Gamebot ideas

We are in the process of rebuilding the scripts that spawn games from IRC.
The will still provide the same functionality and syntax as before in addition to a few new features that I am working on.

Please leave your ideas and suggestions below for the next generation of IRC bots.

I wish there was some way users could purge winbolods from IRC. This would eliminate the need to use the task manager to kill them when they fail to end. I often find 3 winbolods running with no games in progress. I still don't know why this happens, but I have to purge them regularly or the bot won't create any more games.

Some kind of stat reporting would be cool.

For example, keep track of how many times each map as been made; how many games are open, strict, or tourny; which nick starts how many games; counts for how many are mapped each hour of the day; stuff like that. It's easily stored in an .ini at the least.

I wish there was some way users could purge winbolods from IRC. This would eliminate the need to use the task manager to kill them when they fail to end. I often find 3 winbolods running with no games in progress. I still don't know why this happens, but I have to purge them regularly or the bot won't create any more games.

Sheep's WBB script has a purge feature that can be set to allow anyone (or just a chosen subset) to purge them via a irc command. We can set this up before the new bot stuff happens if you want. I will also look into what's causing that and fix it.

Some kind of stat reporting would be cool.

For example, keep track of how many times each map as been made; how many games are open, strict, or tourny; which nick starts how many games; counts for how many are mapped each hour of the day; stuff like that. It's easily stored in an .ini at the least.

I'm actually working on some statistic stuff to tie in with the spawning algorithm. I've added your ideas to the list and hopefully you'll be around to help with scripting things.

Thanks for the ideas!

Acro wrote:

I wish there was some way users could purge winbolods from IRC. This would eliminate the need to use the task manager to kill them when they fail to end. I often find 3 winbolods running with no games in progress. I still don't know why this happens, but I have to purge them regularly or the bot won't create any more games.

I wish there was some way users could purge Acro from IRC. This would eliminate the need to use /ignore to avoid him when he fails to shut up. I often find 3 channels with Aco in them and no intelligent conversation in progress. I still don't know why this happens, but we should purge him regularly or IRC won't attract any more players.

CF

perhaps you should consider removing access to the kill command and use the winbolods built in feature -autoclose instead. That way it removes alot of possible problems such as the derami/brando fiasco. Not that I expect you to listen to my ideas. Since you rarely do.

Min

We're working on clearing up the confusion on how we apply policy to game killing. I was thinking that by default the map starter can only kill a game before a time threshold has passed or before a game event has taken place, and then it's only accessible from ops or the bot owner (or whoever). -autoclose will probably be enabled by default.

Thanks for the suggestion.

jhood wrote:

I'm actually working on some statistic stuff to tie in with the spawning algorithm. I've added your ideas to the list and hopefully you'll be around to help with scripting things.

No need to reinvent the wheel, as they say. Scripting those things will be pretty easy. Stuff like that only consists of string manipulation so as long as the bots can follow some sort of rules for outputting text, we'll be good.

jhood wrote:

We're working on clearing up the confusion on how we apply policy to game killing. I was thinking that by default the map starter can only kill a game before a time threshold has passed or before a game event has taken place, and then it's only accessible from ops or the bot owner (or whoever). -autoclose will probably be enabled by default.

I don't see the need to allow people to kill games at all. Other than having the purge function in case winbolods's get caught in memory, if you want to kill a game becuase you started it and wanted a different map, join it, quit it it kills itself. Done. Giving people the kill function gives them 'power' and we all know how that seems to go to peoples heads. Minbot used to every 5-10 minutes check which games had players, and the games that didn't, he would automatically kill them. This was so that people wouldn't kill games in progress or various other problems that occured. I always wondered why we reverted to the stupid way of doing it. Well, thats not really true, I know why we reverted to the stupid way.

Min

Min wrote:

I always wondered why we reverted to the stupid way of doing it. Well, thats not really true, I know why we reverted to the stupid way.

It wasn't due to precedence, that's for sure.

Back to this.

I'm still looking for feedback and have all the previous suggestions on the white board and would like to bounce my "maprank" idea off you guys.

Without going nuts here, I'd like to copy Google's pagerank stuff and apply it to the set of 5000 or so maps. Simply put, Google uses the web's link structure to rank how popular a specific page is - since maps don't really have a matrix (is that the right word?) I thought of scoring the maps in ClassicMaps and the basic maps packaged with WinBolo higher than the others. I did this because one can assume those in particular would have a higher chance of being spawned in IRC. Without using "references" (such as mapping "ct3" to "chew toy 3") you could simply type "chew" for the "chew toy 3" map, or "gn", "slug", etc and it finds the correct map each time, based on the probability of a user wanting that map.

I'm in the process of applying a very simple string matching technique as well as mapping a select set of keywords to various maps (ct3->chew toy 3, dh oil-> dh-oil rig) and the algorithm finds the right map pretty well, but it fails for more obscure maps because 98% of the maps have no score.

I've asked Elvis and Fermat to implement an rss feed so we can pull some stat numbers, which should help rank I'm thinking 80% of the maps, but I'm still stuck on how to rank any map that's not in ClassicMaps or packaged with the distribution.

Any ideas how to rank the more obscure maps? Suggestions on what I have so far?

Looking forward to feedback!

I honestly think just using a simple counter would work. I know that this is the way that some online games choose to break ties when players are allowed to vote for the next map. The map that is most popular (ie, has been played the most) wins.

You're right though. Because maps really aren't referenced anywhere else but in IRC, it would seem silly to implement an algorithm, while creative as it is, doesn't really serve the purpose well. KISS is the best anagram I can come up with this.

Even still, what about the bots that watch the channel? If you really want a tough project, implement a bot that watches for map names during conversations and keep track of the counts, who said them, what time of day, etc. Work out an algorithm to give weight that way.

Sticks wrote:

I honestly think just using a simple counter would work. I know that this is the way that some online games choose to break ties when players are allowed to vote for the next map. The map that is most popular (ie, has been played the most) wins.

You're right though. Because maps really aren't referenced anywhere else but in IRC, it would seem silly to implement an algorithm, while creative as it is, doesn't really serve the purpose well. KISS is the best anagram I can come up with this.

Even still, what about the bots that watch the channel? If you really want a tough project, implement a bot that watches for map names during conversations and keep track of the counts, who said them, what time of day, etc. Work out an algorithm to give weight that way.

I HAVE A COMMENT: YOU GUYS HAVE NO LIFE LOL! PLAYING WIHT THIS 2D BULLSHIT ALL THE TIME, GET A JOB, YEESH

EVEN THO IF YOU HAVE A JOB, YOU SUX ALSO, YOU PROBABLY WORK IN MCDONALDS IN YER 30S

IF YOU ARE A STUDENT, YOU HAVE NO LIFE TOO

IF YOU GOT A GOOD JOB LIKE NEWSPAPER EDITOR OR SOMETHING, LEAVE THIS BULLSHIT AND FOUCUS ON YER JOB

HEY LOOK AT ME IF I TYPE LIKE THIS NO ONE WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME AND CALL ME A DOUCHE BAG.

Saiyan wrote:

HEY LOOK AT ME IF I TYPE LIKE THIS NO ONE WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME AND CALL ME A DOUCHE BAG.

No... I will call you a douche bag, you douche bag :P

j/k :D

Wow. I haven't posted on these forums in probably close to a year :D. Anyways, I like the maprank idea. Would it be possible to use the WB.Net download statistics for each map in the map database? This would allow a few thousand to be ranked. Also, a bot would have to be put into the IRC chat to record which maps are getting spawned the most. I think this would be the most beneficial way of doing it.

Also, I like min's idea. After 5-10 minutes of inactivity, the game would be killed automatically. The person who made the game could always lock it, leaving it inactive for the set time period. This would be an effective kill in itself, and if someone wants to play the map in IRC, they could always unlock it :) Simple as that. And if the limit of maps is reached (Acrobot's is three) the oldest inactive game would be killed instantly to spawn a new one.

Just suggesting some stuff. CHECK IT OUT JHOOD!

Jason8

edit: opps didnt mean to post here