Mining Bot - Recruiting

[Cooleko]

I'm done recruiting, I will be reviewing applicants and following up with zone preferences. This will take some time as I am still planning adjustments to the bot (stealth) and the NPC array may not be easy to find.

I'm looking for volunteers who want to help out in this project. Consider this thread as a signup. Below is a copy paste of the emails I have sent out to a few hand selected applicants (unfortunately, none were available).

***No Coding required, participation involves pushing buttons and running between nodes that the bot doesn't know!

 Spoiler

Well, first off, thank you for taking the time to help out with debugging and building my databases for the Crafting and Radar tools. Because of your earlier assistance, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to assist me further but be granted exclusive access to my latest creation - Mining Bot!

Essentially, I would give you access to my mining bot for free if your assistance is up to the required high standard needed.

I built and tested my bot in Nophica’s Wells. At this time I have gotten 8 levels just by afk’ing and praying that no NMs kill me while mining

Unfortunately, mining requires more than just a bot that can perform the act of mining (I’m pointing at all the fishing bots out there). The bot needs to know where all of the nodes in the zone are (there are approximately 40 nodes on average) and the bot needs to know how to get between these nodes (there are 780 (40 choose 2) possible routes between nodes! Double that if you count the fact that you can run both ways.

Given the right tools, and a proper introduction on how to use them, one can get away with running ~80 routes and the automatic tools will figure out the other 700 (or ways to get between nodes without explicit routes).

If I explained how to use my mining bot, would you be willing to completely take over building one or more zones worth data for it?

I don’t want to kid you, this is a large undertaking that requires patience, planning, and time. This will take 1-3 hours a night for about a week. It is a huge commitment. However, you could customize the bot to run with your favorite zone, and finish of your miner to 50 and start maxing out your reserves for lvl cap increase or making profit by selling with next to no effort afterwards. The perks: you simply have to mine like you always would with just a few extra hassles (Hitting buttons: add node, start recording route, stop recording route). The bot will start helping you out immediately by mining the node you are at, and running to the next one if it knows the route.

To be clear, the bot is finished and should run with no errors. I just want to expand known places it can run in (You would also be debugging the bot as you worked with it in case there are errors that occur that I haven’t encountered).

In the end you will have a fully functional bot for your favorite mining area, at no $ cost. However, I require you give all ini files to me once complete, so that I have the extra data to include in the bot.

There are three separate duties required from you if you chose to accept.

You must find and add to the database every node in the area of your choosing.
- This is accomplished by just standing perfectly on top of the node and hitting "Add node" button in bot.

You must make a list of the most favorable gathering item (and depth) at each node.
- Only one item required per node, this tells the bot what depth to mine at.
For example, I programmed the bot to choose gold > silver > iron at Nophica’s Wells. I ignored all Obsidian nodes and left them un-configured (no entry in the ini file) as I have no personal interest in collecting them. I would expect you to do the same at the zone of your choosing.

You must record optimum running routes between as many nodes as you can.
- This involves careful planning of how you are going to run routes.
As motioned above, you may accomplish this with just as little as 80 (I only ran ~100 for NW, If I knew in the beginning what I know now (I didn’t have any of my route creating tools) I may have been able to get by with as few as 60 well planned routes)
You need to make sure every route is traversable in both directions!
No jumping off one way cliffs, always approach the start and end from head on directions (I’ll explain later if you accept to help) so the bot will end in the correct place.
Plan your routes such that they may have intersections.
Plan your routes to avoid common NM hangouts.
I have written several algorithms that will do many things.
1) Look to see if the destination mining node to get to has any known or computable route from your starting location.
2) Creates new routes based off of intersections of old routes.
3) Always looks to see if new routes added make better combinations with older routes so after each iteration the paths become better and better.
3) Error checks your routes to make sure they actually start and end where you say they do! (This may not be a problem anymore since I added intelligent route naming where the bot chooses your route name for you)

If you want to accept I will explain in more detail while looking at the game map of the zone you chose.

Lastly, I expect you to be comfortable verbally communicating with me over msn or another service. I would want to walk you through the bot as well as walk you through how thinking proactively about route management would make the bot and the route making tools work best together. I will be binding the bot to your specific character to prevent a mass leak of the bot. You need to be comfortable sharing your server/character name with me for these purposes. I will not be maintaining a database or sharing this information so you don't have to worry about the information ever getting out.

I will not select anyone until after the big update and confirming that the bot still works great [Mid Oct]. Ideal applicants will have access to a R1 miner and would want to choose one of the 3 big zones to rank up to 50 in. However, I may partition the help into specific zones/grades if needed, and subsequently, many mining lvls will be needed. The applicant would be expected to map out Grades 1-5 of the specified zone. Each selected participant will receive the bot for free as a reward for their services.

[logan]

Mine is rank 10 I believe. I am familiar with many scripting languages as well if need to to map out where points are ect.

[asdf1987]

lv 30 miner here, dont mind trying/help out with the bot~~

Also, i frequently use your running bot, so i'm familiar with the way it works (assuming this bot uses the same thing)

[sl295]

R18 miner here, more than welcome to help

im not bad with languages and feedback

[Cooleko]

Just for clarification, there will be no coding required, you will just be pushing buttons on a bot while running between nodes as the bot mines >.>

[sl295]

well im still happy to do that :P

[anarres]

miner 21... just tell me what to do and i will

[RossB]

SECOND EDIT!!

I can also start new characters on each account and dualbox if needed. Good for testing multiple instances of your bot?

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EDIT!
I also have my second account which is only R22 miner. Quite happy to leave that grinding all day if required ^^

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Miner 34 (at time of posting) and happy to help.

Would be interesting to see your take on mining bot!

[gaiablaze]

I have a level 7 miner, and I certainly have the time currently to do the mapping. I also don't plan to level it any time soon, so I don't mind waiting till mid October.

Also by verbally speaking, do you mean via a voip service or just IMing? I'm not sure due to you mentioning MSN lol and also because my hearing is less than stellar over headsets.

Anyway, I look forward to helping you if I can.

[polarisxx]

I would be willing to help assist with this bot. I have multiple accounts I could use also and will talk to you over vent or whatever.

Thanks

[dinin991]

I would be willing to help out. I think my mining is at R10. I also have a lot of c/c++ coding experience if that helps at all.

[squallredx1213]

miner rank 22 at your service

[vMarth]

I have miner 14 or 15 and was planning on leveling it anyway. So I'd love to help!

[Aionimus]

Hey !

Very nice to hear that !!

I´m a R38 miner and really looking forward for a nice mining bot. I almost play ~12 hours a day and i think i got the time for testing and bug reporting.

It would be really awesome if it would be possible to join the test!

Regards and thx in advance !!
Aionimus

[steve782]

this is an interesting project that I may want to get involved with soon, my miner is rank1.
Instead of having to record all of the paths between all pairs of nodes(forward and reverse), is it possible to just use a collision detection/motion planning algorithm that will take you between two nodes? I know I have seen bots use these algorithms in previous games - for example if you run into a wall while traveling to the next node, then it just finds its way around the wall using a simple algorithm. If it were possible to implement this, it would be substantially easier to do this project and get people to participate. You would just need to know the location of all nodes. Given that, you could use a shortest-distance or time algorithm (for example) to determine the order in which you will visit each node and then implement the collision detection along each path to avoid obstacles. This is certainly non-trivial, but it would be a very interesting programming project! lol.