is a huge undertaking. I don't see the benefit of doing it that way either, now your server has to work 20 times harder so you can play by yourself, but see more people in a /who.

[kickerx]

You read my mind Draugr, I too wish that were possible. Unfortunetly not many ppl seem to care about this sort of thing as we do. They complain of how much memory would be required, how it would slow down the gameplay, or they just simply don't get it. Personally I don't think it would slow down the game anymore than joining a server with say 50 real life players in any givin zone or zones. The only real problem I forsee is someone anyone being smart enough to pull it off. One person can't do it alone it would take the work of many for such an undertaking. If it ever does come about you can bet I'll be proud to download, install and praise the creators for all their hard work. Now for my #bot command idea's for said project.

#bot talk // Allows the bot's to talk to one another in chat via botchat.txt default is on

#bot who // Show's all bot's in current zone

#bot whoall // Show's all bot's on server, their current location, and level

Those are just a few examples but doubt anyone will every bother though it would really be cool if they took some initative. I am a begginer coder who just can't seem to grasp what makes a game well ..... a game. I can however, make up commands come up with idea's etc. etc. A great man once said great men do not while lesser men strive.

Thanks sorry for length

[Mrwalsh]

Actually, I think this is a pretty cool idea. Supremely complicated, yes...but cool in its own way. I would use it if someone wrote it, that's for sure.

[Theeper]

Something like this would be much more resource intensive since the server has to do a lot of the work that the clients normally do. It might be less network intensive, but it would certainly cost more memory and CPU on the server itself.

I am not sure I can understand what fun it would be to have bots playing when I'm not online though. I guess I am one of the ones that "doesn't get it".

Why not just write a script to tweak your DB as if a bot was actually playing. I mean, you're offline anyway. If all you care about is the results, you don't need to actually make the server to do anything, since your bot won't have any visible impact anyway. You could look at your DB and see that the bot earned 5,000 plat over the night and gained 5 levels of XP.

[ChaosSlayer]

think about it: a whole server of BOTs who play by themselves, make groups, form guilds, actively camp named mobs for items, improve their gear... Have guild wars over named spawns and cockblocking each other....

And all you have to do it sit back and watch.. well and play god ocasinaly =)

[Caden]

I am very curious about this too, I actually design AI myself but only in terms of conversation intelligence, you can find my pet project at www.jeeney.com.


Actually, if some of the Devs are willing to work with me I can probably create a link between Jeeney (my bot) and EqEmu. To start with it would be just the conversation end of things, as language in itself is difficult enough without adding a whole lot more.

If possible, I would set up a bot that sits in the plane of knowledge to handle some of the basic GM duties, answering questions, helping people etc. I could even make it open ended so that the Emu comunity can all pitch in and train it up. It would be like having a BotWiki in game. =P

Anybody interested can email me at caden3k18@yahoo.com

[trevius]

Am I wrong, or could that all just be done via quest scripts?

[Caden]

Sure, if you have thousands of people putting in the info, otherwise you either need to have an advanced software program or a lot of time on your hands. I'm talking about a General AI though for any topic, not EQ specificly, but 'specialized' for eq. =)

I've only worked on Jeeney off an on for about a year and a half. She's not perfect by any means, but shes coming along at a fairly quick rate, the concept of mixing her existing capabilities into an EQ based wiki would be interesting to see if it panned out.

It wouldn't be all that hard to set up, might take a couple days under optimal conditions, (experienced devs working together) a week or two tops.

[Nytewind]

Here I go bumping a post that hasn't been touched in two months, but anyways I found this post by a Google search, go figure.

Being able to create an AI script so bots could go about normal game play in EQ is completely 100% interesting. Like said in posts above getting them to level, group, loot, quest etc would be a huge task and fun to watch in my opinion.

There are a few things that someone would scoff at me or agree, but we played EQ going from zone to zone following the exp and grouping/raiding for loot. Each item in the game has an id number, so isn't there a way to be able to put some sort of a value on each item? The bots would know they would want to go adventure and of course better themselves, so the AI would need to figure out to how accomplish that. They would need to figure out the risk vs reward in terms of where they go. We wouldn't want them to make a bee line straight for Naggy at level one.

Also, going along with what I mentioned above someone said they would have to figure out pathing for the bots. Fair enough, that might get a bit extreme since there is so much open space. Again if the bots were able to see the value of an item, or know what to look for while doing a quest, or looking for exp another script/DB would need to be created. All of the zones are connect in some sort of way. Lets say a bot is in Qeynos Hills and for example purposes is zone 5, but he needs to get to East Commons which is labeled zone 8. The DB would calculate the bots current X/Y/Z location in it's current zone then figure the path going through zones 6 and 7 to get to zone 8. There could be some sort of random feature which would determine if the bot is looking to get there asap or time isn't an issue and it still continues on the path from point A to point B, but will fight mobs along the way.

I know, it's easy to say, but hard to near impossible to do right? Would be great to see though.

[Furinex]

I wasn't sure if I should have started my own topic for this or post in this one, but I'm going to stick with this topic since it seems to be very constructive. This is basically on the same lines as what people were thinking with bots roaming around and doing all the PC like things (Which is a really cool idea I think) but not so extreme. I'm sorry to reference another game/emulator, and in my defense... I don't even like WoW... but The auction system in wow is a pretty handy tool. Not only did the Emulator use the current in place auction system and mod it so random items showed up on the Auction house every so often to provide a way for people to purchase wares without the need for people to actually post the items... but it was also ever changing. I was curious. Is that something we might be able to do with bots and the bazaar? Like use Bots instead of traders and have them post random loot on their person based on either the current economy and or a preset curve. Just an idea... any thoughts?