ascend.ash

There's a script I've been working on for the past year or so, on and off. It's called ascend.ash. Here's how it works:
1) Configure it, and the related scripts on which it depends (e.g. Zarqon's outstanding One Click Wossname)
2) Run it
3) Interrupt periodically to buy skills and change equipment or combat strategies (these are not managed - it assumes you can kill anything with the default settings, although it includes precautions to make sure you only fight things you can kill)
4) Ascend (after a week of running it every day, give or take, depending on what you've got permed)
5) Repeat.

It includes automation for 50 distinct quests, and intelligence to figure out the order in which to do them. It's robust against being interrupted and restarted. It eats, drinks, spleens, pulls, shops, and insults pirates. It's pretty neat. I'm perming skills on a multi, and on a typical day, I just run the script and then check out the results.

Originally I wasn't planning on releasing it because it's fragile. But I've been thinking about making it available for 1 Mr. Accessory (plus free to devs, moderators, and active scripters who contribute to the group). I've got three questions:
1) (to the devs and moderators) Does this violate any rules?
2) (to the respected members of the community) Would this tick you off?
3) (to everyone else) Interested?

First off, good work, I don't want to minimize what you have accomplished.
My belief that anything you can think of can be done with Mafia is really bearing out.

I do think that we, as a community, have a responsibility to make sure that Mafia isn't easily and widely misused. My fear is that people who do nothing but create characters that they bulk up and farm for meat would love this script. Making more meat-bots and crimbo-bots would be my fear.

That being said, the script itself wouldn't tick me off. Misuse of it would.

I can't resist the urge to say that I think Hola would dissaprove of it and perhaps that is no longer relevant in some ways, but that is what I try to think of as a guide in such matters. While I didn't agree with him on all his stands, I think his reasoning on this one was pretty sound.

As dangerpin says, "Banzai! Great accomplishment!" I'm quite impressed. Sadly I fear he's right about how people would use this as a license to misuse mafia. You should also consider that as soon as you start to sell this to a few people it is likely that one (or more) of them will decide to share the script with everyone in their clan, and other friends. Lots of players work that way. (Remember, someone actually explained the legendary meat vortex bug in chat instead of becoming the kingdom's only ridiculously wealthy individual.)

So, while you are thinking it wouldn't be bad for a few people to have this script, soon there will be many more using it that you did not sell it to. That said, I'd trade you a Mr. A to keep it to yourself, although I dearly would like to see it myself in order to find out how you dealt with many of the programming challenges. It's a shame that my argument says you shouldn't give it to anyone including me even though I'm probably in the category of those you'd offer it to for free. Unless you're certain I would definitely never give it away.

Yeah.... I would actually be very interessted in such a script and would surely pay the Mr. A... I just have 2 questions:
Is a haiku katana OK? (Out of Mr. A's ATM)
Does it work if I'm out of ronin or if I am in HC or BM?
Hope to get an answer...

Yep, I've seen an early incarnation of this script (which is surprisingly small given all it does), and it's quite impressive! But I would have to agree with the previous posters, in the spirit of mafia as empowerment rather than replacement (and in respect to mafia's creator) it should not be publicized or spread about except among trustworthy friends.

Bale, JH, you two are on the freebie list regardless as foundational members of this community. Of course, you two are also those most qualified to give me flak about how ugly some parts of it are.

I recognize some folks could decide to give it away after they have a copy. Not much to be done about that, except ask them politely not to*.

I suspect the concern is a bit overstated, though. The only skills that can only be acquired by repeated ascension (e.g. excluding buffs) and excluding AT skills (since it's optimal to make your farmer's ultimate class AT) are Nimble Fingers (20%), Expert Panhandling (10%), Leash of Linguini (5 lbs), and Ampibian Sympathy (5 lbs). By my count, that's barely +60%. Compare that to the ~+300% that my never-ascended main can easily achieve, and it's peanuts**. In other words, the would-be meat farmer would be vastly better up spinning up another multi (and not ascending him) than spending months perming skills, with or without this script.

Blue, I love katanas, so yes, that would qualify if I decide to move forward.

*That's not entirely true... I do have an idea of how to put some pretty robust copy protection on it, but not really the time to do it.

**And that's without a hobo monkey. Who would love peanuts. If I had one.

zarqon said:

(which is surprisingly small given all it does)

Click to expand...

Kind words, but ironic, coming from a guy who wrote a script that does half of what this one does in <10% of the code.

(so far, Z's the only one I've shared it with)

Oh, other points I missed:

It's complex enough that configuring it is nontrivial. More to the point, configuring mafia (hp/mp restore, ccs, etc) so that the script can work properly is nontrivial. Trivial example: if you don't deal with pirates in your CCS (e.g. with Zarqon's firstthingsfirst), you'll waste a lot of time* not insulting them. Nontrivial example: I've got a sense of how many people have successfully configured eatdrink.ash, and it's table ante for ascend.ash. If someone is brand new to mafia, this will be a steep learning curve. So it's unlikely that someone unfamiliar with Mafia will be banging out the multis with it.

@blue: It is a softcore script; it transitions seamlessly to post-ronin (pulls all your stuff out as soon as you can, buys stuff instead of farming for it if it's not available, etc). It's useful for hardcore but requires quite a bit of minding since it assumes you will be buying things at the mall at level 11+ when you typically get out of ronin. When I do HC runs, I use it side-by-side with Zarqon's hardcore checklist.

Dangerpin, sorry I confused you with JH. I just assumed he would have jumped in by now. You're on the list too.

*infinite is a lot

dj_d said:

It's complex enough that configuring it is nontrivial.

Click to expand...

That is further reason not to release it -- people who are comfortable with configuring mafia scripts probably enjoy it and would not use your script more than experimentally. On the other hand, people who are not comfortable tweaking mafia and want a set-it-and-forget-it multi would bombard you with ridiculous support requests.

"how do i set it up"

"ya it doesnt work what's wrong"

"i run teh script but it just asks me what program to use"

"i'm lvl 34 and i keep running this script but it never ascends"

"how i mine 4 fish?"

The main thing is that you have written an ascension script. That is a terrific achievement that you can enjoy every time you run it.

Oh, I do enjoy it. But I also find it to be fantastically helpful, and I do want to share the joy.

The way I see it, there are many ways to enjoy the game. One way is through clicking stuff. One way is through learning mafia. Another way is through learning to script mafia. And yet another way is learning to optimize scripts. I had a grand old time figuring out how OCW worked and optimizing it for what I wanted it to do; it's part of how I got started writing scripts myself. Diff'rent strokes and all that.

So I imagine some folks would enjoy tweaking this to make it work for them.

And I derive immense, perverse pleasure from n00b support requests.

I'd pay to see this. I have a semi-functional primarily-CLI driven set of scripts that is does a similar thing. It'd be neat to see how someone else handles some of the tricky parts.

hi thank you, id rather post here.
first impressions on reading this = you are a robbing bastard, and are operating contrary to the spirit of these forums.
Full ascension scripts are frowned on, and charging money (ingame items whatever) for something you have developed by using other peoples scripts and the knowledge you picked up from others here is just not on.
Considering the code is not available how are people supposed to know that your script is not just a direct rip-off of their own work? Its these sort of things that make people wary of sharing their own work, for fear it will be abused.

It's reasonable to wonder if the script does what it says. You can see here that many people already have access to it, and at least one - the most generous scripting contributor to this community, Zarqon - has confirmed that it does. And while you're looking around, you might notice that while I haven't been a member of this community for nearly as long as you, I've contributed quite a few more scripts - seven or so, compared to zero - that should indicate that I'm at least capable of what I said I did.

As for crediting sources, I've been pretty open about that. I'm sure this forum's scripters are impressed by your indignance on their behalf, but I bet the people who contribute to the community can and will speak for themselves.

Finally, for someone who is so concerned about the standards of the community, it seems odd that you would launch an ad-hominem attack.

you do not link to the other thread, and this thread is for your script - about which my comments were 100% directed. if a mod wants to move them then its fine with me.

i gave you my initial reaction to your post, i even surprised myself by how strongly i felt when i read it. Something about paying for a script to autoplay your character strikes me as completely wrong, actually scratch the paying part, autoplay = bad. maybe im just over-reacting

btw, i did not see sources credited, or an official confirmation from a mod that this wasn't a rip-off. Im not actually saying omg, dj_d stole all these c0dez! im pretty sure you are a decent scripter and that you worked very hard on this - just that i see no way for people to verify that what they are getting is legit.

It's legit

I'd like to say that there's nothing wrong with charging for scripts being wrong or against the spirit of this forum. Check what hola had to say about that here. It isn't even against the spirit of KoL. You can check the contest forum and you'll always see people offering MrAs for artwork. I honestly see no difference since they are both about receiving ingame compensation for use of one's creative skills.

As for using other people's scripts in ascend.ash, I don't see anything wrong with that either. Those scripts were offered freely so that people could make use of them. Bundling them in a zip is just more convenient that giving download links so I appreciate that. He's been quite open about making use of such things and nobody minds. I've only just started to look at ascend.ash, but it seems he has quite enough of his own hard work involved that nobody can say he is cheating.

Bishy said:

i gave you my initial reaction to your post, i even surprised myself by how strongly i felt when i read it. Something about paying for a script to autoplay your character strikes me as completely wrong, actually scratch the paying part, autoplay = bad. maybe im just over-reacting

Click to expand...

This is where we agree. I don't think that a full ascension script should be offered, but I'm not the one with the valuable resource tempting me into greed. If I had the holy grail of an ascension script available to me I might also be swayed by the prospect of a pile of Mr. Accessories. However, I don't think people should be encouraged to autoplay their character with scripts they don't understand. That does seem somewhat cheap.

The only good thing about this is that it might encourage scripters to post more of their work so that dj_d will grant them the password to ascend.ash

I think a nice framework for a user to add their own quest scripts is a better idea than a fully automated set of scripts. Even if the fully automated script is a steep learning curve to get running, new players will be tempted to try it and miss out on KoLs humour and fun gameplay
That said, well done on creating the scripts, its a great achievement

For what it's worth, my main has been around since '04 and has pretty much everything that I could ever want... his "net worth" is far enough past 100mm that I'm not so much tempted by greed. What I *am* excited about is sharing what I've done with some people who appreciate it, and a way to give something of value (this script) to the people who contributed so much to kolmafia. I've given about 2/3 of it (by bytecount) away for free already - eatdrink, levelup, etc - so tying it all together and attaching some value of it seems like a nice way to put a bow on the whole endeavor.

And you're absolutely right - I *do* hope that it encourages people to publish their stuff, and I would be delighted to give it away to more people who become active members of the community!

Interesting!

For those concerned: I can verify that the script is fo realz, yo. And he's right -- he's published most of the major pieces of it already. It actually wouldn't be too hard for a decent scripter to take the pieces he's already published, and the quest scripts published by others, and write a container script to put them all together.

I'm actually in the process of writing a support script for the community that he will probably want to integrate into this script. I do not mind at all that others take my scripts, which are freely shared, and use them for their own purposes. If they make a pile of meat/Mr. A's off of their modifications to my work, I hope they remember me and send a little love my way (I have received one Mr. A so far for my scripting work), but I do not contribute scripts expecting compensation. I hope rather that they will be useful to the community and promote both mafia and ASH scripting.

I don't believe that dj_d differs all that much from me in this regard.

That said, I agree that the script should not be public. Great power, great responsibility and all that. This is an abusable script.

zarqon said:

It actually wouldn't be too hard for a decent scripter to take the pieces he's already published, and the quest scripts published by others, and write a container script to put them all together.

Click to expand...

Let me go one step further: If you're learning and want to find out how I did something so you can do it yourself, just ask. I'll tell you and even share the relevant code snippets. I mean to motivate contribution, not horde knowledge!