Bazaar bots

[Secrets]

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]

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]

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.

[Akkadius]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[BrandeX]

Originally Posted by Secrets

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,

They have seller "bots" on EQTitan server. You hand them items and set a price via # commands. The bots sell them while you are elsewhere or offline, and you collect the cash when you zone in to baz.

[provocating]

Well after months of letting it sit I finally got back on this during the Thanksgiving Holidays.

What I ended up doing is starting with just one NPC. The NPC randomly pulls a small list of items from the item table, based on certain criteria. The items are then loading into him like a vendor would. He randomly yells in the zone with random text and links to what is for sale. I know it is a lot of randomness but I did not want anything to be static. I am thinking having him randomly spawn / despawn and during the respawn the items clear out.

It sounds easy to do all of this, but it has not been super easy for me to do with my lack of coding experience, but it is now done. I had to modify the server code a bit because clearing out the vendors items did not seem to have a built in routine. Also the pricing in the database was an issue as some items had a zero value. I found someone had a post on modifying server pricing and used it. I need to go back through that and critique the pricing.

Now all I have left to do is come up with shouts for zone, then make 30+ of these guys with different names, looks, shouts and behaviors.....tada.....East Commons tunnel is now alive.

[provocating]

So far so good, I am sure it needs tons of tweeking, but he is working.

[Furinex]

You should share this... Im looking for something for solo servers that allows the acquisition of items unattainable solo. This looks like the solution.

[provocating]

Well I have started and stopped multiple times. I did code out some that just sat in East Commons, announced items. Basically they pulled random items out of the database based on type and price. I will definitely share it but keep in mind, I wrote it months ago and never went back and tweaked it out.

It was not so much a "bazaar bot" but East Commons NPC's that pull random items from the items table, set prices and announced. It may not even be what a server admin would want. Some of the things that bothered me was it used Perl DBI and also the fact the config sat in the Perl file. It was not the elegant solution I really wanted so I ditched the idea.

[chrsschb]

By sharing it you allow more experienced coders to fine tune it.