Mafia hotkeys: combat action vs. CLI command

Mafia currently has a combat hotkey feature, allowing single combat actions to be assigned to keys 0-9. I intended to change this to allow arbitrary combat macros, which would make the feature much more powerful: for example, you could use "attack; repeat" as a finishing move. However, it turns out that these hotkeys have another use, that I was entirely unaware of: if the command starts with something other than "attack", "skill", "item", "custom", or "consult", it gets interpreted as a CLI command instead of a CCS action. That's unlikely to do anything useful in the middle of a combat, but the hotkeys are still available on the final page, and might be used then to use restoratives, cast buffs, or perform other after-battle actions.

I don't see any practical way for the hotkeys to be upgraded to allow arbitrary macros while still supporting arbitrary CLI commands, since there are several commands that are valid in both namespaces (and likely to be more such commands in the future, since we don't control the macro namespace). I don't want to take the CLI feature away from anyone who's using it, but on the other hand I'm not sure that anyone was actually aware of this feature in order to use it. Thus, a poll:

I was confused when trying to use the hotkeys as it didn't seem to use the CCS. I think that having them use CSS is the best thing to do though


So my vote goes to CSS

I don't have any idea what icon315 is talking about.

I had no idea that hotkeys could be used for CLI commands in that specific circumstance. Please let them be used for macros.

Hmm...
"I use hotkeys, but only for in-combat actions ...
would be willing to give [CLI hotkeys] up in favor of macro hotkeys."

I'm in the same boat as Bale -- didn't know that they could be used that way, but macros would be so much more useful (and kinder to the KoL servers, too!).

heeheehee said:

I'm in the same boat as Bale.

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So... you also don't have a clue what icon315 was talking about?

>.>......sorry i'm out of it right now

Bale said:

So... you also don't have a clue what icon315 was talking about?

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Yeah, that too. I could swear the "auto" button makes the combat follow the CCS...

A while back I had enabled the option to add custom buttons to the top of fight pages. I tried that for a short while and then I think I stopped because it conflicted with something or perhaps didn't behave as expected. I don't recall what happened for sure as it's been a while, but I've been using KoL's combat action bars for a while now and have gotten used to them. In any event, without enabling mafia's custom buttons, there is no access to the combat hotkeys as they cannot co-exist with KoL's combat action bar to the best of my knowledge. Mind you, I have yet to try any KoL combat macro, so I'm not sure how I'd even use it. I like my CCS scripts and would rather not have to tinker with writing KoL macros. I liked the idea of mafia somehow translating my CCS into macros if that would decrease real life time spent, but aren't KoL macros meant for single turn adventuring? I only use CCS during automation, so I'm not sure how this would help me. Maybe this is all going over my head.

Spiny said:

aren't KoL macros meant for single turn adventuring?

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No. They have nothing to do with how you spend your turns, they only describe what to do once you start fighting a monster. Running a macro is like running a CCS except that it uses less bandwidth and you don't have to wait for all the sending and receiving of information in the middle of the fight.

lostcalpolydude said:

No. They have nothing to do with how you spend your turns, they only describe what to do once you start fighting a monster. Running a macro is like running a CCS except that it uses less bandwidth and you don't have to wait for all the sending and receiving of information in the middle of the fight.

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Right now, I manually adventure in the relay browser for the most part using KoL's Combat action bar to facilitate my desired actions per round. If I'm confident in the series of actions I wish to do for a series of combats, I translate this into a CCS and I tell mafia to autoadventure X number of turns in a specific area (pre-selecting the choice adventures I want to have mafia select for me) using the respective CCS for combat. As I understand it, kol macros is a way of programming a similar style CCS within kol itself, saving server hits and speeding things up, however I would manually have to adventure turn by turn and click the macro button each turn if I wanted to use them. At least until mafia implements a way to use the macros directly within mafia, so I can continue to do exactly what I'm doing and know that mafia is handling the execution. Correct? or no?

I guess I'll have to try to tackle reading the threads in the KoL forums regarding the macros again or maybe take the plunge and try one and see what happens within mafia when I do so.

You can set a macro as your auto-attack. As long as it kills the monster, it has all of the benefits of a CCS.

If you're using the CAB, you can already create KoL-side macros and place them on the bar for easy access - they can either be macros that completely run a combat, or fragments like "attack; attack; attack" that you can use and then decide what to do next. This should be fully working with the current daily build, as long as any "skill" commands in your macros specify the skill by name rather than ID number.

The question at hand concerns mafia's own hotkeys, which are somewhat of an equivalent to the CAB. Currently, they can only be single-round actions (and not even all such actions are possible); the possibility is to upgrade them to be arbitrary macros. They'd still be different from macros on the CAB, in that you'd be able to edit them directly in combat. CAB macros have to be created or edited outside of combat, via the account menu.

jasonharper said:

However, it turns out that these hotkeys have another use, that I was entirely unaware of: if the command starts with something other than "attack", "skill", "item", "custom", or "consult", it gets interpreted as a CLI command instead of a CCS action.

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Ahh, so *that* is why trying to "use <combat item here>" autofinished the combat first, then aborted on unusable item.

I don't see any practical way for the hotkeys to be upgraded to allow arbitrary macros while still supporting arbitrary CLI commands

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Except having yet another namespace-switching command, like "ash" in the CLI, right?

Add me to the list of people who had no idea that hotkeys could be set to CLI actions. Mind you, I've tried to figure out how to set them before without any luck, and if I had known that setting arbitrary CLI commands was possible, would have loved this feature. But, I would have used it primarily to accomplish the same goals as combat macros (arbitrary ccs chunks), so changing it in this way would be a net positive from where I stand. I can always use the main CLI or the chat version for non-combat-related commands, which doesn't seem to be a significant problem to me.

tl;dr this change sounds good to me.

xKiv said:

Except having yet another namespace-switching command, like "ash" in the CLI, right?

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What could that command possibly be, such that we could absolutely guarantee that it would never conflict with a KoL macro command? Something like "thisisreallyakolmafiaclicommand" I suppose, but that's a bit difficult to remember...

I don't consider the capability to be especially desirable, considering how badly some CLI commands screw up if issued in the middle of a fight.

jasonharper said:

I don't consider the capability to be especially desirable, considering how badly some CLI commands screw up if issued in the middle of a fight.

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I tend to agree with this, and is why I never thought to look for CLI functionality in this location.

If we want a way to issue CLI commands from the relay browser, we could always ask that such be implemented. Perhaps maybe in the chat pane? Oh wait...

jasonharper said:

What could that command possibly be, such that we could absolutely guarantee that it would never conflict with a KoL macro command? Something like "thisisreallyakolmafiaclicommand" I suppose, but that's a bit difficult to remember...

I don't consider the capability to be especially desirable, considering how badly some CLI commands screw up if issued in the middle of a fight.

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And how do you/we know somebody won't want to use a macro named "item", "attack" or "skill" [1]? I would propose calling macros with "macro <MACRONAME>" ... and "normal" CLI commands with "cli <COMMAND>", probably.

[1] or are you saying you want to get rid of that too?

Colour me lazy, but I have been trying to figure out a functionality for this but so far only have half luck. I am doing Slime Tube speed runs, so I switch between my two outfit often. I have the #1 slot set to OUTFIT PREVIOUS, and it works beautifully if I do it on the screen just after the battle. Otherwise, it does not work.

I know I can type it into a chat command, but it is probably more effort, and I wanted a way to streamline it. I have tried the command with and without the /, as I was reading about it pushing into the CLI. It doesn't always work. I can get by, but is there a way to get it to take the number press outside of the end of combat screen?

Lazy in London.