SurvivalBot V0.85 ALPHA

[SMooreAce]

If you're still needing servers to use as test beds, I have 2 clusters of 4 servers. All 4 islands in PVP and PVE. The population has simmered down in the PVE realm a bit. Ranging from empty to 4 or 5 people. The PVP side generally sees from empty to 14 people. Very strange fluctuations.

[Archimodes]

On 7/11/2017 at 3:40 PM, DuoMog said:

Max we get is 5 or 6 survivors at any time.  Search for WiredCat on the battlemetrics website to see the stats.

I know this doesn't meet your request for high usage, but I am interested in your software because it sounds like you've implemented some features that I'd like to take advantage of.
 

 

4 hours ago, SMooreAce said:

If you're still needing servers to use as test beds, I have 2 clusters of 4 servers. All 4 islands in PVP and PVE. The population has simmered down in the PVE realm a bit. Ranging from empty to 4 or 5 people. The PVP side generally sees from empty to 14 people. Very strange fluctuations.

I will definitely keep you both in mind, but for the time being will hope that I can get a high pop server to test with that is on shared hosting. Tremendous amounts of testing has already been done on shared hosting with 1-30 concurrent players. I'm looking to test with 40+ so I can ensure that the performance does not rapidly decay beyond that.

It's decently important that I do this testing as when I tested with 70+ players on a dedicated server I was made aware of critical bugs. As I approach general availability I'd like to ensure the smoothest experience possible for all.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Archimodes said:

 

I will definitely keep you both in mind, but for the time being will hope that I can get a high pop server to test with that is on shared hosting. Tremendous amounts of testing has already been done on shared hosting with 1-30 concurrent players. I'm looking to test with 40+ so I can ensure that the performance does not rapidly decay beyond that.

It's decently important that I do this testing as when I tested with 70+ players on a dedicated server I was made aware of critical bugs. As I approach general availability I'd like to ensure the smoothest experience possible for all.

I'm still interested... in fact, I could use the software right now !

Thanks for keeping us informed.

[StriderUk]

i have two 40+ populated servers and would be interested in testing your software - 

 

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/ark/1170103

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/ark/851658

 

PM if you need some decent stress testing.

[Guest]

On 17/07/2017 at 5:46 PM, Archimodes said:

 

I will definitely keep you both in mind, but for the time being will hope that I can get a high pop server to test with that is on shared hosting. Tremendous amounts of testing has already been done on shared hosting with 1-30 concurrent players. I'm looking to test with 40+ so I can ensure that the performance does not rapidly decay beyond that.

It's decently important that I do this testing as when I tested with 70+ players on a dedicated server I was made aware of critical bugs. As I approach general availability I'd like to ensure the smoothest experience possible for all.

Hi Archimodes.  How is the testing going ?

[Pose]

Hi Archimodos. I am very interested in your project. I would like to contact you privately.

my steam: Poseido

 

[Pose]

On 13/7/2016 at 6:08 PM, Archimodes said:

I appreciate all of the offers to test and such. Presently, it's not realistic to push out everything I'm working with to multiple different environments. Presently, I have a lot of different parts to keep everything running smoothly. Code-wise, this would be 5 separate repos: One in C++, two in PHP, and two in bash (not including automated reboot functionality, automated update functionality, etc). Also, it is absolutely required to run on a dedicated server. I've made crazy progress on it, however. Here's a list of features so far:

• Custom starter kits that hit the second a player finishes creating their character. Also has a custom welcome message. The custom start kits can be literally anything you can do in the game, formatted as such: cheat giveitemnumtoplayer @ID@ 36 1 0 0, cheat giveitemnumtoplayer @ID@ 35 1 0 0, etc. where "@ID@" gets replaced with their player number automatically.
• Custom currency system with custom gain rates. Mine is set at 1 SP (Survival Point) per 5 minutes of being in-game. Can be set to whatever or temporarily double for Double SP Weekends (etc.) Double SP Weekends is a simple config change allowing you to set to "true", which will enable the double gain but also enable a notification (upon joining) so everyone knows.
• Custom in-game shop where SP can be spent. Add any item(s) you wish to the store (including mod items), including groups of items for packages. Set the pricing to whatever you like, including free. Players purchase with !buy <quantity> <item>. Players with memberships may receive custom discounts. My max discount for a Platinum Membership, for example, is 30% off. This is all handled automatically.
• Price Checking for players: !cost <quantity> <item>   If no quantity is specified it'll price an entire stack. Discounts are taken into consideration here as well.
• SP Trading among players: !give <quantity> <steam name>
• Admin helper commands (ALL admin only) like push: !push <quantity> <item> <steam name>   For example, !push 20000 stone Cool Ark dude   Handles stacking and such to deliver 20k stone to "Cool Ark dude". !giveexp <amount> <steam name>, !kill <steam name>, !kick <steam name>, !ban <steam name>, !broadcast <message>, etc. Very useful for allowing only some commands to be executed by certain in-game admins.
• Message Rotation for spamming whatever messages you want on the server. Can be a Broadcast or Normal. Spams at custom intervals. Losing connection has no impact - if you set it for every hour and lose connection/reboot 10 times within that hour it still spams the proper message in the proper order.
• Custom Reboot Cycles with messaging. Mine is presently set to 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM EST every day. Alerts 15 minutes in advance, then 10 minutes in advance, then 5 minutes in advance, then 2 minutes in advance, and finally 1 minute in advance. 
• Custom website shop automated fulfillment. Example here: http://fusiongamers.com/shop   Any items purchased here give a redemption code. Type !redeem <code> to receive all items instantly. Of course there's a chance that the bot is down for some reason, so at the top there's an "ONLINE" / "OFFLINE" status. A person could easily just make the shop unavailable if the bot was offline. All item packs are super simple to setup, just like the custom starter kits. Possibilities are endless here, could add a max level perk incredibly easily by just creating a pack with "cheat giveexptoplayer @ID@ 999999 0 1".
• Lottery system for SP. !jackpot shows the present jackpot. !lotto <quantity> buys tickets at a default of 1 SP each. 50% of SP put into the lottery is given out as a jackpot.
• Random custom shipments. A random shipment which can be small on up to massive will "spawn". The first person to type the proper code in chat (example, !3826) gets it. It'll pick from any of the categories of items you want, and pick random quantities of random items within those categories. By default, it's setup to pick items from resources, consumables, ammo, and kibble. Basically it's like a whole new type of beacon without having to be there physically.
• Custom Join Messages Part 1: upon a certain player joining, SurvivalBot can say any phrase you wish to all the players. Useful for notifying that an admin joins, etc.
• Custom Join Messages Part 2: upon joining for the first time each day, a player will see a message showing how many threads in the forum they have not read, if there's a Double SP Weekend they'll be notified there, and finally will also be notified if they get a consecutive bonus (listed next).
• Consecutive Play Bonus: if a player joins the server 2 or more consecutive days, they'll get a custom amount of bonus SP. Default is 2 * consecutive days.
• New Player Alert: By default the bot says "Fresh Meat." when a new player joins. As such, the default join notification for admins is "Spoiled Meat". 
• !played shows the amount of time a player has played on the server, in hours.
• !roll [number]  Rolls from 1 to [number] or 100 if no number is specified. Shows for everyone to see (example: Archimodes: 53). In my testing, surprisingly no one spams this to try and grief the server.
• !maxlevel shows the max player level, wild dino level, and levels gained post-tame. This is shown to all players due to the fact that many new players join a server and ask "what's the max level here?". Allows anyone to simply type !maxlevel and give a proper response.
• !kibble <dino> shows what kibble should be used to tame <dino>.
• !gift <steam name> (admin only) pushes a random item of upgraded quality to a player.
• !jump <steam name> (admin only) pushes Jump Puzzle loot to a player.
• !help [command] If no command is specified, shows general help and a list of commands. If command is specified, shows info on the command and how to use it.
• !list [category] If no category is specified, shows a list of categories. If a category is specified, shows all items for purchase in the automated store from that category.
• !settings Shows all players the current server settings. My server for example says: "Tame: 10x, XP: 5x, Farm: 5x.", "Tamed Dino Damage and Health per point buffed from 15% to 25%", "Weight on Players and Tames at 50 per point.". Shows to all players due to the fact that many new players will join and ask "what are the settings for this server?". Allows anyone to simply type !settings and give a proper response.
• !sp shows the player's current amount of SP.

As we all probably know by now, Ark servers are fantastic at being buggy. RCON is no exception. Most admins know that Ark servers will sever RCON connections randomly. This causes other RCON programs to bug out. SurvivalBot accepts this as a simple fact of life. Disconnects do not impact a single feature here. Functionality relying on players joining, for example, will never erroneously activate multiple times because Ark severed the RCON connection. Everything is DB driven, and as such, even if a shipment is generated and then the RCON connection is severed, nothing is impacted. Once the connection is available again, SurvivalBot connects and picks right back up where it left off and gives out the shipment.

There are more features but I've been typing this for a decent chunk of time now, lol.

 

Current Bugs:

• Players changing their Steam name after creating a character is an absolute mess. This is not due to my own scripting, but due to an awesome bit of strange logic in Ark itself. In the player list, the new Steam name is listed. When chatting, however, the old Steam name is used. This could all be alleviated if Ark pushed a Steam ID with chat, but alas, that'll likely never happen (have personally begged in the forums for devs to fix that and many other things). For now, Steam name changes disallow players from interacting with the bot entirely.
• Now and then the bot gets out of sync. Not a huge deal, it auto-recovers. However, sometimes items are not given out because of this. It happens about once every week, so it's not a giant priority.
• It is possible to buy items after a save immediately before a reboot (there's about a 15 second window), which will take SP and give the items. Of course, however, upon rebooting the items are lost because they were never saved. This isn't possible with built-in reboots, but it is possible with external. It is planned to detect broadcasts about reboots and disable the automated store. Of course, I'm extremely limited in what I can do about external scripts causing reboots.

 

Anyway, if anyone wants to see/test it, feel free to join my server. Until things are more organized a legitimate alpha/beta for others to use on their server(s) is off the table.

I'll be posting more progress here as it is made.

 

I am interested in your work. We could talk my steam: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198232959308/