Developer looking for a new project.

IMO you should be able to move and cast. Its just one of those things that never made sense to me. Like shield blocking and parrying with sword. In 1.0 you could one or the other but not both. Why? I have a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. I can easily use both. Why cant I block AND parry?

But I see what you're saying about being suspcious. It would be kind of obvious to everyone around you if you were doing that.

I agree with you about the logic behind the rules of the game particularly with the blocking and parrying (since i normally play a tank class).

But that is the rules of the game which everyone should really abide by and it is one rule that if broken would be blatently obvious to all around, no different to the speed hack though.

Steve

So what all features are you planning on adding to the bot?

The features for version 1 have not yet been finalised, however we have decided on licencing and security aspects.

We will not be releasing a commercial version of the software at this time, all of the developers involved at present have unanimously voted to keep the software within the hands of the developers and testing team.

We will allow friends of the developers access to the software but this will be subject to contributions for the hosting (hosting isn't expensive, particularly when its shared out).

The software requires authentication with a web service which creates a session and feeds back operationally critical data to the application. So without this authentication the program will not function. This is to stop the software being usable by unauthorised RMT groups.

Once I begin to list the features you will see why this is important:

Crafting Bot
1) Integrated Recipe Database
2) Recipe profitability calculator
3) Recipe profitability analyser
4) Automated Guildleve Crafting
5) Update Central Database with performance statistics (for future optimizations)

Fishing Bot
1) Integrated Fishing Database
2) Location, Bait, Settings Advisor
3) Queue Fish and Auto move between locations
4) Count Casts, Hooked, Caught, Lost
5) Update Central Database with performance statistics (for future optimizations)
6) Automated Guildleve Fishing

Mining / Harvesting Bot
1) Custom Path Recorder
2) Predefined Path Recorder with Variance factors. (Configuration is a big project so will be in v2.0
3) Integrated Gathering Database (so that the most efficient points can be used)
4) Location Equipment and settings advisor
5) Fully Automated (Select Material and bot will collect in the most efficient method)
6) Guildleve Gathering


Farming Bot
1) Integrated Farming Database (Item, Mobs, Drop Rates, Spawn Points) for the most efficient farming area and mobs.
2) Automatic Solo and Party Farming (For us dual boxers out there)

// Until I understand how the new inventory system works these are just ideas
Inventory Management
1) Anywhere Inventory Viewer (Bag, Storage, Retainer)
2) Anywhere Auction House Viewer
3) Auction House Camper (Auto Buy, Auto Sell)
4) NPC Shop Item Locator Database
5) NPC Shop Autobuy / Auto Sell
6) Total Asset Calculator (based on current market values).

Battle Parser for Player / Party
1) Monitor / Calculate Total Damage inflicted
2) Count number of KOs for
3) Monitor / Calculate Total Damage Sustained
4) Monitor / Calculate Total Health Restored
5) Monitor / Calculate Total Damage negated with shield

Remote Control (with WhatsApp)
1) Use webservice to monitor inbound messages through whatsapp
2) Parser messages and pass commands back to the bot
3) Parser chatlog messages and pass communications back to the bot
4) pass /tell messages and inbound emotes to whatsapp through webservice
5) Pass bot state communications to whats app through webservice
6) Pass bot progress updates to whats app through webservice.

Ideas Still in design
1) Fate Finder
2) Map Overlay Splitter
3) Automated Agro Handler
4) Event Trigger and Macro Response

We will be collecting and storing data in two databases which will be locked down so that it can only be accessed on the physical server or through a web service which has limited functions.

I am more than happy to provide all the bots users access to the data so that they can do their own analysis but I believe that centralising the data storage will help us all to determine patterns and further understand the influence of all factors in server side functions.

For example you will recall in FFXI that there was a fallacy that the direction you face while crafting had an effect of the result, but no-one could prove it conclusively with data. (Well at least they couldn't while I played it).

With this system all of that will change and we intend to be at the cutting edge of optimisation and further more include these optimisations in our automation.

Hope this answers your questions.

Steve

O.O;

thats alot of stuff.

Sounds great! Hope I get to try it.

Yah I didnt do much crafting in FFXI, it was overly complex. I just got the materials and let my friends craft for me. But in FFXIV I had Armorer 50 and everything else in the 20's - 30's with Fishing at like 47 or something and the rest in the 30's.

The Auto Buy Auto Sell seems like a great function. Especially if they setup legacy players the way I think they will (or atleast hope they will). If you can send mail to anyone regardless of what server they are on, you could essentially buy something cheap on one server, mail it, sell it high on another server. I dont know if SE would be smart enough to prevent that or not, but I hope they dont think of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by omfgbbqwtf O.O; thats alot of stuff. Sounds great! Hope I get to try it.

Well since you are our first beta tester you will be a part of our "testing team" so you will be issued with a licence :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by omfgbbqwtf The Auto Buy Auto Sell seems like a great function. Especially if they setup legacy players the way I think they will (or atleast hope they will).

How do you hope they will setup the legacy players?

Steve

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveMoore How do you hope they will setup the legacy players? Steve

well according to SE, legacy players will only have to pay a flat fee of $9.99. This also allows us to have up to 42 (or 40 I cant remember) total characters, 8 per server (world), with no additional fees for the additional characters. If they do infact allow us to use the mog delivery box (ingame mail) to deliver gil, items, etc to characters on OTHER servers, we could potentially buy a cheap item on one server and sell it on another server.

This is of course assuming they let us mail items/gil cross server, and that the AH is not a universal AH and each server will have its own AH.

I am pretty sure each server will have its own AH since if they didnt do that then the new players on the "new player" servers would basically be screwed by the high prices the legacy players have already set.

I highly doubt they will allow cross server item delivery that would just be asking for trouble, they might allow cross server communications but again I am doubtful.

With regards to a universal AH, I think that is more likely than the other two but I am still doubtful. My reasoning behind this is that one of the components which makes MMORPGs unique is their virtual economy it is in SEs interest to keep the economy stable for the longevity of the game.

It is much easier to control several smaller isolated economies than several economies which can influence each other, this is the reason I am skeptical. If they did make this mistake the game will undoubtedly fail within the first 18 months unless quickly rectified.

I also noted that SE are going to be stealing all my save up Gil when the server reopens, something about all players will only have 10% of the gil they left 1.0 with.

So I don't think that the average player will have that much of an advantage over the new players. That said I had a friend who played since release who amassed around 720M gil so now he will only have 72M gil haha I say "only" but seriously some players will have a considerable advantage over everyone.

Steve

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveMoore I also noted that SE are going to be stealing all my save up Gil when the server reopens, something about all players will only have 10% of the gil they left 1.0 with. So I don't think that the average player will have that much of an advantage over the new players. That said I had a friend who played since release who amassed around 720M gil so now he will only have 72M gil haha I say "only" but seriously some players will have a considerable advantage over everyone. Steve

Yah but this is SE we are talking about. 1.0 was a huge flop for them. Ive been playing the beta from day 1 and so far IMO they are making some big mistakes already. Mostly with how they are making the game far too easy (for the casual gamer). I fear for the longevity of the game already. I made it to lvl cap on 2 jobs in 2 days. The lvl cap for now is only 35 but still, thats 70 total lvls in 2 days. Also the dungeons are amazingly easy. I was speed farming the final dungeon in under 6 minutes.

And yes they are reducing everyone's gil by 1/10th. But they are also reducing the prices of things by 1/10th (npc merchants only of course). Also the maximum amount of gil one character can hold is reduced by 1/10th (99,999,999 instead of 999,999,999). So the economy is going to be determined by the players in the end anyway.

MoeToy has apparently finished his bot for the beta, if you wanted to check it out.

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I am not sure if they did that to accelerate the testing phase, I think the level caps are going to be level 50 the same as 1.0 because the character data will be persisting and they already stated they wont increase the cap.

I think it was so that they can control the environment. Beta 3 will be where we will see more of what to expect from the finished product because they will be restoring character data if my memory serves me correctly so this is more or less the Trial Release.

Steve

P.S Also the Moetoy bot is all pixel based from what I can gather and its functions are extremely limited :(

Shame really because he has obviously put a lot of work into it.

yes its a pixel bot. But from my understanding it is almost 100% undetectable (i could be wrong, you know more about this stuff than me) because it does not ever touch the memory. Good for lets say craftbotting on your main account. Then use a more sophisticated one on an alt account to gather mats and such.

And no, not exactly. The lvl cap for new characters during phase 3 will be 35. However if you are using your old character from 1.0 and its lvl is 50, it will stay at 50 during the beta. This could all change again before phase 3 starts though, they like to change the rules around. In phase 1 they said they would wipe all character data for phase 2, but then changed their minds and let everyone keep their phase 1 chars.

Indeed Pixel bots are difficult to detect but no more difficult to detect than a bot which reads from memory addresses. Where it gets detectable is when you write directly to a protected memory space.

Reading from the memory is safe and writing to unprotected memory is equally safe but the question then arises... how can the developer be 100% certain that the memory block it is writing to is safe?

In short the answer is they can never be 100% certain, however they can make an educated guess and then test it thoroughly, but there is no saying that SE won't change its security methods and monitor different memory addresses as time passes on.

So from a security perspective Pixel bots are sounding like the safest option right?

Well again... I have never been one to sacrifice performance and reduce functionality in the name of security :) I want the best of both worlds and yes that can happen.

Instead of relying on graphical images and pixel sampling and restricting the user to specific resolutions and menu colours we read the processes memory for input and push the bots output through user controls so we interact with the software in exactly the same way as the user would.

So there is absolutely no way that the software can report any direct memory addressing back to the server because we are not writing directly to memory but we are only interacting with it in the way that it anticipates.

I won't go into too much detail as to how we accomplish this because this isn't really the forum but it suffices to say that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

We intend to have a "Safe Mode" which needs to be disable to allow the user to use functions which rely on direct memory addressing. The user will be made aware of the risks involved with using certain features, it doesn't mean that they will get caught but it does mean that they are assuming the risk of using the function.

Some functions / memory addresses are likely to carry more risk than others, to give you an idea ALL of the features I listed earlier in the thread can be accomplished putting the user at risk.

Things like a teleport hack, speed hack, AH anywhere, Retainer Access Anywhere, Instacast, Disabling spell interuption are all examples of direct memory address access. Basically anything which cannot be done by a player at the PC without a bot will put your account at risk.

I hope they keep the level 50 cap... it took me ages to get my mining hat from Hamlet lol :(

Steve

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveMoore I hope they keep the level 50 cap... it took me ages to get my mining hat from Hamlet lol :( Steve

Your lvls should stay the same, your items however are garunteed to change. Which items are being change is up to SE. Im pretty sure they sent out a list of what items were being removed from the game but I cant remember where that list is. Ill have a look around for it.

And I do understand what you are saying (atleast as much as I can understand). Reading from the memory is mostly safe but writing to it is not safe.

But in regards to moetoy, anyone that bought his bots in 1.0, get his bots for free in 2.0. So either way I'll have his :)

His bots are not as featurepacked and they do require proper settings, but the proper settings that it requires are usually the default game settings, just tell it what your current resolution is and it should do the rest.

Your safety features seem great! Cant wait to try it.

One thing I forgot to mention that Moetoy does that I dont think we have discussed yet (but should be very easy to do) is the macro/gear/job swapper. Basically does what it says, instead of having a macro (which is i think limited to 7 lines?) to change job/gear, his little program will do it for you. Change job, change full set of gear including rings earrings and such, and change your hotbar around as needed, all with 1 click.

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items being changed ^

Quote:

Originally Posted by omfgbbqwtf One thing I forgot to mention that Moetoy does that I dont think we have discussed yet (but should be very easy to do) is the macro/gear/job swapper. Basically does what it says, instead of having a macro (which is i think limited to 7 lines?) to change job/gear, his little program will do it for you. Change job, change full set of gear including rings earrings and such, and change your hotbar around as needed, all with 1 click.

Sounds like a useful function... would be interesting to see his implementation, I presume that you leave your macro blank in your FFXIV macro set and instead configure it in Moetoys bot?

It sounds like adding this as a feature will be worthwhile as I will have to code job changing and gear swapping functions anyway so that when the bot changes jobs while automated its not walking around naked something I overlooked in my preliminary design :P

Steve

the way his worked was literally just a text input.

It had a normal interface that was setup like this:

[job] = (drop down menu)
[main hand] = (text box)
[off hand] = (text box)

etc etc.

And when you hit "go" it just typed the text into the game chat box, since that is the same thing a macro does. You would see the text actually come up in the chat log making it appear as if you were typing it yourself.

/mh "Sword"
/oh "Shield"

like that.

The good thing about it was that it took like 3 macros to make 1 full job change and his did it without taking up macro space.

it also had a save feature to save your profiles to a notepad. could also open up the notepad outside of the program, change something, and save it.

However, according to SE (i have yet to see this though so it might not happen), we will not need such a thing because when we change jobs it is supposed to remember what our gear was/is or something like that.