Unkle Nuke

That's really too bad. I was hoping it might be done with adding a table entry to the database, much in the same fashion as is done with "custom" items and NPCs. Thanks for the info, Patman.

There will be more quests to choose than the two you've proposed? Just those two quests for those two zones means some characters will meet the requirements early while others will arrive to that point at a much later level, if their chosen exploration takes them to those areas. For example, a Gnome starting in Dun Morogh might decide to go north to Loch Modan and The Wetlands, instead of south to Stormwind and Elwynn Forest. There's no telling what level their character may be by the time they did get around to the southern lands. A Botguy in each major city would probably be the best way to go, with a quest appropriate to that zone and minimum character level. You could also have Botguy in other cities or major towns, like Menethil Harbor, but only as a "vendor" for hiring bots by those who already have earned the privilege. This begs the question of what to do with very low level characters. The only way to accommodate them would be to also spawn Botguy in the starting zones. Is it even desirable to allow very low level characters to hire bots, since it's likely the other characters on that player's account are going to be higher level? Should a very low level character be allowed to use higher level characters to help them complete quest objectives in the starting zone? The quest requirements do imply a minimum level at which a character can hire bots, since obtaining the quests have their own level requirements. On a side note, under the heading of wishful thinking: It would be great if it were possible to make "unlocking" the ability to hire bots an Achievement, perhaps titled something like "Mercenary Captain". This would make players feel even more proud of earning the right to hire playerbots and motivate others to also earn this. However, that would probably stray back into the mess of making things too complex from the perspective of programming the features.

It would help if you could be more specific, unless you want an answer so generic as to be useless. Which spell is it that's bugged? Depending on the nature of your error, it might be a core issue or it could be your database has missing or incorrect data.

There needs to be a balance between the needs of the player and setting the requirements for earning the ability to hire bots. Since the bots come from the player's own account, I'd say it shouldn't be too difficult. Otherwise, the player's reaction might be "You're making me go through all this just to hire my own characters?? WTF?!?" And let's not forget Playerbots are intended to be useful for low pop servers to give characters a helping hand. Another matter to consider is limiting the level difference between the hiring character and the bot. You wouldn't want someone with a level 70 character in their account hiring them to run through instances with their level 20 character. I'd say there shouldn't be more than 5 levels in difference if you're going to use Botguy to turn playerbots into a commodity that is part of the server's economy. The quest part might get a bit sticky. Unless you choose a common quest that already exists for the current zone and level of the character, you'd need to script custom quests. I'm not sure if messing about with a custom quest would be preferable, unless someone can script such quests according to class and level ( a solo mage might have more trouble than a much less squishy warrior, for instance ). No point in sending them out on a quest they'd need help completing! Although, you might use a party quest to allow hiring Heroic characters, like Death Knights. There's also the issue of having to pepper the world with these Botguy NPCs and then having them offer the correct quest for the zone where they reside. You wouldn't want the Botguy in Shattrath handing out a quest to kill Hogger in Elwynn Forest. If these were NPC bots with some good skills and gear, then upping the requirements would be perfectly reasonable, but they're not so it makes little sense to over-complicate matters concerning cost and/or requirements. A relatively simple quest and some gold ought to suffice, if not just gold.

You can blame me for some of that. It was partly my suggestions that prompted a look at Trinity's AHBot code for ways to implement some wanted features for the MaNGOS AHBot. I don't know if xeross simply ported those features or used them as guidelines for his own code, but his version of AHBot is still mainly based on the code inherited from Naicisum...who got it from Paradox...who got it from...blah,blah,blah. But, you get the idea.

Or you can edit your HOSTS file to redirect those IPs the client attempts connection to with your loopback address. This may break other games you have that uses those retail services, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Simple and direct. No mucking about with firewalls and registry hacks.

It should, but you will most likely need to resolve conflicts by manual edit or git mergetool, mostly because line numbering has changed between last rebase/merge of pet patch and the newest MaNGOS revisions.

After traponinet's generous offering, I just might be able to try Vehicles on my server now. Thanks, trap!

If you wanted to be sadistic, you make it a requirement to complete a quest and having that item in their inventory before they can unlock the ability to hire bots. For levels 1-10 it would be...Hogger's Head! P.S. I just covered IF-THEN-ELSE and FOR loops in my C++ book!

Another issue could be Auction House Bot. If you have this added to your server, it will cause lag spikes at login and cause high CPU usage with cache thrashing if you have configured AHBot to have an excessively high number of items stocked in the auction houses. Depending on your system hardware and database configuration, try lowering the item count by increments of 1,000 until you notice more responsiveness from your server. Also...make sure you set minitems and maxitems to the same value or very near to each other. If you have a minitems of 6,000 and maxitems of 10,000 for each auctionhouse, this means your server will have to delete old items and then add new items with each auction cycle for as many as 12,000 items!!

I like the idea of using NPCs for players to "recruit" or "hire" their bots. It allows me to reserve the .bot add command for GM level accounts and simplifies things for players wishing to summon a bot. The one advantage Botguy might have had is the ability to display a list of character name/class/level for the player to choose which bot to summon with very little code modification. Such a feature might be cumbersome to implement for so many vendors. I'd say having the option to charge gold per bot summoned would be great, with price scaled by player's character level, not as a penalty but just to give the player the feeling he's earning the right to have help instead of it just being a "gimme". * Levels 1-10 = 5 Gold * Levels 11-20 = 10 Gold * Levels 21-30 = 20 Gold * Levels 31-40 = 30 Gold * Levels 41-50 = 40 Gold * Levels 51-60 = 50 Gold * Levels 61-70 = 60 Gold * Levels 71-80 = 75 Gold For those who still want them to be freebies or not even have the vendors offer bots, then simply disable it in the config file. Perhaps there could even be a coefficient you could set by which the cost is calculated using n*level, for those who feel a lower or higher cost is more fair. /me loves config options.

Thank you for continuing to develop and maintain this project, KAPATEJIb. I look forward to seeing this arena in action.

As far as combat, I suppose you could. It would require some scripting to have them capture flags or buildings, wouldn't it? That's where the BG Bot idea would come into use. In fact, it would probably be better if Playerbot had a "BG Mode" so they could do all these things like buff/debuff, heals, and capture objectives, leaving the NPCs to just be combatants and window dressing.

That's just how Eye Of Acherus behaves without SilverIce's patches so it would seem the edits you used broke either the Camera Fix or the Eye Of Acherus patch. You also applied any necessary SQL patches? For the sake of keeping things simple and in one place, can you post the code sections you edited?

There's been enough problems with Ubuntu, since 9.4, that I have to wonder if some of the trouble doesn't lie there. Just look around some of the more popular Linux blogs, like Fewt's. Aside from possible OS issues, check your configs for MaNGOS and MySQL to make sure you haven't skipped over something like grid unload or set values too high. If you don't know what you're doing when configuring MySQL, it can seriously impact server performance. Bigger numbers don't translate into better performance. With a typical desktop setup used to run a MaNGOS server, buffers that are too large, too many threads per read/write, and so forth can gobble up memory and CPU cycles.

ROFLMAO. I nearly sprayed my screen with coffee while reading that, DC! Thanks for making my day.

Did you use SilverIce's "Eye of Acherus" patch or the latest one from traponinet in the Eye of Acherus thread? The Camera Fix by itself does not fix this spell.

Are you kidding?? You bet there's demand! Right now, I populate my BGs with city guards and other NPCs to at least try and give it some life on my tiny realm. I highly recommend you consult with blueboy, our resident Playerbot guru, on this matter for ideas.

As always, xeross, your work is deeply appreciated. Having a greater flexibility for how AHBot does its thing makes it much more useful to servers of any size population now, rather than just those that have dozens or even hundreds of players. I'm not sure when I'll have this compiled for testing. Since I'm now the sole player in my realm, updates have slipped down my list of things to do by a few notches. My other play-testers (a.k.a., "nephews") have reached those teen years where girls and other distractions now occupy the majority of their waking hours. Anyone know where I can rent more? lol

None of these are new. Looting player corpses has been floating around for a very long time. I think it was balrok who first introduced a "proof-of-concept" patch. Blocking creation of specific races/classes per realm has been in the Core Mods section for weeks now. Isn't Dual Spec now completely integrated into the core, making the Gossip Patch deprecated? I thought MaNGOS had full support, not counting database and scripting, for Death Knights since 0.15 so why is this even a patch you'd want to use for 3.2.0 clients and above?

That Trinity fork of AHBot that I've been puzzling my way through has this feature. You might want to take a peek at it, xeross. Your superior technical expertise should allow you to determine if their code is viable for MaNGOS. I'm not saying to use theirs, but it might give you some good ideas. In fact, as I had also said to Naicisum back when, I prefer if it is your own code because only you truly know the direction in which AHBot must grow with MaNGOS. Sure wish I knew more C++ than the basic "Hello World" stuff, but you and blueboy have inspired me to dust off my old C++ books and at least try.

Assuming you're using a clean MaNGOS core, I do not think your memory issue can be blamed on this. MaNGOS has very well done memory management and I've never had trouble with it. More than likely, your database is incorrectly configured. You might have too large table buffers or cache sizes need to be reduced. Take a look through some of the stickied topics on how to configure your MySQL to work with MaNGOS.

Does your server have any additional patches, such as Vehicles? Is your database completely up to date?

The principles still apply, the only real difference is the cleaner is now built into the core (and it's about time! lol).

Ok...so this patch will never be accepted into the core because it does not duplicate behavior on retail. We get that. But, it is superior to retail because being able to shoot someone or spell them through the ground is just plain ridiculous.