Planet M.U.L.E.

    I played a game hosted by the mule4u bot and hated it. Prior to the land auctions the mule4u bot would announce (Land Auctions: 3 colony land auctions ) and then we would go on to have 3 land auctions. I for one dont want to know ahead of time how many auctions are comming. Hate that. Kills the strategy and surprise of the game in my humble opinion. Also a guy lost a plot in the game and the mule4u robot made the comment (First the plot, then your dignity.). I wanted to punch my computer screen and i wasnt even the guy who lost the plot! I know that i have the option of only playing human hosted games and i will in the future but geez! Retarded to me! Maybe it's just me? Dont know. Guess i am to old fashioned or something? I am really starting to miss the days of human interaction! This futuristic world we live in just isnt for me i guess. I just want to jump into a time machine and go back 50 years.

Yes of course, bash the complex program you could have never made your self and is often the only thing hosting. Plus, the humans you want to play with will make much worse comments about events than the bot is programmed to do.

       If they want to have a host program then so be it. If guys need somebody to host and the Robot is all there is then good. Just think the robot should host and thats that. Robot should not be announcing upcoming events and posting comments on a game in my humble opinion! Just host. Who wants to know as soon as the auctions start how many are comming that round? I dont. Just throwing in my 2 cents is all. Personally i wont use the bot ever again because of this and wont comment again on the subject.

Mt-Wampus,

I read your post about the hosting program, and wanted to respond.

First the goal of the program was to give players an un-biased host that would be available to everyone.   
many players cannot port forward and work on their routers and firewalls to be able to host a mule game.

New players, often shunned by others don't get an opertunity to become experienced players as they are not allowed to join due to host bias.   (not arguing this point, there are reasons)

It solves a few problems like:

Host advantage
Hosts Arbitrarily kicking players
Hosts who decide that they are loosing and cannot win, closing the game.
Hosts who fall asleep or go away during the game
Poor or dropped connections on the host


I removed the comments on lost plots and gained plots, and as far as it announcing how many plots are up for auction this information has been available to everone that is playing regardless if it is bot hosted.   The bot only monitors the game log for information.   

It doesn't automatically announce how many plots are up for auctions, it needs to be requested by a player.   I agree that this changes the strategy a little, but atleast everyone can see it, as opposed the some of the players you may have played in the past who are monitoring their game log files during play.

The goal is to make everything fair.

I will add a function that will allow you to disable the bot:auctions command prior to starting a game so you can play the same way as you did before.   This will allow 1 person to turn it off, if it offends.

Hopefully you will give it another shot in the future, but if not no worries.

In fact I coulda swore that the original C64 game told you how many plots were going to be auctioned before the auction started.  I could be wrong and I may have to fire up the old C64 to be sure, I don't trust all the emulated roms to be correct :-)

Uh - what? People look at a log file and find out if and how many auctions there are? They have been doing this all along??? That's awful. Why is there even a way to do this? But if this is the case, then why not have it right in the game, so its fair (not everyone is going to know how to do that, I for one had no knowledge of that, and i have been here a while).

But, the bigger question: Why is this information available in the first place? Is there some reason it needs to be? Can it be removed or hidden?

If this is the way it is, then tell me how do do it at least. Only fair.

I'm assuming they are all talking about the log.txt file in in the mule/data/ directory.  if you take a look at it after a game you will see all the information is in there about the game.  now interpreting it on the fly is another thing.  my guess is you would need some 'specialized' program, or if you are running on Linux/Unix you could probably just start a shell and tail the file to watch it as it writes to it during the game...

just start a shell and tail -f the file to watch it as it writes to it during the game...

Windows users: Get cygwin, and do the same thing.

My screen is wide enough to put the mule window on the left, and a Terminal window on the right. Half the terminal window is hidden underneath the mule window, and most of the information is on the right half of the Terminal window.

You can also just use a nice file editor like notepad++ or ultraedit and reload the log when needed.

Hi main, thx for your excellent mule4u-bot! I particularly enjoy the "obscure records". I´ve got one little suggestion which others have already talked about: PLEASE remove "bot: auctions" altogether. I think this command is indeed totally superfluous. Even worse, it gives a huge advantage to players who are familiar with your bot. I needed some time to check out that some players now type this command to find out if they have to bid the extra $60 in an auction in order to prevent another player from buying another plot. In my humble opinion, this command is really a nuisance, because it also makes the game unnecessarily complicated and distracts from the real action. I don´t enjoy having to type commands in order to have a better chance to win. Pure gameplay - that´s what we want, don´t we? Greetings from mopssamson

Mops,

After some discussion with others, and monitoring the use of the command myself.     I agree that after the first round it is more of a nice to know command and serves less purpose.

Initially I made a command to disable the bot:auctions command... bot:noauctions will disable it for everyone.

but after further discussion with a few others I will make the bot:auctions command disabled by default and it will take 2 votes to enable it. 

I think that way it will be fair to those who like the command and play with others who do... but those who don't or noobs won't need to worry about it.

remember this information is still available to everyone in the log if they choose to view it.   And the reason i put the command in was to make it fair for everyone, so everyone could see.

Thanks for your feedback,  and I am going to start a thread for feedback and suggestions for the hosting bot.

    I like the bot:auctions command.

I actually LIKE the auction info. Helps me plan strategy accordingly.

I haven't weighed in on the bot yet so here goes...

First off, THANK YOU Mainstream!!!!  I know you have put a lot of effort into the auto hosting bot and it has been a genuine service to the MULE community.

I have the same problems with the bot as everyone else....namely that it is supplying information that should be hidden.  I agree you can plan your auction strategy if you know how many auctions are coming....but that unknown variable is an important aspect of the game.  Likewise keeping track of events is something that each player should be responsible for.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the last assay command.  IMHO paying attention to assays is an important part of the game.  I am personally against all of the assay tracking programs, and have never used them myself (I prefer to just watch and train my brain to remember)  But i understand that everyone has their own way of doing things ....as many have pointed out they could always use pencil and paper.  But i think having a last assay command is going too far.  It also erases one of the advanced techniques of assaying and catching the wumpus to hide the results.  Notice I say technique and not exploit.  Using this technique takes advanced planning, some luck, and of course the player that is doing the assaying deserves a small edge for doing the assaying.

So I think those 3 things should be taken out of the bot.  However, we are asking the wrong person to take them out.  Mainstream has done a fantastic job with this bot, and as he has pointed out several times all this info that people are complaining about is in the logs (something i never knew).  Too be honest i have checked out the logs a few times and find them far too confusing to get any useful information out of.

So my solution to this problem is simple......We need to petition Turborilla to not make the logs accessible until the game is over, or possibly just put a 90 minute delay on the game logs.  I have always been an advocate for a level playing field, and having the more tech savvy players being able to gain extra information seems wrong to me.

To Dynadan: A trick to viewing the logs...

Recently realized that if you open them in Wordpad, Word, or some other program that interprets ANSI, they are much easier to read.

Notepad doesn't see the ANSI carriage return and everything stays in a one continuous string.

Yeah, thanks folks for trying to explain that with the log file, but I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Where do you find this file? I don't know what a shell or what tail-F is. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be clueless about what that means, and it really sucks that some people are viewing this and others are not. I think it's a HUGE advantage to know this information.

I like the sound of what Dynadan was saying about petitioning for it to be unavailable until game is over. *Also agree with almost all your comments regarding tools etc, Dan. (except that annoying wampus assay trick, but whatever ;)).   

*Want to make clear that I appreciate Main creating the hosting bot very much, and really quite well done - Sure hope you take any critisism's as constructive!

When you look at game stats on the web page (in hi scores) - There are two types of logs you can view...

At the top there is a chat log (a log of what was said during that game)

At the bottom end there is a java machine log for each computer that was involved in the game.
The machine log is created locally on your hard drive during each game and can be "tailed" so you can see the data as it is written in real time.  (I've never done this, but the new hosting bot does it and reports what is recorded in the game chat.  There are players here that do it.)

As for shell (before we had GUI os like Windows or MacOS, we used a command line oriented OS like Unix or MS-DOS or CP/M.)  A Shell emulates one of these command line OS from within the GUI OS.  It allows command line level control of certain functions and also allows the running of many older command line driven applications.

The bot program works by monitoring the log, so if you kill the log or make it only available at the end of the game, the bot hosting will not work.   It needs the log in order to determine when the game is started, completed, and to respond to commands.

Remember the goal is to make it fair to everyone when you are playing Mule not nessisarily hiding infomation that some could see and other cannot.

Dynadan:  I see your point on what you brought up, and as a purist agree 100%, but in practice, people are using tite and event trackers while they play.   
I however disagree with you on the Wampus / Survey technique.    I wouldn't classify it as an exploit, but more as a bug.    You cannot tell me that it was the intention of the developers to hide the survey message with the wampus catching.   And some could argue that if a player can do this, it gives them an unfair advantage over those who cannot.   Not saying I don't respect players that do this, infact I thought it was rather ingenious the first time I saw it done.   And don't get me wrong, I love watching players try and fail even more.    The lastassay command does not give anyone who was not paying attention any information other than the result of the survey, so if they are not paying attention, it will not give them coordinates of the survey.   Infact it was this technique that led me to using the log to determine what the last survey was, others who do not have the ability to see this are the ones that have the disadvantage. 

Although in the grand scheme of things, im sure you will agree the lastassay and event tracking features have little impact on gameplay, and serve to benefit all players.

The bot:auctions has a little more impact on gameplay as it allows players to determine wether or not they need to pay $60 more to block another player from getting a plot.   The $60 may seem marginal, but as we've seen games won with smaller margins.

There is reason to keep this command in, other than the fact that it still is available to everyone to see in the log regardless.   It allows players to change their strategy on buying lots.  If you knew that a 2 plots are up for auction, as a player you might decide to let the first plot go in hopes the second plot is in a better location than the first, So in the command changes the strategy not replaces it. 

I am not sure if there is any evidence that any of these commands have changed the outcome of any games,  but the bot:auctions is the one I have received the most feedback on, and I will make it disabled by default, and allow those who play to enable it by 2 votes.

I think Mops had the best argument for disabiling it by default, was the fact that people who are not familuar with the bot commands have a disadvantage, as players who know the commands can issue them when it suits them better.  In reality changing the auction announcement from displaying every round (as it used to) to only displaying it when requested, caused the functionality to be un-fair.


Thanks for the feedback,  I don't offend easily so all comments are constructive.    I've opened a seperate thread for comments and suggestions, that will notify me when there are posts.   I would like to get some more idea's for obscure records, as I think everyone enjoys these and they do make playing the game more entertaining, without distracting from gameplay.


New obscure records comming.

[Megamind] - Awarded to the player who wins the game with the fewest plots.
[Workhorse] - Awarded to the player who develops/converts the most plots in a round
[We All Suck] - Awarded to the 4 players who have the lowest colony score upon completing a full game (12 rounds)
[Synergy] - Awarded to the 4 players who have the highest colony score upon completing a full game (12 rounds)

I rather like the bot:auctions command because in real life, when you go to an auction, you know how many things are for sale. In fact, you'd also know WHAT is for sale instead of it being random.

@Mainstream...I understand your reasoning on the last assay subject.  While I don't think the developers put in the catch wumpus thing the second after you assayed, I think it was an accidental improvement to the game.  I also enjoy watching people (me included) fail at trying this.  I also didn't understand why everyone can't do this....It's not like it requires any special abilities....just the knowledge that it is possible and then trying it out.

I appreciate you explaining that you use the log to make the bot run.... How about if we could ask the developers to move the number of auctions onto the next round or after the auctions have taken place etc.  For me this isn't a hosting bot issue, but instead an issue of having the log have real time info that should not be available yet.  Just wanted your thoughts on the subject?  Would making this change have any effect on your hosting bot or how the game runs?  I never realized this info was available in the log info, and I think having it available whether thru the log file or the hosting bot command makes the game worse.  Auction gambits are one of the key elements to the game.

As far as the last assay and event tracker i concede that they do not make huge changes to the game, I was just commenting more on the purity of the game of mule, and what i would like to see in a perfect world.  To me having an auto host bot is well worth these changes.

So there are my thoughts....I still think we should try to get rid of the current auction info from the log.

I don't know what obscure records you have thought of so far, but figured i better try to contribute something positive if i am going to voice criticism.

[Happy Go Lucky]  Most good events in 1 game
[God Hates Me]  Most bad events in 1 game
[Curious Cat]  Most assays done by a player in 1 game
[Inquisitive]  Most assays in 1 turn
[Fleeced]  Most Crystite stolen in a single turn
[Pillaged]  Most Cystite stolen in a full game
[Plundered]  Most Crystite stolen from a colony in a single turn
[Ransacked] Most Crystite stolen from a colony in a game
[Hunter]  Most $ received from wumpus in a single game
[Parcel Party]  Most auctions in 1 game
[Tycoon]  Most pieces of land bought by 1 player in a game
[Merciless]  Largest margin of victory between 1st and 2nd
[Pitiful]  Largest margin of loss between 4th and 1st

Yes, what about this idea? I like this idea. 

That above was a quote from Dynadan. I dont know to use the quote thing properly...


Couldn't really figure out the log business, kinda gave up (maybe I just don't want to know) I see the chat log, and the individual logs. Don't see any "main" log. I guess you have to download all of them?

Maybe I'll revisit it later if I get the feeling that a lot of people are doing it.

I found a trick.. that WorkHorse record can be "cheated" when you switch on and on one thing to another.

Look at this game chat: http://www.planetmule.com/server/chats/chat_game_40905_user_20657.html

iso9001: 8 plots develop i 1 round?
C.T.C.P.: Are you CTCP?
chris_PL: i will beat this record.. have idea
Round 10 of 12
C.T.C.P.: oh you meant "in"
C.T.C.P.: funny
chris_PL: :)
iso9001: in
iso9001: hmm
mule4u2: ************* NEW OBSCURE RECORD *************
mule4u2: Record: WORKHORSE
mule4u2: WorkHorse - Most plots developed/converted in a Single Round
mule4u2: Old Record: C.T.C.P. (8)
mule4u2: New Record: iso9001 (18)
mule4u2: **********************************************
mule4u2: ************* NEW OBSCURE RECORD *************
mule4u2: Record: WORKHORSE
mule4u2: WorkHorse - Most plots developed/converted in a Single Round
mule4u2: Old Record: iso9001 (18)
mule4u2: New Record: chris_PL (88)
mule4u2: **********************************************
C.T.C.P.: :(
chris_PL: heh
iso9001: :!
chris_PL: new record  



------------------
After that iso created more.... over 260 :)

(The individual logs are copies of the log the bot uses (Specifiically the individual log that is made under the bots name at the bottom.)  Those individual logs are machine logs (carrying hardware information, a track all communication that go between the computers in the game to stay sync'd.))

@Chuckie, I have no issue with removing the last auction info from the log.  I have disabled the command in the bot and have not seen anyone vote to turn it on yet.

@Chris_pl I think I have fixed the bug on the workhorse award.  It now will count all the developments and subtract all of the undevelopments.

Thanks for pointing this out.


@everyone,  I'm having one more small problem with the boys, it appears they are not restarting all the time after a game ends, I am working on code.

Thanks for the feedback,

My new obscure record suggestion:

[Spoiler] = most spoiled units in round
[Utilizer] = most spoiled units in whole game
[Spiker]  = most sold units at highest value possible
[Lucky Gambler] = most sold units previously bought from another player and sold at higher price next rnd
[Loosy Gambler] = most sold units previously bought from another player and sold at lower price next rnd

Yes, I appreciate this Mainstream. I think at this point we are inquiring about the possibilities of moving that data in the log, so no one can extract it in a roundabout way (Not talking about the hosting bot anymore, even though that is the thread). Hoping people will chime in enough where it may attract developers attention.

And in fact, if a fair amount of people are being quite the opportunists with this information, then well it almost seems like it SHOULD be easily accessed by a simple command. But even in that case, it would only be then fair, WITH the hosting bot, so I don't know.

I agree with dynadan's objection to the overexposure of game history and upcoming events. If a player wants to record all observed game events (full disclosure: I manually chart everything and use the knowledge to my advantage) then that's their choice and their burden. The hosting robots should not act in any other capacity except to make games available, which I think we all agree is a Very Good Thing.

On the issue of running a tail -f on logfiles (or using a similar inspection method, for those running toy operating systems), I believe it's possible to use a fast ASCII obfuscation scheme like ROT-13 or some other fast character-replacement scheme to make logfiles illegible (in a practical sense) until the game's score is saved. This could even be done by making up a 1-to-1 "decoder ring" replacement code by using a hash of the of the game's start time on Irata. Doing so would make it impossible to generate a log-descrambler beforehand, particularly if the hash is properly salted before being rehashed to determine the random code pattern. (Well, it would make it impossible for me to generate one.)

Of course the ingenuity of the human mind and the instinctive drive to exploit any and all resources to obtain social advantage means no system will ever be 100% effective in preventing this type of "front-running" behavior (Hello, Wall Street!). But to me, that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to make it more difficult to discover information before the game's intended disclosure.

I haven't played in many bot-hosted games, but I hope the bot:noauctions command is retained. I would also like to see a bot:noassays command to prevent the recall of assay results that are no longer displayed in the status area of the colony map. Any bot:no* commands should only require a single vote to prevent * information being disclosed by the bot. Of course, I'm content to play host and only join non-bot-host games if the community decides they wish to retain the loudmouth county recorder  ;)

More importantly, if we accept that a new generation of players is a good thing (it is), shouldn't we also try to make sure they learn how to play the game without artificial advantages conferred by our game's infrastructure, innovations that don't conform to the original design by Bunten and Ozark Softscape?

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old M.U.L.E. but when the host robot blabs a game's event history, assay findings and upcoming plot auctions then this makes our new players complacent and lazy in their play and their planning. I make the extra effort to feed my brain with my hand-mapped and recorded diary of each game and I don't begrudge others their own chosen game tracking methods. But the game itself (in the guise of the host-bot) should stand silent and not divulge that which could have been readily observed. Players who know me know that if asked, I'll usually chat the answers to questions like, "Did pirates come yet?" and other event-realted inquiries.

Now you kids get off my lawn!

Inherent problem to your idea dok...

If the game terminates abnormally and the decoder doesn't get to run, you would not have a legible log to debug the cause for the crash.  (Now you might be able to send the scrambled log to admin for them to decode manually, since they would have to have a decoder if they do the scrambling.)

Indeed.

I think a design is possible that can accommodate real-time data-hiding but that will allow for decryption by a knowledgeable administrator. Since events prior to the game's start don't require encryption, I think the combination of global data and local data in an unencrypted "frontmatter" portion of the machine log should be sufficient to enable an admin-level person or developer (who has the hashing function at hand) to decrypt logs from games that have not gone final.

LOL Am I reinventing the public-private encryption method?

    I like that you can find out what events happened in the auto-hosted rooms.  I don't want to see this feature withdrawn.

A couple of things,

Just a reminder that the hosting bot work solely on the Log file in the data folder, and does not integrate in the mule software in any other way, other than sending key strokes and mouse clicks to the mule window.

At this point I don't think the developers are intending to make any additional updates to M.U.L.E.  as they are developing M.U.L.E 2.    So we probably have to live with the current state of the Log file and game.

I've been through the game logs, so I have a good understanding of what is there, and regardless of what anyone thinks, the only pre information that was in the log was how many auctions events are generated per round.    The rest of the information is historical in nature.

I don't sit and monitor the log files when I play a game, and the only time i've used the log in the past during game play was to see the last assay result which was seldom.  I didn't even know about the number auctions was in the log until I started writing the bot, but made it available to everyone out of fairness.

That is not to say that others are not monitoring it, I'm sure if they are few would admit to it.   

All assays in the log have no reference on where the assay was, just the result.    So you still have to rely on your brain, notepad, tite tracker or whatever other method you use to figure out where the crystite is.

As far as keeping track of events, again there are already utilities out there that do it, and most seasoned players use them even if they won't admit it.

As far as new players and reliance on the bot to give them events is a poor argument, as you would have to assume that everyone plays bot hosted games only.   New players will have still have to learn these skills when they are playing non bot hosted games.

The hosting bot's main goals

1. Have reliable host that can host games for people who cannot
2. Remove host advantages
3. Eliminate host bias and disconnects


All the information the bot discloses is disclosed to everyone, so from that perspective it is fair.   

Players still use their own systems (Tite tracking, spreadsheet) and still have their advantages by using them.  So removing them from the hosting bot, doesn't make those advantages go away.   

From my playing experience, other than the knowing auctions ahead of time, no one has produced a valid argument for not having the other data available.  And in reality having the other features in the bot does not change game play or strategy at all.   Does it matter if it is your spreadsheet, your external tracker or the bot telling you that pirates have been 2 times already?

When I release the software for hosting, as I hope to do soon.   I hope to make it the hosts preference on how they want the bot to function.   

If they want to disable everything or nothing as far as information the bot displays they will have the choice.



Cheers,

And thanks for the feed back, it's all good.


Also, if anyone is interested in hosting games using the bot software, please let me know so I can compile a list.

You will need a free computer, or one that can run a virtual host.
needs to be available 24/7 (or close)
has good stable internet connection
be a decent host yourself and good reputation for hosting.

I got the free plot in a game today in 2nd place AGAIN. I was Purple. Almost made me mad to get the plot! Why is 2nd place getting plots and packages and such? 2nd place should NEVER get a good event.

Ok, good points, but seems this might be the wrong thread to post it about, since this would be a server issue and not related to the bot and this thread is about the bot.

if you could I think a bot:scores would be a nice command to have... :-)

I don't think I'll be using another BOT server again. Me and my friend got kicked mid-game so our game was ruined. I do not recommend using them until they are fixed.

Yeah, been a lot of mystery lag issues on the host bot games lately.  I have a feeling it's actually not the bots, but the master game server that is the issue again.  A while back it was discovered that there were not enough packet frames allocated in the landgrant/development phase.  It was adjusted and problem went away mostly, but still crops up now and then when you have more than just the four players in the game (e.g. visitors, hosting bots, etc) suddenly seems like an old problem comes back with extra people in the room.

Wondering why there are only a maximum of 2 bot hosts available.   Had it happen a few times where 4 of us waiting in the lobby for a bot host to come free...

there are actually up to three hosting bots at times.

The bots are written and run by a fellow Muley here, "Mainstream"

He has them running on a server at his work place, utilizing a very awesome internet connection.  They are not trouble free though, they crash constantly.  Sometimes they don't restart after a game ends, sometimes they have hiccups during the game that cause other players to timeout.

The reason for the limitation is to adequately run more than two or three you would need to have a few more servers available to dedicate to the task.  Currently, the one hosting server running all three is all that has been available.

We don't have to have hosting bots at all.  It's not a feature supplied by Turborilla, and is simply a voluntary courtesy by a fellow player who saw a need because not many of us can actually host.  Now that those bots exist most the clan wants to use them even if they can host, they're just nice.  They keep stats, they remove a lot of frustration over the host player having an advantage over the other three, and they have brought the number of host kicks during a game down considerably.

Hope this answers your question.

Chuckie Chuck aka.  SolidLight

I just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work on this game&bots.  :-*

I agree completely.