finally, 0.8.3.0 (Orbiter pather)

Yes I finally decided to release it yesterday, after some extended testing.

The goodies include:
1. Orbit pather and Bastos movement engine. Now zolo will move randomly, and if waypoints are close or crossed, it will go across them instead of follow the same order again and again (if your waypoint goes across entire area in as a mesh, the movement will be totally random). In a way it is similar to IS, except you define the mesh.

2. bot will run to mobs near by actively (if orbit pather is enabled)

3. Ghost res will be smarter now, instead of run the entire normal waypoint to get corpse, now it will select the shortest path to corpse.

4. Turn with mouse now.

With Orbiter pather, you can export the WOW mesh data as waypoint and the bot will move in the 3D world freely. However I think that might put me in risk of violate copy right law (I think that is the reason Judge ruled against glider, as I read the copy section, the violation is not in memory reading, but the use of WOW internal data), so the users should map their waypoints themselfs, not use WOW mesh data.

So many stuff to do

Yep, I got several fixes that are almost ready, but still need facial changes. The moving with mouse also needs some tuning, and if you want to move with mouse, you better install some kind of hot kill program to kill the bot on key stroke, else it will be VERY hard to use the mouse to stop the bot.

And no, I won't add that functionality to the bot, as it will show up as a virus on some of the scanners on virus total.

Yet another fix

Yep, the bot will attack totoms made by itself in attack all mode. That will have to be fixed. Will have to fix that in the next release as well... So many stuff.

Busy day

A lot of stuff form work, and I was not able to do anything today. The algorithms are pretty much done since yesterday after a tiny fix, but I don't have time to publish it.

And another down side is the server is crashed, this will need sometime to fix. I hope all users got their keys correctly. I will try to get to it sometime tomorrow.

Failure on bastos engine

Yep, was not able to get it to work as expected. Will try some more. And to not make Blizzard put too much attension on me, I will test the engine with emulator instead of on WOW. I will take the time to do some grinding while I debug the bastos engine on emulator.

Orbiter pather and Bastos movement engine

Yep, after some tries again today, I found just the pather is not enough. So my original idea of a "propulsion" system is still needed. I will have to allocate additional system resources for that.

Tonight is again raid night, so I will start the implementation tomorrow on the propulsion system, and I will name it bastos movement engine, credit to John Bastos, who got banned using zoloFighter. The difference of his ban is that he is a long time user, and used carefully, but was still banned. The new system will not totally prevent bans, but at least it will be good enough that it won't follow the same waypoint the same order again and again and other can tell that you are a bot by observing you for 2 minutes.

The Orbit engine is born!

Yes, I have finally made a good model of a smarter path finder for zoloFighter, and I named it Orbit :-)

The implementation has been changed several times, the main goal is to make a smart path finder and scheduler. Initially I thought of a propulsion based system to "push" the bot forward, but that is a bit complex in turn of memory usage. And after some tweak and fixes, I finally decided for our current model.

I am still in the stage of tweaking. The first try, duel to some internal bug, I was using the old system instead, and because some of the randomization in the javascript, it looks like Orbit was working, but was not. I was so happy (at the time).

Anyway, right now Orbit is doing well at times and doing bad at other times, but the main part is working now. So I will give myself a pat on the back and catch the raid on my guild :-)

I will have a very busy week next week, so the release of ZoloFighter+Orbit will be sometime next next week.

Current progress

I am still working on the new waypoint system. Here are some of the new features of the new bot (some implemented and some not):

1. Improved attack all. Attack all will now restricted by level limit, so when you are at higher levels, you no longer need to worry about frogs etc.
2. configurable waypoint margins on each profile. On wide open areas you can set it to a large number to make the bot roam more randomly.
3. new javascript call backs during running, for better unstuck (right now sometimes at end of loot the unstuck routing will think we are stuck).
4. possibly if I got time, a much complexed navigation system, that acts more human like. I am looking at possible solutions from either daju11's mapnav or most likely a personal mapping. I will avoid copy right violations at all costs, so it will not be a build in. I will just provide a interface, and you either map it yourself, or possible we can use a shared user created mapping data.

A Big Ban

No not the theory. Today I was surprised to find John, a long time user has been banned. In his report he did all recommanded stuff, bot while watching TV, didn't use public profiles.

But he is banned.

This comes to be a big shock to me, because I don't think I could have done any better (actually I was afk bot while work this morning, and run back home to shut down my bot during lunch).

So the only possiblities are user report and blizzard might be using waypoint to check if a bot is running. I need to do something to make sure the bot doesn't always going follow the waypoint exactly.

A dark day for all of us

Yes, I am talking about this, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9991451-93.html?tag=nefd.top

Apparently Glider lost the legal battle on copy right?!! So the judge ruled that examing another program is in violation of copy right.

Does that mean the end of zoloFighter? A detailed check on US copy right law, it appears to be that the Glider defense team is making the wrong judgment. The team is defend the work based on section 117, which is assuming Glider is copying the program, while in fact (at least for zoloFighter) nothing is copied, and nothing is modified (unlike other hacks).

So at least for now zoloFighter will continue on, and I hope Glider defend team will pick up some steam.

Possible cause of why some users not able to get offsets

2 or 3 of them reported that it won't get offsets for them, just hung there.

Beside some who got virus on their system (worked after reinstall windows), I found the rest might has something to do with low level drivers.

I use XP both at home and at work. And at home, when I debug my code, the connection to zolohouse will drop if I debug it slowly. But it will never drop at work.

I am assuming it is because I have a cheap ISP that disconnects quickly, and some hardware or driver buffer the tcp/ip traffic while others don't.

So I am doing my own buffering instead, which should solve most of the offset data downloading problems.

I am on another project now

No, that is not the other big secret project I was on, I still haven't start that one. I just found something new and exciting and I am all over it right now :-)

I know constantly moving from project to project is bad, but I can't help it. The other big secret project is too hard and although I am interested, the hardness is preventing me from touching it. This one is different, I love the projects that I can jump in and making it better over time.

zoloFighter bot for WOW was hard, but I just had to do it. Everytime I wanted to abort, I was pulled back and dig some more because I just can't stand the constant grinding.

Updating of graphics card canceled. Now AVbot!

Yes, thanks to the nice comment on my previous blog, I will not update my graphics card. I was thinking about getting a quiet directX 10 card but that is scraped.

So next goal is adding ZStorm's unstuck script and make AVBot testing friendly.

I have been had by Matt from BrokenToys

CRAP!! Now he give up AOC after the great review about it!! http://brokentoys.org/2008/07/01/burning-of-an-entirely-different-type/

My second day of playing. The character is a bit gray, and tends to blend to the rich background, so it is not standing out as much as I would like to. The fighting is not as exciting either, the worst part is there is no auto attack, so if I want to go help wife on something, the char will stay there and get beat to death.

The part I like is, game play is easy (maybe because I am in level 1 area), I can rush to any mob or two and beat them to death (in WOW an add meant death).

If I can't progress far after my trial period, I will give up too.

Or unless someone can prove to me it looks better with a directX 10 graphics card.

AOC impressions

Yes, over the weekend I bought Age of Conan, the reason is this blog:
http://brokentoys.org/2008/06/25/gaming-journalism-is-an-oxymoron-the-endless-series/

My first impressions are not so good, where is the graphics goodies? And why am I not slash and set thing on fire??!!!!

My graphics card is not directX 10 compatible, could that be a problem?

AVBot is back (almost)

Yes, I updated AVBot a bit, together with zoloFighter 0.8.2.6.

The updates are:
1. BGScreen.exe is no longer needed. It is provided as a tool to capture the 3 screen parts (join/queue/leave battle) if the user has customized UI mods installed.

2. AVBot has a new waypoint calculation algrithm, that favors ghost waypoints only if it is near the start of the ghost waypoint, to avoid stuck problem.

So now it is much easier to use AVbot, just download AVBot.txt and select it as your profile, go near your AV battle mater and go!

However there is a catch, that is it is best to create your own main waypoints, else blizzard will find all the users who are on the default waypoint and BAN!

I will delay release the news on my forum, to avoid questions. Want some peace and quiet in the holiday :-)

Happy birthday America!

I am not an American, but I appreciate very much what America has provided for me and my family, and I am proud of this great country.

No I don't agree with everything Americans do, and I do think some things this country has done are stupid. But to this day, there is still no one other country that surpass the freedom and liberty America provides, and no other country will surpass America's prosperity any time soon either.

To all the Americans who feel ashamed because what this country does, don't be because there are non other could do better. To all the people who hate America, don't hate, learn from it.

I have to say this is a great country, and God bless!

On Gay marriage

Well, I don't hate gays, but I am against Gay marriage. If there is a vote on Gay marriage, I will give up the vote to save gas, that is how important the issue is to me.

The more interesting part will be, how far should we go to extend the idea of marriage. If we allow Gays to marry, how about polygamists? Do we also want to legalize for a man to marry several women, or a woman to marry several man? How about the age to marriage? I know a story about a female teacher and her student who has several kids together, and she got thrown into jail. It is the voters that give the government the power to do that, but is that really want we want?

Maybe the government should not have any power over our marriage issues, but if that is true, what about the ones who want to avoid their responsibility in a marriage, i.e. support the children?

Audit tool on Glider

Just for fun, I downloaded Glider and another bot and run my tool I used for my internal audit on them. Both them fail. If blizzard hired me I could really do some damage. It will be fun to hack the hackers, it is like PVP, both sides will pump up exciting ideas.

Horrible things

I am referring to this link: Woman dies on ER floor

That was just horrible. A woman died on hospital floor, and no one cared. None of the people in the same waiting area does anything to help or report it.

There are situations where nothing will help no matter how much money you throw at it. That are the situations when the people involved just don't have a hurt.