Unattended macroing/Strong AI Project

[marcus93]

The ingame macro editor sucks big time. Razor offers very nice options, but it's an external program. I'd prefer to have all Razor functions built into the game, using Gumps.

RunUO's AI is rather weak. On my server, I'd love to see many NPCs wandering around and living their lives (hunting, wood chopping, mining, selling/buying infront of the bank and in shops, getting hungry and going to the tavern, etc.)

If RunUO offered it's own advanced macro system, the community could collect all the users's macros and use the best of them in AIs. That might require some shards, that allow "unattended PKing" (or at least ressource gathering, etc), and would bring a nice looking in game macro system.

I could try to create a macro system, but I am sure, the script language, I'd be able to create, would be too slow for large shards. I've had an idea, how this problem could be solved: Perhaps we should use something existing and fast, like JavaScript. We even could go as far, as take parts of UOX and incorporate them into RunUO's new macro system.

What are your thoughts about the idea? Would you put time in such a project?

EDIT: This is not a feature request and I am not asking for someone else to do it; I want to discuss the idea in general.

[Peoharen]

It's called EasyUO, and it has automated mining scripts designed to piss most shard hosts off.

Just send a gump on login that offers a choice of free resources. The amount should be based on last login time with an upper cap. People can gather resources while 'afk', they're not eating your bandwith up for their free items, they're logging in daily for resources, you can control accumulation rates (compared to 4k ingots in a day or two via easyuo).

As for your strong AI, make them.

[marcus93]

I am not aiming at the macros themselves, I see them as the means to get good AI scripts from the _players_. Therefore I suggested to create built-in Razor functions, allowing players to create their own macros. We could then use all those macros for a new AI system.

Writing a new AI on my own, that also works significantly better than the current one, might be too much for me (or one person allone). Your answer "make your own AI" is indicating, that I am probably right about this. Many people are complaining about the "weak" AI, so I was suggesting a way, how it could be done, with the secondary bonus of getting a new, built in standard macroing system.

With an easy-to-use macro system, we could hold contests for the best AI scripts, too, allowing normal players to participate.

[Peoharen]

Originally Posted by marcus93

I am not aiming at the macros themselves, I see them as the means to get good AI scripts from the _players_. Therefore I suggested to create built-in Razor functions, allowing players to create their own macros. We could then use all those macros for a new AI system.

I suppose asking for Razor to be designed to be more like EasyUO hasn't been done in a while so the why not in the last several years hasn't been around. Even I'm not sure, outside of the fact EasUO is fully functional and has it's own dedicated community & devas.

Everyone complains about AIs. "OSI's monsters cast 400 times faster, OSI's monsters acquire though walls, OSI's mages try to stay 3 tiles away from you at all times" etc. Two of which are undoubtedly complained about and the last one requires little editing (hint: change RunTo). Ravenal is supposed to provide a new AI engine it's one of the reasons he's on the SVN deva team. His system is based on actions and probably has room to do exactly what you want. Srsly, last code snippet I seen (about 8 months ago mind you) had about 30 actions listed just to make a snake 'think'. By now I'm sure he's gone back and made it a lot less bulky, maybe you could try getting with him and helping out...

[marcus93]

Just for your info: I am not personally interested in AFK macros, I am a pure role player. I just thought, it might be a good idea to get players into "making AIs". I will ask Ravenal about his opinion, thanks for the hint!