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ElvenProgrammer
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Post by ElvenProgrammer »

Well a bot would have rejoined.
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Platyna
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Post by Platyna »

Actually it did. And both got kicked in the same time and both rejoined after some time, looks like some delay is set. I tried to speak with them but no answer from both. My botdar has turned red.

Regards.
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knivey
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Post by knivey »

Have the server send the client a message every few minutes and have the client respond (like a ping pong) and if the client doesn't respone ban em for 10 minutes for botting or out of date client. the original ro servers wouldn't have this so bot programs made for them shouldn't work.

of course a bot could be adapted to work but hopefully botters are to stupid to figure out how :P
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ElvenProgrammer
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Post by ElvenProgrammer »

This wouldn't work. And botters could be stupid but they're stubborn and hardly give up :P
peoro
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Post by peoro »

Hi
I was using a bot, to know this you had only to ask it, I've even helped a pair of players to get and install that bot, it's an official patch of TMW.
I just didn't think that a bot was forbidden (and I can't still understand why it)...
- There's not PvP, then if someone is stronger or weaker than others this make no differences...
- The game is currently a beta: when it will be complete all characters will be erased.

Anyway, if you are so anti-bots I won't use it anymore, although I can't see the reason :P
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Pajarico
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Post by Pajarico »

Officaila patch? I missed it.
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Post by peoro »

Pajarico wrote:Officaila patch? I missed it.
See on sourceforge: it's a patch of themanaworld
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Modanung
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Post by Modanung »

I think NPC bots might be cool, special character who act almost like a player. This would add to the realness of the world. In most MMORPGs NPCs are only for quests, trading and guarding the city. Somtimes even most of them stand still all the time.
It would be cool to have NPC adventurerers, gatherers, thieves, hunters, merchants and townspeople.
Adventurers would travel around the world exploring dungeons, killing monster and selling found items.
Gatherers don't do combat, they just gather items in the wild (Herbs and the like) to sell.
Thieves steal money and maybe items. They are rare, because they're pretty irritating.
Hunters kill creatures for any useful resources he can sell in town.
Merchants travel from town to town. He buys items in one town and sells them for a higher price in the other.
Townspeople just walk around, buy food, go home, eat food, sleep, work, buy a beer. Most of them are always in for a chat and may give you, hints, directions and maybe even a small quest.

Two reasons not to allow players to use bots in the final game is it destroys the feel of the world, but hey... some normal players do that too. Also these (after a while) no-sweat-super-players could be sold. Character selling is something you can't prevent when a game grows big. And bots make it a lot easier to make a character that's worth some money, so it stimulates dealing in characters.

But I'm ok with bots in this stage of the game.
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Post by peoro »

These NPC bots seems pretty :D
I'm adverse to bots too, but not currently... :P
Certainly bots have to be banned when there'll be PvP.
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Post by AlSim »

Is it the "attack by rules" patch ?
Then yes, it's in the sourceforge patch repository ... didn't see it !
And well that's true bots do no harm for now ... but we have to be sure that they won't work when PvP is activated.
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Post by yosuhara »

Modanung wrote:I think NPC bots might be cool, special character who act almost like a player. This would add to the realness of the world. In most MMORPGs NPCs are only for quests, trading and guarding the city. Somtimes even most of them stand still all the time.
It would be cool to have NPC adventurerers, gatherers, thieves, hunters, merchants and townspeople.
Adventurers would travel around the world exploring dungeons, killing monster and selling found items.
Gatherers don't do combat, they just gather items in the wild (Herbs and the like) to sell.
Thieves steal money and maybe items. They are rare, because they're pretty irritating.
Hunters kill creatures for any useful resources he can sell in town.
Merchants travel from town to town. He buys items in one town and sells them for a higher price in the other.
Townspeople just walk around, buy food, go home, eat food, sleep, work, buy a beer. Most of them are always in for a chat and may give you, hints, directions and maybe even a small quest.
very good idea Modanung
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Ultim
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Post by Ultim »

Yes it would be interesting if that idea were implemented in the game. But would it be worth it? I'm sure some of the resident programmers can back me up on the difficulty of coding advanced NPCs like the ones you mention. One of the problems would be you're coding AI, arguably the most difficult realm of programming. Another would be coding the NPC to do its job; each NPC would have to be worked on separately but intensively to do all its specific tasks. And carrying an NPCs stats across game (such as from the monster field to market in town) is a big nuisance. The only practical method would be each NPC is worked on by one coder. With all the different functions of the NPC, the coder has a higher chance of err. Though if he did complete it perfectly, the NPC would be very susceptible to human intervention. Blocking alone would be enough to knock the NPC off its programed schedule. If an NPC is reported to be messing up? A moderator has to be contacted, has to tell a coder, and the coder has to go fix it. The Advanced NPCs feature is sure to cost some coders a few headaches; is the impact it would have worth it enough to the players?
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Rotonen
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Post by Rotonen »

Please do not start to talk about how hard stuff is to code and actually implement when people are tossing around wild, new and exciting ideas (even if they're not, they're still fresh-ish). If an idea is good enough to implement, it will get implemented eventually no matter how hard it is to implement.

That aside, it'd also nice to see the parser dialogue thing with these things.
I think I've always stated that I'd like to see a dynamical and functioning world and that it should include autonomical-ish NPC.
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Krillancello
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Post by Krillancello »

I just found TMW in the Gentoo Portage tree a couple days ago... very nice game... this is one of the first few threads I've looked at on this forum thusfar.

On the topic of autonomous NPCs... and since this is about wild and crazy ideas that may or may not be possible or plausible... I have some personal ideas with which to expand on the aforementioned NPC bots.
Modanung wrote:Adventurers would travel around the world exploring dungeons, killing monster and selling found items.
Gatherers don't do combat, they just gather items in the wild (Herbs and the like) to sell.
Thieves steal money and maybe items. They are rare, because they're pretty irritating.
Hunters kill creatures for any useful resources he can sell in town.
Merchants travel from town to town. He buys items in one town and sells them for a higher price in the other.
Townspeople just walk around, buy food, go home, eat food, sleep, work, buy a beer. Most of them are always in for a chat and may give you, hints, directions and maybe even a small quest.
I would personally foresee an Adventurer NPCbot exploring the world and killing monsters as needed (every so often for food or whatnot, or if the monster attacks the bot first)... they would also be knowledgeable of the world from their travels, and thus be able to give players directions to a location (although it would require more data to be saved for the NPCbots to remember where they've been and how to get there and such).
Guards would patrol towns, possibly killing monsters to ensure the town itself remained monster-free.
Townspeople would have random gossip, hearsay and knowledge (same as 'hints' if you think about it) to impart to players willing to listen.
Merchants travelling between towns, looking for the best deals, also buying and selling items from players.
Thieves attempting to steal money and items, but with a logical chance of failure... possibly with consequences, possibly not.
Hunter-Gatherers (+5 Geekiness for the historical reference) hunting monsters, gathering useful items, and selling or compounding (e.g. Alchemy) the items.
And, of course, all NPCbots would have random quests (and maybe whether a particular bot would have a quest or not would be random as well) for players, relating to their bot type; Thieves requesting a player to steal something from a certain location, Guards requesting aid in clearing a town overrun by monsters, Townspeople requesting random things, Merchants requesting players to find certain valuable items, Adventurers requesting a player to be a bodyguard.
</idealism>

And on a side note, I have GM'd, hosted and scripted (NPCs) for eAthena servers... if eAthena had support for mobile NPCs and an interface thereof (an NPC script command to move or whatnot), the subsequent actions of the NPC would likely be relatively easy to script without hardcoded patches. This doesn't have much gravity as TMW is switching to another server software soon; however, often times it seems easier to reimplement something after changing to a new backend model if it's been implemented in the previous backend model.
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Crush
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Post by Crush »

adventuring and exploring is something that should be left to the real players. npc's should only do the tasks that are important but too boring for players to do 24/7. they could guard towns, trade or give dynamic quests. npc's traveling between towns and paying players to protect them are another interesting element.

an NPC boss that gains exp whenever he kills a PC and becomes stronger and stronger over the time (and keeps his level when he dies - like a normal player does) might be an interesting experiment.
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