Hosting Bot - Feedback and Suggestions

[Mt-Wampus]

    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.

[Gmanster64]

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.

[Mt-Wampus]

       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.

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.

[Mainstream]

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.

[mikman]

Mt-Wampus,

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.   

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 :-)

[Chauncey]

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.

[mikman]

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...

[Keybounce]

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.

[Mainstream]

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

[mopssamson]

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

[Mainstream]

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.

[Spoonwood]

    I like the bot:auctions command.

[Gmanster64]

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

[dynadan]

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.

[Chuckie Chuck]

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.