Botman server manager official support thread

I have released a bot update to the A20 code branch.  Here is what's new..

If a bot command is missing from the command help table when someone tries to use it, the bot will automatically rebuild the command help and instruct the player to repeat their command by just typing /
 

Fixed some rogue pm's that were somehow STILL using steam id instead of the new cross-platform id.
 

Added lounge (irc) command..

Command: list help command {keyword}
List all matching help commands from the bot's help commands table for use in changing the minimum access level required to use the command.
 

Added lounge command..

Command: set help command {keyword} number {number from list} access {new minimum access level. valid range (0-99) }
Set the minimum access level of a help command after using the command list help command {keyword}.
The list command gives you a numbered list. Using that number and THE SAME keyword you can change the access level of a previously listed command.
If you don't use the exact same keyword as before, you risk changing the access level of some other command which will have unintended consequences.
 

Fixed bug in lounge command 'list bases'
 

Made some adjustments to the telnet parser to try to cope better if the server is spamming certain errors.
 

Added call to verify command access for almost all of the info commands so that they will honour changes to their command access level.
 

Fixed bug in location random teleport selector that prevented location teleports working that had any random spawns defined.
 

The /pack command will no longer send players to the top of structures or to the highest ground level above the player. Instead it will attempt to send the player to their exact death coordinate.

 
I am looking for a program that will allow players to /setbase  and tele back to it at will I really don't need much more than that.  Is this what i am looking for or is there some other smaller mod/install that I can get? 

 
Snowdog said:
I am looking for a program that will allow players to /setbase  and tele back to it at will I really don't need much more than that.  Is this what i am looking for or is there some other smaller mod/install that I can get? 
Click to expand...
If that's all you want, you would probably do good with ServerTools. It's free and has the basics.

(Not to knock on Botman, it's a good tool too!)

 
Botman does not honor the UserDataFolder setting properly.

When using a UserDataFolder outside of the game installation folder botman creates an erroneous Mods folder inside the game installation folder.

This causes issues with double loading of mods which I've reported as a bug to TFP.

Basically, when a UserDataFolder is set mods should honor it and create their config files etc in the UserDataFolder location rather than the game installation folder.

And here of course I'm talking about the botman mod rather than the mudlet based bot.  Also I'm running the server on Linux, so I'm not sure if it's only a problem on Linux.

I've had a quick look at the source and the problem may stem from here, https://github.com/MatthewDwyer/Botman_Mod_A20/blob/main/ModBase/Source/API.cs#L11, which is where the mod tries to get the correct location of the mods folder.

 
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I have released Botman mod A20_7 with support for the new Mod folder location.  The Botman mod will automatically detect and save to it and will only save to the Mods folder in the game folder if there is no Mods folder found outside of that.  Thanks to O C (Server Tools dev) for sharing the code snippet needed to grab the new folder location. :D

Also the Botman mod now lives on my new file server and can be downloaded here   https://files.botman.nz/releases/botman/a20/Botman_Mod_A20.zip

You can also grab older versions etc   https://files.botman.nz/

 
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A20 changelog  25 July 2022

IT IS FINALLY HERE! :D The a20testing code has now replaced the a20 code branch. :D :D :D 😮

There are many bug fixes big and small and many aren't worth writing about (also they are hard to track down in amongst all the other code changes.  Here are the main ones.)

Fixes:
Replaced steam id with user id throughout the bot code.  Many bot messages (pm's) that were not working before are now fixed.

Changed steam id from a number to a string so it can store a steam id or gamepass id and any future platform id's

I had to alter the internal index of player groups to get around a quirk of Lua when handling tables that are indexed with a number.  It would mess up constantly until I changed the index by adding a G to the number so that it is no longer numeric.  That was a fun bug.

Another player group bug that I fixed was caused by the fact that Lua passes tables to variables by reference, not by value so I was having trouble with unintended changes to values in the parent table.  This was fixed by adding a function that walks the table copying the value pairs to a temporary table.

Removed hard coded references to the "Steam" platform so that functions for stuff like setting player chat colour etc will work for XBox players as well.

Fixed bug in code responsible for live table and field alterations to the database.  It was running the same updates every bot startup instead of once only. There were also some changes and a few fields missing during today's live update test so those had to be added as well.

Donors are (or should be) automatically expiring when their donor period ends and they should be losing their extra bases and waypoints, donor colours etc.  This may need additional testing and fixes on live servers as I have had reports that it still is not working properly. Of course it works perfectly in testing.

Fixed bug in the gimme arena that prevented it spawning zombies - Boo!

The bot was not always able to automatically rejoin the main irc channel if it fell off.

If the bot detects a nullref it will scan the live entities list (once) and will automatically despawn a few that are known to cause nullrefs such as template entities and a few others. If the nullrefs continue, it won't scan again for several minutes to avoid generating a ton of command spam. It does nothing for other causes of nullrefs.
In testing this fixed the nullref when an entity was the cause within 2 seconds of the nullref appearing.

Changes:
Added support for XBox (Gamepass) players.

Rolling announcements now support daily server time specific announcements.  These trigger separately from the rolling announcements and are not included in the normal (untimed) rolling announcements, but both are managed with the same commands.

The bot's automatic switching from API mode to telnet mode should not switch to telnet mode unnecessarily (at least not nearly as often).  The code that checks the status of the API has been changed so it takes a full hour of having API not working while telnet still works before the bot will switch to telnet mode. If the bot has been told to never use telnet, it will instead message an alert to The Lounge that it is not able to communicate with the server and will suggest fixes.

The code for removing a donor has been moved to a dedicated function which is used by several commands and other parts of the bot.  This should ensure a consistent result no matter where or how a donor is removed. Also the application of donor colours, name prefixes etc should be working properly.

Improved the function that determines if a player is an admin or not and replaced other code with calls to that function so that the admin test is consistent across the bot.

Mostly cosmetic improvements to the lounge command, info.

Also tidied up the output of the lounge command, staff.

Cosmetic improvement to the output of the lounge command, who.

Cosmetic improvement to the output of the lounge command, whos.

Many and various minor code improvements were done to the bot's chat parser.  There is always room for more improvement there.

Added gimme cooldown to the player groups as it was accidentally left out.

New commands:
/empty group {group number or name}
This command allows you to remove all members of a player group in a single command.

/move group members {group number or name} to {group number or name}
This command allows you to move all members of a player group to another group in a single command.

/set max admin level {number from 2 to 89}
This command was added so that servers with custom player levels and/or players given levels in the admins xml file won't clash with the levels used for actual admins (which are also customisable).

/allow xbox (or /disallow xbox)
This command was added so you can prevent XBox players joining your server. If you do not allow XBox players on your server, the bot will kick them as soon as they connect.

New lounge command, reload admins.

Many of the changes for XBox support required changes to thousands of lines of code and changes to lookup and other functions that handle id's.  This was literally months of work.  Thank you Pimps, thank you very very much. 😠

Please report bugs or other issues as soon as you can either by PM'ing me in Discord (preferred) or by posting in the Botmanhosting Discord group.  I can be emailed at [email protected]

 
An updated version of the Botman mod was released recently for compatibility with A20.6  Older releases will still work but you may see a console error mentioning the brender command.  In A20.6 there was a change to one of the server functions that the Botman mod calls.  The only botman mod console command that uses it is bm-pexport.

The console error should not cause any problems other than showing up in the logs.

The latest Botman mod is version A20_v9_for_A20.6+

You can always download the latest Botman mod here..  https://files.botman.nz/

 
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I have re-released the Botman mod (same version as above).  The only change is that for several months the zip did not contain a Mods folder and I have fixed that in this release.  This was done to make it easier for game hosts to automatically have the latest version of my mod as they all expect the zip to include a Mods folder.  If you already have version A20_v9_for_A20.6+ you don't need to do anything.

Also if you want to keep up to date with news and other posts about my bot you should join the Botmanhosting Discord group as that is where I am most active with posts.

Here is an invite..  https://discord.gg/MUaHTjJ

 
I have released an update to the a20 code branch.  Here is the changelog..

New command /play as player

Works like /test as player but lasts for 1 year or until the command '/restore admin' is used. While the new command is in effect, the admin player still has access to all the admin commands that their admin level allowed. As far as the server is concerned they are not admin but the bot remembers. Due to this change, if you want to remove an admin you must use the /admin remove command. The bot will automatically add admins via the console command admin list but it will not automatically remove them from its own internal admin list if they are removed from the server's admin list.

There currently is an issue with the /play as player command.  When used in game it is not able to remove the admin from the admin list if they are on the server at the time.  If it is used via The Lounge while the admin is not on the server, it works properly.

The bot will not arrest or otherwise punish an admin while using the /play as player feature since it knows they are still an admin so you can have admin items on you etc.

New command /reset chunk

/reset chunk
/reset chunk wide {number}
/reset chunk wide {number} player {player}
/reset chunk {player}
Reset chunks at your position or where another player is standing.
When used with a player name, the player must be on the server.
When used on yourself, you must be in-game.
ACL: 0 restricted to server owners, in-game and IRC

You can finally reset chunks using a chat command rather than needing to resort to the console command. The width setting means you don't need to mark a start and end point. It can be used via The Lounge but only when a player is specified and the player must be on the server at the time.

Player lookups are now aware of the Steam_ and XBL_ prefix so you no longer need to strip those out when doing lookups on steam id or xbox id.

Fixed bug in /bases command that prevented it listing the nearby bases.

The command /save {name}, used for saving a custom prefab now uses the Botman mod's bm-pexport console command instead of the Pimps own console command. This fixes the issue where freshly saved prefabs are unknown to the server until after the next reboot. Now those prefabs are available to spawn immediately.

 
The bot host is moving to new hardware.  Bots will be offline until the move has completed.  The server is being backed up atm which is taking longer than I'd like but the end result should see bots running much smoother.

 
Hi guys!

I have released an updated Botman mod for A21 and also a new bot code branch called a21.

You can find the new Botman mod here  https://files.botman.nz/releases/botman/a21/Botman_Mod_A21.zip

Apologies for the out of date ssl certificate on that url.  Hoping to get that fixed asap.

Several game hosts also have the Botman mod available in their mod manager page.  I have reached out to the 4 I am aware of and it should be available there soon if not now.

To command your bot to switch to the a21 code branch use the commands  /set update branch a21, then tell it /update code

As A21 is new and this is just the first A21 release of my Botman mod and bot code you should expect to encounter issues.  If possible please go to my Botmanhosting Discord group if you want to report any bugs you find.  These days Discord is my main platform for keeping you guys informed about bot stuff.

Here is an invite if you need it   https://discord.gg/MUaHTjJ

Note that at the moment it appears that with the A21 changes to Alloc's web API, the API appears to be broken.  Until I am able to use it again I have temporarily blocked the ability to set the bot into API mode.  If you do manage to get the bot into API mode it will not be able to respond in in-game chat as the API is used for that.  You can fix it by restarting your bot or you can tell it /use telnet

Once the A21 changes have settled down I will resume working on new stuff.  I have a half finished Windows port of the bot to finish which will make self hosting the bot a breeze.

Smegzor

 
Hi guys!

I am just about finished re-coding how the bot communicates with Alloc's web API.  His latest update uses a more secure way to authenticate.  That part is sorted but I still need to make changes to how I process the API's responses while still supporting the previous method.  The bot will use the old method or the new method automatically depending on the version of Alloc's webserver as reported by the server.

These changes should be finished and tested by the end of the day.

Also note that in the latest game update The Pimps removed the ability to set trader protection on blocks.  This change breaks block protection for all server managers not just mine.  Hopefully the Pimps revert that change or provide a new way to set block protection but I am not expecting that they will do either.

At some stage I will remove the trader protection commands from the bot.  I am just waiting to see if they restore that ability.

While the Botman mod is no longer able to make blocks unbreakable, you can at least have the bot despawn zombies in and around anything you want.  There are 2 methods available that despawn zeds under different circumstances.  The Botman mod has bm-sanctuary which you can enable and use (console commands) to set an area of any size so that all zombies that spawn within it are immediately despawned.  It does not however currently despawn zombies that walk into the sanctuary area.  I hope to change that soon but need to add a timer to the mod and timed events (to rescan for zeds in sanctuaries etc).

The other method of despawning zombies requires the bot (not the mod).  You can set a location as safe with for example /location safe lobby.  To undo that use /location unsafe lobby.  The bot will scan for any hostile entities within the location every 10 seconds if a player is in the location.  If no players are there, it will not despawn zombies there.  Additionally the scan will only run if a player is in a location that is set to safe.

 
Hi guys!

I am working on making the Botman mod compatible with 1.0   I hope to have a new Botman mod ready for release later today but it will be slightly delayed as my wife has a hospital appointment today (suspected bone cancer) so I have to take a few hours out for her.  I have been working on the update since early in the morning and have got it down to just a few things that the Pimps have changed that are preventing a successful build of the Botman mod.

I will post again when I have the update ready.

 
I have a build of the Botman mod that is compatible with 1.0   It is still being tested but I haven't found anything yet that is not working.  There was a minor chat bug and still is but in game chat is displaying without the bug in this release.

You can grab it here..  https://botman.nz/r1/Botman_Mod_R1.zip

If you find something is broken, feel free to let me know, ideally message me on Discord rather than posting here but if you must post here, just reply here, not via private message.   Thanks! =D

 
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