client only farming improvement, what do players want?

[theTrav]

With respect to planting and harvesting only, assume you've got 100% access to the client code, but can't change what the server does AT ALL, so basically you've got the mother of all macro's. What do you think is the best interface you could get out of that?

So far I'm thinking use something similar to the drag select you can do in the Land Management interface (ctrl + l) to select plants that you wish to harvest. Have a menu pop up and then your character will go and harvest them, one tile at a time, as if you as a player had clicked through them manually.


A quick improvement to that would be to add an option that has you re-plant the crop as you're harvesting, that'd cut down on a lot of clicks.


Then another improvement would probably be to allow you to chose whether to stop harvesting when your inventory fills up, or whether to just keep going and let everything fall on the ground.


Finally I'm thinking maybe some different options for when the crop produces multiple item types eg, tea or flax, to either collect the seeds, or the secondary produce or both... It should be possible to have your character automatically gather whatever falls to the ground if needed.


Being able to designate storage containers for use while harvesting strikes me as a potential upgrade, but that's getting pretty extreme in terms of complexity (approaches bot skill levels).

Can anyone think of any more relatively basic improvements to the UI mentioned above? Can anyone think of how they'd like to see the menu implemented? Mockups maybe?

[kobnach]

With respect to planting and harvesting only, assume you've got 100% access to the client code, but can't change what the server does AT ALL, so basically you've got the mother of all macro's. What do you think is the best interface you could get out of that?

So far I'm thinking use something similar to the drag select you can do in the Land Management interface (ctrl + l) to select plants that you wish to harvest. Have a menu pop up and then your character will go and harvest them, one tile at a time, as if you as a player had clicked through them manually.


A quick improvement to that would be to add an option that has you re-plant the crop as you're harvesting, that'd cut down on a lot of clicks.


Then another improvement would probably be to allow you to chose whether to stop harvesting when your inventory fills up, or whether to just keep going and let everything fall on the ground.


Finally I'm thinking maybe some different options for when the crop produces multiple item types eg, tea or flax, to either collect the seeds, or the secondary produce or both... It should be possible to have your character automatically gather whatever falls to the ground if needed.


Being able to designate storage containers for use while harvesting strikes me as a potential upgrade, but that's getting pretty extreme in terms of complexity (approaches bot skill levels).

Can anyone think of any more relatively basic improvements to the UI mentioned above? Can anyone think of how they'd like to see the menu implemented? Mockups maybe?

Since I'm dreaming, as well as storage containers, let's have the ability to do something else with it, like grind it into flour.

One UI for telling it what to do, would be to demonstrate what is wanted by doing it manually. I.e. you harvest an inventory full, grind it up, dump it into a container. You'd have to have a way to tell the client what parts of your actions need to be repeated in the same location, and what parts shifted to the next location. Also of course you store the routine. Thus routine - make flour. 3 areas involved - land to harvest, quern, container. Each time you invoke, you select the land (a rectangle) the quern (or it could be remembered) and the container.

Yes, I think I want a bot, now that I'm sure it's not illegal

[theTrav]

Since I'm dreaming, as well as storage containers, let's have the ability to do something else with it, like grind it into flour.

Would you really want that though?
Personally I'd be happy with telling my character to harvest an entire field, and then telling him to grind all the flower he's carrying into flour, I wouldn't really be happy with just clicking the "play game" button and then going away to do other things...

Yes, I think I want a bot, now that I'm sure it's not illegal

Well yeah, I guess that's what it comes down to... Do you really want a bot? Where would you draw the line between making the UI a little more user friendly and building progress quest?

[kaka]

Selecting an area and doing something with it should go for a lot of actions.
Besides farming and (re)planting, things like digging, plowing, laying stone, planting grass and mining should be doable.

Edit: As for mining, I would be quite satisfied with just having the character mine through every tile on the way to the
point where you click, instead of having him/her stop if it's not the tile you clicked, like it is now.

[kobnach]

Yes, I think I want a bot, now that I'm sure it's not illegal

Well yeah, I guess that's what it comes down to... Do you really want a bot? Where would you draw the line between making the UI a little more user friendly and building progress quest?

Much depends on what game I'm playing. I was kind of happy playing house, as it were, but people tell me H&H is a PvP game, not a basically co-operative game with PvP available as a check on atrocious behaviour. Given that, well, maybe I shouldn't get too attached to my character - and I definitely want ferociously good stats. How do I get those stats, without playing 24*7? Well, maybe I should be playing corewars - i.e. the competition to design and implement the best possible bots, which will run your character up to ferocious levels in a sustainable fashion. (Naturally the bot would run 24*7; that's not a problem.) At that point the character(s) will be fairly irrelevant, and I ought to be able to grow them bigger than Rift, Raephire et al. in fairly short order, if I'm a good enough programmer. Moreover, I've never gotten to really play competitive programming on a freeform game, because it's generally disallowed as unfair to players lacking programming skills. This could be a great challenge - with very few mouse clicks. Many thanks for the idea. (And it may make the devs very happy, as it is likely to show up every game imbalance they have - I wonder if I could make a self training bot that chose the best strategy based on LP gains produced by past strategies.... and output tables of LP effects of various activities as a side effect.)

[JTG]

You don't have to worry about that, most of the people on this forum have no programming skills at all.

[theTrav]

people tell me H&H is a PvP game, not a basically co-operative game with PvP available as a check on atrocious behaviour.

They're wrong... H&H is whatever we the players want to make it. I don't plan on engaging in PvP at all for 90% of the time I'm playing.

The vast bulk of your post seems to imply that you want to have a bot do all the grinding for you and only do PvP yourself, well yeah, have fun with that... Personally I doubt the mechanics are really going to support you in that long term and you're going to miss out on a lot of the game (although if you aren't interested in those parts then you probably won't mind)

[kobnach]

people tell me H&H is a PvP game, not a basically co-operative game with PvP available as a check on atrocious behaviour.

They're wrong... H&H is whatever we the players want to make it. I don't plan on engaging in PvP at all for 90% of the time I'm playing.

The vast bulk of your post seems to imply that you want to have a bot do all the grinding for you and only do PvP yourself, well yeah, have fun with that... Personally I doubt the mechanics are really going to support you in that long term and you're going to miss out on a lot of the game (although if you aren't interested in those parts then you probably won't mind)

Nope, I want a bot to run my characters up to frightful levels, so if anyone chooses to involve me in PvP in any form, I can deal with the issue with minimal risk. I don't believe in starting trouble, but I do believe in finishing it. If for example Kobnach the peaceful owns a second character that happens to be a bot created monster, and a bot to create additional similar characters, than if anyone leaves any kind of clue on Kobnach's land, the monster pays the offender a visit If that results in someone AFK-summoning the monster and managing to kill it, well, then the bot makes another monster. Kobnach can play the game he wants to play... because it won't take many examples before no one but another alt collector is willing to tackle him.

Even if I'm not that successful a bot programmer, and the results aren't as tough as described above, it's still a win, given the way some people want to play. I don't want a game where I get attached to a character and its homestead, and then some troublemaker decides to commit massive damage on either one. If I'm playing the game manually, I'm going to have a lovely homestead and a character I cherish. I'll be worried about either one being attacked for someone's amusement. But if my game is bot programming, well, then suddenly they are all quite replaceable. And that makes me compatible with all the people who seem to believe one should only be allowed to preserve what one can defend, even if it profits them very little to destroy it.

[kobnach]

You don't have to worry about that, most of the people on this forum have no programming skills at all.

In that case, my competition becomes the developers. Can I keep up with changes to game and interface? Can I milk the maximum possible LP out of each opportunity?

[kobnach]

Selecting an area and doing something with it should go for a lot of actions.
Besides farming and (re)planting, things like digging, plowing, laying stone, planting grass and mining should be doable.

Edit: As for mining, I would be quite satisfied with just having the character mine through every tile on the way to the
point where you click, instead of having him/her stop if it's not the tile you clicked, like it is now.

Yes. Getting away from my hijack, and apologizing for it, this all sounds very good. and I think if you can do one of these, you can do all. I think you could also do check-and-repair of things like palisades usually a similar interface and similar techniques.