Confused Tree - the friendly bot in Hurnscald

[Crush]

Why not turn it into an NPC?

[melkior]

Why not turn it into an NPC?

I thought you already did, years ago.

[WildX]

Alright. One more thing to discuss: a long, long time ago, the Tree could do something semi-useful. It could heal people, when they asked nicely. It's easy to get back that functionality, in fact, it's already there, only turned off.

Now, obviously, I've been thinking about bringing that back, but with a caveat: since I consider the Tree to be a source of amusement, nothing else, it wouldn't heal every time it's asked to. Sometimes it would ignore the person completely, sometimes it would answer with a cheeky remark or an emote. For the sake of the discussion, let's say there's a 10% chance the person asking would get healed. This percentage is, of course, easily adjustable.

Now, I know this is a touchy subject, as it would be an AFK activity where the character could gain something. IMO, that gain would be pretty insignificant as the Tree would get XP only during (or after) spawn events in Hurnscald. Apart from that, it would further its magical skills, but that's not really something useful for a bot that's standing the whole time in Hurnscald, is it?

Now, I'd like to hear thoughts about this both from the players and the TMWc. For players, again, this would just be an additional amusement, not something really useful (at least that's the way I see it), so, do you even want that? I also welcome the thoughts of TMWc members as they are the ones who would need to approve this functionality.

I like the idea, but wouldn't this cause people to spam until the tree heals them? Can that be avoided?

[Crush]

Why not turn it into an NPC?

I thought you already did, years ago.

I did it for Manaserv, not for tmwAthena.

[melkior]

Why not turn it into an NPC?

I thought you already did, years ago.

I did it for Manaserv, not for tmwAthena.

Ah, my mistake. But to answer your question, because now there is someone who constantly expands on the phrases the Tree responds to, adds players to its ignore list if they abuse it and so on. This keeps it fresh, and doesn't complicate any updates that are made.

I like the idea, but wouldn't this cause people to spam until the tree heals them? Can that be avoided?

Anyone spamming the tree would get added to the Tree's ignore list. Also, they'd probably get autobanned for spam, especially if I make the tree respond to only one phrase.

[Frost]

• Confused Tree is wonderfully amusing and wonderfully popular.
• It's sometimes useful to redirect some futile argument in town.
• Any benefit to the Tree would be vanishingly small. Give me a stack of bug legs and sulphur powder or logs, and I'll hotkey the spells and max out magic experience very quickly. There's no XP from healing a respawned character.
• I haven't seen anything similar to this as an NPC. When someone creates such a thing, we can consider that.
• The proposal doesn't seem to benefit any particular people over others. People already get healed after they respawn in town (although the "serial pukers" tend to get ignored, much like in this proposal.)
• I love the innovation and fun attitude of this, and would like others to be inspired to contribute too.
• We can always decide that this isn't working, and change something.

Yeah, I like it.

[WildX]

Yeah, I like it.

And the tree likes you... a lot

[Alexander]

Yeah that's nice idea Would be fun to ask a tree to heal you and of course, the tree activity cant be considered as AFK activity purposed to gain some use of it. I totally approve this idea so turn on "healing, if asked nicely" please

[Cassy]

I was laughing pretty much yesterday when Silent Dawn explained a new guy how to get the Trading Skill, using the word "trade" in every second sentence. Confused Tree always popped up that annoyed smiley with every "trade". Remembering Silent Dawns last words "I know tree, you don't like the word 'trade'" still makes me laugh.

Anyway... actually everythings already said about the Confused Tree (/me points at Frosts post), but I want to comment though that I really like it. More people, more feedback, better idea of how people look at CT. It's a real attraction to me, even when I just watch people messing around with it. I'd really miss it if it disappeared.

Btw thanks for caring about it, Melkior.

[Johanne Laliberté]

Of course I like confused Tree and its jokes, it is so entertaining!

[Avenn]

I hate that tree, its nothing persolnal so my vote go to kill it i can change my mind if i could burn it from time to time

[melkior]

I hate that tree, its nothing persolnal so my vote go to kill it i can change my mind if i could burn it from time to time

While I respect your personal opinion about the tree, in the spirit of discussion, could you please elaborate a little bit on that?

I like substantial feedback, as it lets me improve the tree.

[Reid]

Hurnscald needs some attractiveness, but it could be better to write it as a NPC instead of a bot...

[melkior]

Hurnscald needs some attractiveness, but it could be better to write it as a NPC instead of a bot...

It could be, however, from my understanding, right now it would be impossible to create an NPC that would replicate the bot's functionality perfectly. Also, bots have an advantage — they can be updated on a whim, and I have the luxury of going through the log to see how people have tried to interact with it, so I can expand on its command list.

[melkior]

I like your tree very much too Melkior. :
But...

Excellent, a discussion.

I am sincerely concerned with its current status. As of right now, you - Melkior seem a little too "protectuous" ( if that is a word ) about it. I have witnessed you asking another Person ( my husband in game) to not spam the tree, which he still finds disturbing, since he never meant to do any harm, he just liked the jokes, read them and wanted to hear more. If he had actually spammed the server would have taken care of that.

It's not the tree that I'm protective of, really — the tree is fairly safe from spam autobans. But as it uses the public chat, triggering it too often can disrupt conversations in Hurnscald and the GMs don't like that. Frankly, I don't blame them. Yes, the tree is there for everyone's amusement, and yes the jokes are there for anyone to read, but triggering the tree 5 times in the period of one minute is a bit excessive, wouldn't you say?

Also do I not see why a single player should be provided the right to maintain his "own" bot in town, that doesnt mean that confused tree wouldn't make a great NPC.

Furthermore would NPC status grant the ability to look into the trees code - which you, Melkior sadly refused to reveal, though politely asked. ( You assumed that your code could do severe server damage if in the wrong hands)

I'm not sure if you've read my prior responses to other comments in this thread, but as of now, replicating the tree's functionality in the form of an NPC is pretty much impossible. If and when it becomes possible, I'm all for it. Hell, I'll even help code it.

Yes, I do refuse to show the tree's code. However, several times I've explained how the tree works. Whenever I have enough free time, I'm more than willing to explain in great detail how you can replicate the functionality of that bot, but I won't go into the specifics of the actual code.

As for the possible server damage, I don't assume that it could happen, I know it for a fact. Several times during the setting up of the tree, I've managed to do things that shouldn't be possible. None of them are quite serious, but combined they could do some damage. The fact is, anyone could tinker with the official client to make it do things it's not supposed to do, however it's quite complex, so most people will give up before doing any serious harm. On the other hand, the tree is a very simple script that's extremely simple to mess with, giving someone with less than honourable intentions an amazing tool for causing problems.

Aaand I am not comfortable with Melkiors "reading the logs to adjust the tree", since it is quite likely that somebody assumes the tree to be an actual NPC and maybe acts different towards the Tree than to a real Person. As of the language learning part, that could be done by someone officially assigned to that job, to maintain transparency in the game.

Sorry for the long post - but I really wanted to point out that something that behaves like an NPC should be an NPC in this Open Source Game with Open Sources and rules that acquire for everybody.

But the tree doesn't behave like an NPC. Not really. It acts more like a player, albeit a player with a very low IQ and a terrible sense of humour. I honestly doubt anyone will mistake the tree for an actual player or an NPC.

The wiki page on friendly bots says:

Like TMW, friendly bots should be free software.

My interpretation of that is that while it would be recommended for them to be Open Source, they don't explicitly have to be. If that gets rephrased into a must, I'd of course comply in one way or another.

Don't presume for a minute that I'm the only person operating a bot in Hurnscald. It's just that mine is the only interactive one.

Yes, I read the Tree's logs. It logs the general chat. I used to keep my character logged in for that purpose, now I do it via the tree. I also log whispers separately and encourage players to use them to suggest new things for the tree to do. I fail to see what the problem with that is exactly. At this precise moment, I can see two other bots in the town that almost certainly log the public chat and/or whispers.

I have yet to see a single case of someone actually attempting to communicate with the tree as if it was an actual player. Most whispers are attempts at getting a list of items for sale or help commands like:

Code: Select all

!help
!selllist
!info
...

And the tree doesn't reply to those.

I hope I've responded to everything in your post. If not, please, let me know.