5 ms·

AutoHotKey is amazing! I've written more then 5000loc long program that plays an MMO for me! It can already do most of the content that's in the game, but the

AutoHotKey is amazing! I've written more then 5000loc long program that plays an MMO for me! It can already do most of the content that's in the game, but there still a lot of improvement needed. But the development was so fun, every night I would start the script and then when I woke wake up, I would see where it broke and could then try to fix it and test it again the next night (because a lot of in-game content rests daily). When I started writing the program, I was looking around to see if there's a library for Rust that would give me the same or at least similar functionality, but sadly I didn't find anything. Don't get me wrong AHK is amazing, I just wanted to use the coding of this program as a way to better learn Rust! I even had the program write a CSV file so that I could track the effectiveness of farming. It really is incredible how powerful and easy to use AutoHotKey is!

isaacfrond 3y ago
AutoHotKey is amazing! for cheating! Right, noted.
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  OP is just playing a different game to the other players. If the game is boring enough that it can be played by an ahk script, then it probably isn't the most interesting game in the first place. The ahk game sounds like more fun to me.
  - lfkdev 3y ago
    That doesnt change the fact its simple cheating, getting an unfair advantage against other players. Beside this, botting is not what AHK is really good for
    - computerfriend 3y ago
      Other players can write automation too.
    - csydas 3y ago
      I wouldn't go that far. A lot of games have drudgery built in which isn't exciting past the first few times you've played it and rare bouts of willingness to do it again. I would position part of what made Diablo 2 (not remake) last so long was bots on the ladder and the shops that provided the bots; no one "new" was playing the game at that time and everyone had "fair cheats" for rushing through the first two game modes [0] [1], and everyone had been using the "fair cheats" for years since they had been discovered. But the fair cheats needed other players to pull off, and this wasn't always reliable. When the D2 shop farmers started botting, they realized it would be great advertisements to do specific types of common runs for leveling with the bots; the bots would grab any item worth value, but typically they just would repeatedly run common leveling/item farming areas on a predictable and guided schedule, dropping quick announcements about the shop in chat periodically (maybe several times per run which is usually around 5-15 minutes, and it was just a quick stylized message in the game chat.) There were enough bots that it wasn't flooding the available games to join, but you could almost always find a bot game to join and just follow until you were leveled. Most players did this to get through Normal mode and often nightmare, as everyone just wanted to get a character ready for late Nightmare/Hell which is when the game is "fun" (better drops, more difficult monsters to fight, it was the point at which the game gets interesting in general for most players) Without the bots and players "cheating" through the first 2 game modes, I'm not as confident people would have keep playing as long as they did. It wasn't "unfair" in my opinion as everyone had always wanted this, and it had automated what everyone was already doing; I'm not sure I see the difference between using AHK like the GP did and having a setup like what D2 had 0 - For the unfamiliar, Diablo 2 had three modes: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell; same game each time, but item drops are better and monster levels are changed to be more difficult, with monsters getting better attributes that made them more difficult. I am going to make a generalized statement that for most players, the game really begins at Nightmare if it's not one of your first few times playing the game 1 - By "fair cheats" I mean the game was exploited to ensure fast leveling without a lot of effort and also ways of bypassing the "boring" parts of the game that the game allowed, but likely not intentionally. Blizzard definitely couldn't solve this in game without substantial reworks, which they probably didn't want to do
      - Tarsul 3y ago
- Prickle 3y ago
  Some MMOs you really need automated scripts to hit those 0.1s timers. And the majority are time wasters and not very fun. The game should incentivize you to play and enjoy, not farm activity #399 There are also legitimate accessibility issues this can resolve, but would be considered cheating in many games.
- ramblerman 3y ago
  Automating a repetitive task in a low stakes environment, oh no. that’s probably the definition of how most programmers got started. Get off your high horse
- LoveMortuus 3y ago
  The game that I play is called Crystal Saga. And while technically it is cheating, you don't get any real advantage doing so because the game it's designed in such a way that you can but pretty much every item with real money and many systems used to upgrade yourself can only be used by spending more money. As such even if you were to automate every part of the game that's you can do as a free to play player you couldn't get close to those that support the developers with their money. The gap is so big that you can't even hurt those players where as they can pretty much kill you in one shot. But I personally play the game because of the people and the community, so none of the automation or money spending really matters to me.
quikoa 3y ago
If you don't mind sharing which MMO are you playing? It sounds exciting being able to automate that much! :)
- LoveMortuus 3y ago
  Crystal Saga, it's a flash MMORPG as such it used to be browser based, but now you need their launcher or a non-mainstream browser. I do have hopes that Ruffle will bring the game back into modern mainstream browsers, but it's not quite yet there.
trinovantes 3y ago
I remember the old days when I could automate woodcutting in runescape Sadly a lot of games nowadays have (shitty) anti cheat systems that just ban you if you have the process running or have the program installed
infogulch 3y ago
> I've written more then 5000loc long program that plays an MMO for me! Interesting, that's how I got into AHK and programming in general too. It started as a simple timed clicking script, then became dynamic enough to handle variable timings, then I sped it up by embedding compiled machine code from a C function into the script as hex, decoded into a buffer, and called it with DllCall so more computer resources could go to running the game rather than the script. I went into more detail about my story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160930

isaacfrond 3y ago

AutoHotKey is amazing! for cheating! Right, noted.

brokenmachine 3y ago
OP is just playing a different game to the other players. If the game is boring enough that it can be played by an ahk script, then it probably isn't the most interesting game in the first place. The ahk game sounds like more fun to me.
- lfkdev 3y ago
  That doesnt change the fact its simple cheating, getting an unfair advantage against other players. Beside this, botting is not what AHK is really good for
  - computerfriend 3y ago
    Other players can write automation too.
  - csydas 3y ago
    I wouldn't go that far. A lot of games have drudgery built in which isn't exciting past the first few times you've played it and rare bouts of willingness to do it again. I would position part of what made Diablo 2 (not remake) last so long was bots on the ladder and the shops that provided the bots; no one "new" was playing the game at that time and everyone had "fair cheats" for rushing through the first two game modes [0] [1], and everyone had been using the "fair cheats" for years since they had been discovered. But the fair cheats needed other players to pull off, and this wasn't always reliable. When the D2 shop farmers started botting, they realized it would be great advertisements to do specific types of common runs for leveling with the bots; the bots would grab any item worth value, but typically they just would repeatedly run common leveling/item farming areas on a predictable and guided schedule, dropping quick announcements about the shop in chat periodically (maybe several times per run which is usually around 5-15 minutes, and it was just a quick stylized message in the game chat.) There were enough bots that it wasn't flooding the available games to join, but you could almost always find a bot game to join and just follow until you were leveled. Most players did this to get through Normal mode and often nightmare, as everyone just wanted to get a character ready for late Nightmare/Hell which is when the game is "fun" (better drops, more difficult monsters to fight, it was the point at which the game gets interesting in general for most players) Without the bots and players "cheating" through the first 2 game modes, I'm not as confident people would have keep playing as long as they did. It wasn't "unfair" in my opinion as everyone had always wanted this, and it had automated what everyone was already doing; I'm not sure I see the difference between using AHK like the GP did and having a setup like what D2 had 0 - For the unfamiliar, Diablo 2 had three modes: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell; same game each time, but item drops are better and monster levels are changed to be more difficult, with monsters getting better attributes that made them more difficult. I am going to make a generalized statement that for most players, the game really begins at Nightmare if it's not one of your first few times playing the game 1 - By "fair cheats" I mean the game was exploited to ensure fast leveling without a lot of effort and also ways of bypassing the "boring" parts of the game that the game allowed, but likely not intentionally. Blizzard definitely couldn't solve this in game without substantial reworks, which they probably didn't want to do
    - Tarsul 3y ago
Prickle 3y ago
Some MMOs you really need automated scripts to hit those 0.1s timers. And the majority are time wasters and not very fun. The game should incentivize you to play and enjoy, not farm activity #399 There are also legitimate accessibility issues this can resolve, but would be considered cheating in many games.
ramblerman 3y ago
Automating a repetitive task in a low stakes environment, oh no. that’s probably the definition of how most programmers got started. Get off your high horse
LoveMortuus 3y ago
The game that I play is called Crystal Saga. And while technically it is cheating, you don't get any real advantage doing so because the game it's designed in such a way that you can but pretty much every item with real money and many systems used to upgrade yourself can only be used by spending more money. As such even if you were to automate every part of the game that's you can do as a free to play player you couldn't get close to those that support the developers with their money. The gap is so big that you can't even hurt those players where as they can pretty much kill you in one shot. But I personally play the game because of the people and the community, so none of the automation or money spending really matters to me.

quikoa 3y ago

If you don't mind sharing which MMO are you playing? It sounds exciting being able to automate that much! :)

LoveMortuus 3y ago
Crystal Saga, it's a flash MMORPG as such it used to be browser based, but now you need their launcher or a non-mainstream browser. I do have hopes that Ruffle will bring the game back into modern mainstream browsers, but it's not quite yet there.

trinovantes 3y ago

I remember the old days when I could automate woodcutting in runescape Sadly a lot of games nowadays have (shitty) anti cheat systems that just ban you if you have the process running or have the program installed

infogulch 3y ago

> I've written more then 5000loc long program that plays an MMO for me! Interesting, that's how I got into AHK and programming in general too. It started as a simple timed clicking script, then became dynamic enough to handle variable timings, then I sped it up by embedding compiled machine code from a C function into the script as hex, decoded into a buffer, and called it with DllCall so more computer resources could go to running the game rather than the script. I went into more detail about my story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160930