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Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

We are looking at ASSS now for PB. I am very concerned about the design of modules. It seems they fall far short of the convenience of pbot behaviors. I'll explain by showing how our setup works.

pub: bottype1 modules: A B C D E F pub.ini
scrim: bottype2 modules: A B C D E scrim.ini
league1: bottype3 modules: A B C D E G H league.ini
league2: bottype3 modules: A B C D E G H league.ini
league3: bottype3 modules: A B C D E G H league.ini

1. I can stop the pub bot, including all its modules, change its module list and restart it without affecting any other bot.

2. I can change a setting in pub.ini that will affect the behavior of module B in pub, but will not affect any other bot.

3. I can change a setting in league.ini that will affect the behavior of module C in all league arenas only.

4. I can do all of the above without unloading modules completely, and without recompiling. Arenas are not hard-coded in modules or in INI files.

It seems that any attempt to make an INI (or equivalent) for an ASSS module is a huge headache since a module acts as a single instance that handles all arenas it is in. The settings would have to be hard-coded per arena, and could not be generically applied to new arenas without recompiling. In fact, making all PB modules work as we need under ASSS seems impossibly daunting.

Please tell me my understanding is incorrect.
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Dr Brain · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:44 pm Post subject:

Your understanding is incorrect.

The solution is to add entries into the arena.conf. I, for example, put all of my ship's buy prices into the arena.conf.

Code: Show/Hide

Warbird:BuyPrice = 500

Then all I do is use the cfg module to check the price in the arena I'm interacting with.

This extends well to most other settings.

Please let me know if my explanation is incomplete. It's been a long day

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Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

That is per arena, hard-coded. That is far from convenient.

Dr Brain · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:01 am Post subject:

It's a failure of me to convey what I'm talking about,
not a failure of ASSS, so stick with me.

I think the crucial idea you're missing is module attaching.

ASSS can have modules attach per arena. You can attach them, detach them and reattach them as needed.

Attaching is not the same as loading.

Attaching is usually performed on arena creation, so no staff involvement is needed. Someone goes into a duel arena, that arena attaches the duel module and the player gets to use all the special things that module allows. Don't need to load in a bot for it.

Dr Brain · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:08 am Post subject:

Let me give you a concrete example.

I have a module called foo. Foo has three functions:
It sends players a greeting message when they enter the arena.
It lets players use the ?bar command.
It grants a prize every X minutes.

Arenas that want to use foo would need to do a few things:
They need to put foo in their auto attach setting
They need to set Foo:GreetingMessage
and they need to set Foo:PrizeMessage and Foo:PrizeInterval

Side note: You can also set default settings in foo, so that only arenas that want non-standard settings need to specify them.

Foo would register the ?bar command once for every arena it attaches to. So arenas that don't have it attached would ignore a player's ?bar.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

In pbot, each bot type has a list of modules and all the associated settings for all of them. You can send a bot of this type to any arena, and it will behave the way it's been defined. We do not hard code modules or settings per arena. And when any setting of a given bot type is changed, it changes for all bots of that type immediately, even if they are already running.

Dr Brain · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:47 am Post subject:

In ASSS, each arena has a list of modules and all the associated settings for all of them. We do not hard code modules or settings per arena. And when any global setting of a given module is changed, it changes for all arenas running that module. And when any local setting of a given module is changed, it changes for just that arena.

EDIT: For this discussion, my definition of hard coded is something that needs to be recompiled to update.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

That is what I call hard coded. Either your arenas have settings attached to them or your modules have settings compiled into them (or they have to be manually changed).

Muskrat · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 1:22 am Post subject:

A single type of module could still look at it's same "arenatype" folder for settings, no matter how many arenas it is attached to, and apply them when attached. Could even make some sort of template.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

That's exactly what I don't want.

Smong · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 7:08 am Post subject:

Do you want to be able to use some specific arbitrary settings (such as league) in any arena with minimum messing about.

Obviously you'll need an attach module so you can store state per arena. You can put the settings such as league.ini in the conf directory so they are easily accessable. Next code the module to read an initial setting from arena.conf, General:SettingsFile = conf/public.ini. Then say you want to play league in the current arena, just do:
?seta -t general:settingsfile=conf/league.ini

You then code the settings change callback to read this arena setting and reload the rest of the league settings. No module de/attach cycling, arena recycling or recompiling needed.

One thing to be careful about is ?seta in a random arena, it will write the changes to arenas/(default)/arena.conf which will then affect all random arenas. Just make sure you use ?seta -t or make arena.conf read only.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

Been over all this with Arnk and Brain. ASSS just wasn't designed to be as useful as pbot.

i88gerbils · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject:

So you want one module to attach/load several other modules in any given arena? It doesn't sound like that is very convenient in ASSS. However what your goal is can probably be done differently and yield the same result.

you have all your toggles for various components stored in an "INI" or mypb.conf file. arena.conf includes mypb.conf for any given arena. It may have your mypb module attached or it may not. In order to change behavior you would just need to replace the mypb.conf file in the given arena (i.e. change what is toggled & what is not).

So what you want is a set of commands in a separate module that will toggle a setting on or off for a given mypb.conf in a given arena?

ex:

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

Solo Ace · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject:

Gentlemen, gentlemen, let us avoid turning this thread into a flame war.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

Smong · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 6:21 pm Post subject:

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

Then all behaviors (modules) need to be recoded to know if they are supposed to be active or not per arena. Again extra unnecessary code to do what pbot does naturally.

Solo Ace · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 7:48 pm Post subject:

Yeah Ekted, but what I said actually wasn't related to ASSS in any way.

The reason I don't like bots is the idea behind them (needing a client for server tasks is just silly), but then again I don't even play the game we're talking about so whatever.

i88gerbils · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:03 pm Post subject:

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

i88gerbils · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:41 pm Post subject:

So let me clarify:

You built pbot from the groundup. You don't want to buildup pbot the asss module from the groundup. Okay. I think I was right then.

Mine GO BOOM · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: Re: Can ASSS do this?

Dr Brain · Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:30 am Post subject:

Dr Brain · Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:32 am Post subject:

In summary: ASSS can do what you want. If you want to make it work exactly like your precious PBot, then you can do it, but it'll involve contorting the core.

If you decide to open your mind to the possibility of doing things the ASSS way, you'll find everything will mesh better.

Either way, it can do what you want.