Teaming & Aggro Issue

[Auto Pilot]

I started using the bot in teams (of bots) recently (relationship buffs are so nice) and had a few issues.

When running similar waypoints on every bot, each time a bot aggroed something, every other char was stopping everything. That was easily fixed by a few minor edits to stop the bot from interrupting casts & similar stuff.
But, still, everytime someone got aggro, other bots would finish their current target (if they had one) and then "wait for aggressive ennemies" until every bot finished his fight.

Since I switched to a healer/assist waypoints (a modified version of the "lil helper" posted here) for the 2nd char (main char is only fighting, the 2nd one is buffing/healing/looting and assisting - or trying - on main's targets) but a few issues :
- It seems the bot is never targeting mobs, so assist doesn't work
- There is still the "waiting for agressive ennemies" issue : when the healer gets adds (from healing or just new aggro), main bot ignores them and moves to other mobs (even though that add is the nearest one and ANTI_KS is turned off) leaving the healer with a train of adds on him (how could I be screaming "BOT HERE!!!! BOT" harder ?)

So any idea on how to fix those 2 issues ? Making the bot actually target the targets (so secondary chars can assist) and not ignore the mobs shooting other people in team.

Edit : for the aggro issue I found a quick solution, replace in player.lua around line 243 in the CPlayer:findEnemy function

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local aggroOnly = aggroOnly or false;

by

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local aggroOnly = false

It's a very quick fix, since it will make the main char shoot everything in range, regardless of who is the target, and ofc the best way would be to limit it to shoot stuff aggroing the team.

[lisa]

It's not an easy task to do a party bot properly. You can of course just make it ignore agro and to just keep going, this would mean you would attack mobs that other players are killing, which wouldn't be good and you would also walk away from mobs that are attacking you or party members.

RoM bot has been built and designed around working solo, some have managed to get it work with 2 chars semi-efficiently.
I think it would need a rewrite of quite a bit of the coding to do it properly which would basically mean having 2 rombots, 1 for solo and 1 for partying.

I think in order to have a party bott working efficiently there would need to be a good way of communicating between the different bots for each character. I believe this is what is holding back most of the people who are working on a party bot, most are doing it independantly though.

[rock5]

Lisa is of course correct although I think there are probably minor changes that would help peoples party scripts to work that wouldn't require a separate bot (mainly to do with targeting).

- It seems the bot is never targeting mobs, so assist doesn't work

I assume you are talking about, from the second bot the first one seems to not have a target when it does. This is a known issue with the bot and I don't think it will ever be solved. Any solution would have to work around this limitation.

- There is still the "waiting for agressive ennemies" issue : when the healer gets adds (from healing or just new aggro), main bot ignores them and moves to other mobs (even though that add is the nearest one and ANTI_KS is turned off) leaving the healer with a train of adds on him.

If you have ANTI_KS off then it's probably one of the other checks in the eval function that's stopping it being targetted. Hard to say which. You could enable DEBUG_TARGET to see why it didn't target that mob.

I have half a mind to do some work on the targeting to help with partying. I think the main thing it needs is, when you have aggro and it's searching for a mob that has you targetted, it should also check if it has a friend or party member targeted. We might need a profile option or 2 to assist friends and/or party members. What do you think?

[lisa]

Checking if any mobs have party members targeted would solve a few of the issues for sure.

I still like my idea of using the party icons, so party leader (tank) targets a mob and then sets icon I on it. Party members search for the mob with the I and then kill it.
Would need a bit of searching and testing to make that work though.

[lisa]

This may or may not help but if going with the "raidtargetindex" idea these in game functions set and check the value

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SetRaidTarget("target", 1);

set's the target to I

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GetRaidTargetIndex("target")

returns value of target as numerical 1-8 or nil

So the leader would use

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 sendMacro("SetRaidTarget("target", 1);")

Party member would need

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local _tarid = sendMacro("GetRaidTargetIndex("target");")
if _tarid ~= nil and _tarid == 1 then 
*kill it*
else
*keep looking lol*
end

I tried to find the raidicon in memory but failed miserably lol

[Auto Pilot]

Raid Icon idea is a pretty sweet one when good assisting is needed

Also would it be possible to just check if target.TargetPtr is in the list of team member's addresses ? Then I could just take the eval function, keep all the basic security checks (target alive, attackable, ....) and replace all the additionnal checks by that one.

It still wouldn't be assisting, but at least it would only select mobs that the team already aggroed. And with the scoring algorithm RoM Bot has, even with multiple adds, it would probably select the tank's target most of the time. Anyway I'll have to check if it works, but I'm probably missing something, it feels "too easy".

And I'll check the debug stuff (didn't know about those options) on tank side to see what was preventing him from attacking adds on healer.

[rock5]

Also would it be possible to just check if target.TargetPtr is in the list of team member's addresses ?

That's what I was talking about. I think it should work although the way you said it makes me realise you would need to know the addresses of all your team mates. Still, it should be possible.

I haven't been working on it as I'm working on something else at the moment. If you get it working, please share.

[Auto Pilot]

Got some other improvments to make first (mostly some mana management issue and also some kind of detection so each bot can notice when the other one is gone and recall back to safety).

But I should be able to write the code (and have a party setup to test it out) tonight or tomorrow and will certainly post any positive results here.

[JackBlonder]

Maybe the network bot I started is helpful:
http://www.solarstrike.net/phpBB3/viewt ... =21&t=2248
I don't have time atm to improve it but feel free to use its code.
The targeting is solved by using a GUID that Rock found in memory (I also tried to find RaidTargetIndex but gave up).
It also has still the aggro issues mentioned.

[Auto Pilot]

I had checked your post Jack and it seemed like really good work

But my botting partner isn't even in the same country than me, so networking between the bots was kinda ruled out. And I'm trying to get something that works even if the main isn't botting (so I can just stick the healer on some alt or friend doing quests)

Also I had time to test a bit with comparing address of mob's target and team's ones and it seems to work nicely

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if RoMScript("UnitExists('party1')") then
	table.insert(partymemberName, RoMScript("UnitName('player')"))
	i = 1
	while i < 6 do
		if RoMScript("UnitIsPlayer('party"..i.."');") then
			table.insert(partymemberName,i+1, RoMScript("UnitName('party"..i.."')"))
		else
			break
		end
		i = i + 1
	end
    
	printf("Team detected... We have %s members\n", i);
	
    for i,v in ipairs(partymemberName) do
		obj = player:findNearestNameOrId(partymemberName[i]);
		printf("Looking for %s... ", partymemberName[i]);
		
		if obj ~= nil then
			table.insert(addressList,i,obj.Address)
			table.insert(partymember,i,CPawn(obj.Address))
			printf("OK\n")
		else
			printf("findNearestNameOrId failed\n");
		end
	end
end

Code is mostly from Jack. It checks all party members and tries to find their address with findNearestNameOrId which seem to fail a lot (it's automatic when target is out of range and I also still get errors sometimes when standing on top of target). For now all I do is restart it until it works and couldn't figure out the problem. A repeat ... until loop on that part won't solve the issue, when just restarting the bot will often get it right ...

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target = player:getTarget();

if not target:haveTarget() then
	printf("[DEBUG] Target has no target\n");
	-- Mob not aggroed yet, attack or ignore depending on result wanted
elseif in_table(target.TargetPtr, addressList) then
	printf("[DEBUG] Target is attacking our team! \n");
	-- Attack code here
else
	printf("[DEBUG] Target is attacking someone not in team\n");
	-- Add on ignore list, do nothing, kill steal, give buffs to that player or whatever else ...
end

in_table is a small function I wrote that just checks if 1st argument is an element of the 2nd argument.
Couldn't get 2 chars to test the last part, but there is no reason for it to not work. An example of the output log I get :

Resumed.
OPENING LOCAL SKILLS DB!
RoM windows size is 1600x900, upper left corner at 8,30
MACRO Test: ok
Ranged skill found: PRIEST_BONE_CHILL
[DEBUG] CPU Frequency 2345.644
Team detected... We have 4 members
Looking for MyName... OK
Looking for SomeDudeNameOutOfRange... findNearestNameOrId failed
Looking for SomeOtherDudeNameOutOfRange... findNearestNameOrId failed
Looking for AnotherDudeNameOutOfRange... findNearestNameOrId failed
[DEBUG] Target has no target ? <-- bot found a new target
Use ': PRIEST_RISING_TIDE => Some Mob's Name (20011/20011)
[DEBUG] Target is attacking our team! <-- I attacked it, it's on me now
Use ': PRIEST_RISING_TIDE => Some Mob's Name (20011/20011)
Use Ú: PRIEST_REGENERATE => Me (8119/8262)
[DEBUG] Target is attacking our team!
Use ': PRIEST_RISING_TIDE => Some Mob's Name (15515/20011)
[DEBUG] Target is attacking our team!
Use ': PRIEST_RISING_TIDE => Some Mob's Name (13211/20011)
[DEBUG] Target is attacking our team!
Use ': PRIEST_RISING_TIDE => Some Mob's Name (10915/20011)

[lisa]

How hard would it be to get the name of target or target.
I had a browse through player.lua and it appears to me it is comparing the isFriend(from profile) to the CPawn(target.TargetPtr)

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					local targetOfTarget = CPawn(target.TargetPtr);

					if( not self:isFriend(targetOfTarget) ) then
						debug_target("anti kill steal: target not fighting us: target don't targeting a friend")
						return false;
					end

I thought that would return the address of the target of target and not name. So did it get the address of the player's name listed in the profile friends?

If we could get the name of the target of target this would be very simple.

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GetPartyMember(1)

returns the actual name of the first person in the party (not urself) it has no distance limitations either.

[rock5]

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targetOfTarget = CPawn(target.TargetPtr)

returns the whole pawn class. So 'targetOfTarget.Name' is the name and 'targetOfTarget.Id' is it's id. The problem arises when the target you are trying to get the targets target from is botting. When they are botting, because of the way it targets, you wont be able to get it's target. I'm not sure if the same is true when using in game functions, such as 'UnitName("targettarget")'.

[lisa]

Spent quite a bit of time working on this. The code I asked about earlier works perfectly(i tested and retested). I believe the issue of the bot not attacking mobs targeting a friend(profile) is line 272 of player.lua

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					(( (pawn.TargetPtr == self.Address or (pawn.TargetPtr == self.PetPtr and self.PetPtr ~= 0)) and
					aggroOnly == true) or aggroOnly == false) ) then

I think if we put in to also check if the target of target is a friend then it might actually attack it (then later can be changed to check party members aswell as friends) I tried but my understanding of how the function CPlayer:isFriend(pawn) works was failing me.

If anyone is working on using the functions to do with targeting there are a few things I discovered today.
1. Distance of agro is 400 yards, if party member within this range has agro then you will also be in combat, if you are out of that range u won't be in combat.
2. Distance of target information is 350 yards, you can't get target of target out of this distance.
3. If a pawn targets something while you are out of the 350 yards and you move closer you won't see it's target unless it retargets.

[rock5]

The way findEnemy works, we would need to add a score for when a friend is targeted. eg.

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if player:isFriend(pawn.TargetPtr) then
   currentScore = currentScore + SCORE_HELPFRIEND
end

But, remember, not everyone may want to help friends so maybe it needs to be an option. In which case it might have to be

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if player:isFriend(pawn.TargetPtr) and settings.profile.options.HELP_FRIEND == true then
   currentScore = currentScore + SCORE_HELPFRIEND
end

Or could we use the antiks option?

And if you want to help friends you might not want to help party members so that might need to be checked separately, maybe needing another option.

Which brings us to party members. I think we might need a separate function, player:isPartyMember(). Then we could do,

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if player:isPartMember(pawn.TargetPtr) and settings.profile.options.HELP_PARTY == true then
   currentScore = currentScore + SCORE_HELPPARTY
end

We could also change the antiks section in the default eval function.

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				if( not player:isFriend(targetOfTarget) and not player:isPartyMember(targetOfTarget) ) then
					debug_target("anti kill steal: target not fighting us: target not targeting a friend")
					return false;
				end

Unfortunately, I can't see a way past problem '3' but hopefully it wont happen very often. It just means that occassionally you might run past a party member and not help them.

I'm not sure what values to use for SCORE_HELPFRIEND and SCORE_HELPPARTY. I don't know how Administrator came to those other 'score' values. Also, I'm not sure what effect using GetPartyMember, which needs RoMScript, will have on the functioning of the bot. I think it would slow it down too much. Ideally we would need to get the party member names from memory. I'll take a stab at finding them.

[lisa]

could get bot to set a table of party names when it is first launched, so would just run the romscript once for each member at startup. only issue would be if it changes afterwards.

Yeah I have been working on adding in a score for attacking friendly and I was going to make it more important then when mob is targeting player but yeah more options needed down the track. For now I just want to get it so a "dps" will actually kill something when it has agro but isn't being attacked.
For testing purposes I have been using the RoM functions for getting names and targettarget, still not quite there yet. Seems there are quite a few "checks" each time bot looks for a target.

[lisa]

I think I found the main source of the issue, or maybe just the bigger one.

player.lua

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		if( player.Battling == true  and		-- we have aggro
		target.TargetPtr ~= player.Address ) then	-- but not from that mob
			debug_target("target lvl above/below profile settings with battling from other mob")
			return false;
		end;

Since you are in combat it checks if the mob is not targeting you and if not then it doesn't attack it. So trick is to change that. obviously you can't just add in an or friend as it would still be not you.
I wonder if this part of the code is redundant now with the antiKS code that was added to the end? Because if that code is removed it will still get to the end of function and check for anti KS which would check who the pawn is targeting.

[rock5]

Hm.. No I think it's correct. What it's saying is; if the mob is outside the level range then it wont target it, which is correct. But if you have aggro and the mob is targeting you then it will still attack the mob anyway. You don't want it to attack a mob that is out of the level range just because it is attacking a friend. If you want to attaack higher level mobs with your group you just need to change the level settings in your profile.

[lisa]

Been doing lots of messing around today, actually got it to kill mobs that were targeting "friend" while anti-KS was true, I did however discover more issues that are probably even harder to deal with lol

If you have a healer in group, which is probably what most want, then you have the issue of if you cast a heal on another player and if they have no target they will then target the healer, same with buffs.

At one point I had a heal hit a DPS at just the wrong time and the dps tried to attack the healer, of course it couldn't and after a few seconds it gave up and continued on it's merry way but the issue is still there that your bot might be forced to target other players because of how RoM is set up.

I think I will put this back in the to hard basket again for a bit, doing my head in lol

[rock5]

Not sure why that happened. I'm pretty sure there should be a check to see if the target is a mob.

I just had a look. The eval function checks to see if the target is attackable, which players aren't so it shouldn't try to attack.

Anyway I found the party member names in memory. I've whipped up a userfunctions file to test it out. Try it out.

userfunction_GetPartyNames.lua

(656 Bytes) Downloaded 124 times

Just use GetPartyMemberName(n) to return the name of party member 'n'.

I'll try and incorporate it in the bot tomorrow.

[lisa]

Yeah I saw the check for target being player, the timing has to be bad. Bot has to start attacking, so it has already decided player:fighting and then you heal it before the mob fights back. So with the memory targeting it doesn't actually get a physical target until the mob attacks you which means any heals or buffs makes the physical target the player healing/buffing.

On a previous point the UnitName("targettarget") doesn't work for bot unless the bot gets a physical target ie. mob attacked it.

Physical target means you can see icon on screen, memory target is when you can't.

I'll test out the function and see how it goes, still need to get the issue of battling and not fighting sorted out.