EQoffline, bots and more..

gygelly · #1 07-22-2008, 04:11 PM

Thanks for the info, like I said, I'm pretty new at this. I guess I'll hop on the Realm and play around a bit.
Do you want me to put the binaries in the code release thread? Yeah, i saw it, but as it said, that's for code releases, and these are just some binaries.

gygelly · #2 07-23-2008, 04:45 PM

Question 1: is it just me, or do the bots seem to miss alot? It seems to take them a LONG time just to take down a mob several levels lower. I know their level is based off of the character that spawns them, but being npcs, I assume weapon skill doesn't really figure into the equation....

Question 2: is there anything I can do to help out? Any particular part of the code you'd like me to look at?

I'm excited about Congdar's spell database improvements (btw, with that tip you gave me, I managed to track down the bot's spell lists, gonna play with 'em tonight), and even more interested in gregg's added bot commands.

How about getting bard's to twist songs? I realize that'd maybe involve rewriting some mob/pet ai, but if you could give me a recommended starting point, that'd be a pretty useful improvement imo.
Or how about getting melee/hybrid bots to use disciplines?

gygelly · #3 07-23-2008, 05:37 PM

Duh, didn't know if the Bot AI stuff was based on mobai or petai, then I found botai.cpp. Excuse a newb, I'm only barely familiar with the eqemu code, and this is my first look at this bot stuff.

Darkonig · #4 07-27-2008, 02:24 PM

In looking over the bot code and considering its intent, I was wondering why the bots were not implemented as an extension to the client class rather than an internal modification of the npc class.

One of the big issues I have with them being npcs is that they are targeted by the f8 key which interferes with targeting 'real' npcs. They keep getting in the way. When I tried a test of sending the spawn packet declaring the bot's were clients they did not interfere with f8 and showed up in the /who command. This simple change is not sufficient by itself because, although the mobs were still functional, they were identified as <LD> <LFG> <Bad Guild> and had a tendency to go invisible. So further work would be required to make them actual clients on the server side.

If there will be a major rewrite to make them a real class, I would highly recommend making them an extension of client so they behave more like actual players and don't interfere so much with the actual player.

gygelly · #5 07-31-2008, 11:24 PM

hey Congdar, I got on the the Realm and played around a bit. The cleric bot actually threw me heals intelligently, but of course, I was only able to test a lvl 6.

Any chance of you sharing your bot code changes soon? It'd surely help the stuff I'm working on to have those seperate spell lists.

**Congdar** · #6 08-01-2008, 10:12 AM

I would really like to wait until I get all the spell lists completed before releasing. I'm working on Shaman now and still have more classes to do. If you really really want it as it is, pm me.

Ikeren · #7 08-08-2008, 11:26 PM

I recently got the craving to play EQ again, and this has always been one of my dreams - go through the raid content alone as a raid leader. As soon as I get MiniLogin working (which might be a while) I'm going to start playing around with these bots; and I can't wait.

I have a question in terms of quest context; the Bots can't do quests. The PC could of course, do the quests, assuming the have the faction, then hand the reward to the Bots, correct? I am trying to remember from EQ if some quests are impossible to do if you are the wrong class; like, could a Cleric do a Shaman Epic? It'd be useless on the normal servers, but here it would be very valuable.