So, after my first month...

[waldodamon 12]

I figured I would write this after using the bot for one month, just to get out how I feel about going forward.  I want to buy an unlimited subscription to this bot, but after this month, I am going to, for now, only purchase one more month's worth of time.  I will get into the reasons as to why, bear with me. 

 

I like this bot, I really do, it has great potential and the community is active, friendly, and just plain good people.  I like that I can choose to create a fight class the "cookie cutter" way by using the bot itself and setting rotation priorities, OR I can write a fight class using C++.  Pasterke, I hope you don't mind but at the moment I am revamping your Blood DK fight class and may share it here within a week or two once I have the bugs out.  Your foundation was awesome, don't get me wrong, but, being an ex hardcore raider, I am extremely picky when it comes to rotations and as to when to pop cool downs, so I used your already awesome Blood DK .cs file and tweaked it a bit. 

 

Profile recording is a breeze, and honestly, I created some pretty intensely huge profiles in multiple zones, I mean literally ALL of Outland, ALL of Pandaria, ALL of Northrend, profiles that took me hours to create, and this bot handled these profiles with absolute ease.  There was no lag or stuttering due to an oversized file, no pausing for mesh updates, no double-backing on the path because the profile was recorded "too close" in proximity to other waypoints, it just works flawlessly. 

 

The biggest, and I am going to start with the BIGGEST reason here, the biggest reason I am waiting another month before purchasing the unlimited is because of stuck detection.  In Zangarmarsh, for example, with the huge mushroom-tree things, if the bot detects a node and is flying above that mushroom-tree line, the bot will dive down on top of the mushroom cap, once it hits the cap it will fly back up about 10 feet, then spiral down back to the mushroom cap top, rinse and repeat over and over, each fly up/spiral down takes about 3-4 seconds, so imagine if a player was watching the bot do this every 3-4 seconds for a minute or more....

 

This particular situation happens on many obstacles in the game.  If the bot detects a node and there is a rock or crystal formation between the path of the node and my character, the bot will literally just fly into the rock or crystal or whatever obstruction is in the way, it will not attempt to move, fly up, nothing, just keeps flying straight into the obstruction.  I don't want to compare this bot to any other bots, but for the sake of constructive criticism, I am going to, sort of. 

 

The last bot I used had decent stuck detection, though I don't know how the code was written, I was never shown the source, I can tell you what the bot did for stuck detection.  If the character became stuck, in flight, due to an obstacle, first it would try flying left and right 15-20 yards to get "around" the obstacle.  It attempted once to the left, once to the right.  If this failed, the bot would fly the character straight up, as if the player was holding the spacebar, about 100 yards, then forward about 35 yards, then do the left/right thing and try flying back down.  If it was still stuck at this point (you could set the amount of "stuck" tries in the bot in case you didn't want to go through this more than once...), it would fly up 50-75 yards higher than it did the first time, then forward/ left/right and try landing again.  It would repeat this, each time flying a little higher to try and clear the obstruction until it either succeeded or the specified amount of attempts had been reached and it simply just moved on to the next waypoint in the profile.

 

Fortunately, I keep a close eye on the bot when I am using it.  I am not the type to let it run for 12 hours without watching it, I think the longest I have run it for straight was 8 hours, and even then I am watching it at least 70% of the time while doing other things.  Honestly, I can live with skipping nodes.  I can live with not gathering a node after combat is finished, these are small glitches and, honestly, in the grand scheme they really don't affect production.  Not having a good stuck routine, however, that can lead to players reporting you and getting you banned. 

 

This is my concern.  I am not always going to be able to watch the bot like a hawk, honestly, let's face it, the point of botting is to "not" have to be in front of the game, at least that's what my end goal is.  This cannot happen, unfortunately, if a player is continuously nose diving in spirals into a huge mushroom cap in Zangarmarsh or flying into a crystal formation in Hellfire.  Even in Jade Forest and Kun Lai Summit I catch the bot just flying into a bamboo tree or stuck on a ledge.  All I have to do sometimes is simply press the spacebar once quickly, sometimes that's all it takes, and bam, not stuck anymore, but I know this can be detected from within the bot and an automation can be written for it.  

 

Once this happens, honestly, I won't even wait for my month to be up whenever it is, I will buy the lifetime license outright, however, until action is taken in this area, I am going to use this bot and pay for it on a month to month basis.  This may be more financially taxing to me in the long run, however, one fix of one issue is all it would take. 

 

Otherwise, as I stated above, this is literally the smoothest running bot I have ever used, I really do like this bot a lot!!!

 

Waldo

 

 

[BetterSister 367]

Really good text!

About zangarmarsh. What i did there is while lvling (at around 64 lvl) on every profile i disabled flying just because flying using meshes is little buggy so rather use ground mount.

Indeed stuck detection and stuck evasion needs some improvements.

Bot sometimes skipping nodes after combat while gathering is known bug and waiting to be fixed (if there isn't bug report about this gotta make one)

[waldodamon 12]

I am glad you appreciate the organization I try to put into my constructive criticism.  When I write such posts, it is not because I am complaining or that "I don't like the bot", it's actually quite the opposite.  I love using this bot and it is a great bot to use, and I have used my fair share of botting programs in WoW and in other MMOs.  The reason I write this stuff is because I believe that feedback is what helps fuel development.  Let me rephrase that, "positive" feedback is what helps fuel development.  There is nothing "negative" about this bot, as you stated above with your example of disabling flying in Zangar, there is always a way around a problem until the problem is rectified. 

All the small stuff, like skipping nodes, skipping after fighting, etc, that is very small stuff.  I still gather TONS of nodes per hour despite these small glitches, so that is a definite positive side to it, it is not directly affecting the purpose of the bot, it's just weird seeing it happen, lol.

The bigger stuff, again, to me, is the diving and flying into things repetitively, but again, no need to go there as I already have up above in my original post, and I trust that the development team is working on this. 

Some of the greatest bots I have ever used were the greatest bots because of not only the development team, but also the community itself.  There will always be those who complain, however, true progress comes from those who observe, report, and offer to help out in any way they can.  Interaction between user and developer is the defining relationship which either makes or breaks any piece of software. 

 

Ergo, if I can be of any assistance besides simply reporting findings, pleased let me know.  My knowledge of programming is less than amateur at best, but I can test things with the best of them, and I am more than willing to as well. 

 

Cheers!