Recently I've had an idea for a new bot and would like any input / opinions.


The general idea is a "Quest Bot" a collective data-bot in-game. Where you could ask the bot quest info by:

1. Armor (i.e. Shadow Armor)

2. Weapons (i.e. Weeping)

3. Quest Title (i.e. Blackmire II)

4. Misc. Quest Rewards ( i.e. Pages of Salt and Ash)

5. Level Requirement (i.e. lvl 1-20)


While I fully understand nobody wants to be spammed a bunch of quest info. The simple things like starting NPC, Cords, Shortcuts, what type of weapon to use etc etc.

I have quite a bit of DB knowledge and know that this is no simple undertaking. However with the help of various AC sites (Such as the wonderful acvault!! ,Maggies and anyone willing to help participate. I believe this project could be a reality. Imagine, no longer having to alt-tab to find a quest. Just type


/tell Quest Bot 5000, QuestWeapon:Shield of Ins Dule


And the bot would reply with the necessity's of the quest.

Let me know what you think..

While it should be doable I would probably venture it would not become viable. i would suggest that it would probably be better to write a plugin that could be a stripped down web brower, like on your phone or something, and then front it to the AC wiki with search features that you could display the HTML code in game... now that would be FABULOUS!

 

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>> it would probably be better to write a plugin that could be a stripped down web brower


Something like that existed before ToD. But...why not just run AC windowed? All your problems would be solved, you could browse the quest site and run your character at the same time.

 

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For me personally I run it full screen due to the fact I run it on my laptop. Naitive resolution is 1900x... probably 1400 or so can't remember and if i use windowed at that resolution or a subset there of, it is just to small. I like full screen. But if I used my desktop i would probably always run in windowed mode. I would think there are a few of us out there that don't like to tab out if running in full screen.


Might even be fun to see this type of addon to AC+, or virindi tank, or alinco etc... I would think you would strip out all the html code like a text phone does and just send through what you really need to know without pics etc...


just my .02

 

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One issue I can see with this is it's fairly easy to get chat gagged while sending bot responses.. I have seen my Tinkerbot (using craftbot) get chat gagged during automated rare usage. Perhaps a revival of the 'replacement' help system aka the project that used the help system to display it's info...

 

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Brown Fox in Cragstone on Harvestgain had something similar to this, although it was a bit more basic. You send him a tell of enlightenment or forget and he would reply with the proper coords to the guardians and components to spell words. Additionally he would reply with who had recently slain the Queen on Marae Lassale and who had recently done Aerlinthe so that people would be able to know if the timer between quests were up. He used to do other things but I can't remember fully.


To my knowledge Brown Fox no longer plays, but it would be nice to have something like this again.

I currently DO run in windowed mode..(Dual-log, firefox, and Winamp slow my PC down to a crawl) And yes.. there was a plug-in called Oracle of Dearth

that kept quest information and cords for various dungys. But the idea is for a way for non-decal running characters to have a quick easy way to find quests.


jaclin_ff I love asheron.info it is a site that has really picked up where maggies/acvault left off. But one thing I've noticed throughout all the AC sites is not one has everything.


Currently my VB is a little.. well.. crappy. I've wrote a few simple applications in C+ and have been immersing myself in Decal Plug-in related code. Like I originally said I am a XML junkie; organizing and gathering quest info is easy; it's the application itself I'm kinda stuck on. I have been looking into the few open-source plug-ins out there such as GoArrow and most of Digero's that seem to be fairly clean builds.


Once again any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

I know what you mean John... some things I still use maggies for, some vault, some dereth.info etc etc etc...


That is why i am a proponate of a simple web viewer in decal. Just like your cell phone uses. It strips out all the fansy stuff and just give you the text/info. Might even be able to use a free browser out there stripped down to get this.


If you did that you can do googles searches, go to maggies, wiki... eventually would proably just make my own site to link to the best sites. Who knows. It is just html (well sort of)

 

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I still have the 'help system' replacement files that replaced the search tab I think with a "quest" tab, and you could look up whatever quest you wanted.


only thing is it was a pain to get all of the quests on there, so I only had most of the pre ToD quests on there

 

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I've thought about doing a "Quick Quest Guide" plugin, that only showed the steps needed to complete the quest (no maps or details.. only locations of portals or what you need to get the quest done).


The bad thing about the help system is that it gets overwritten about every month.


I do know that I've added some responses to my buff bot on MT, that will tell you the coords of the tusker, eater, olthoi portals and a few other basics.

 

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