script of eXtreme farming

T

the_great_cow_guru

Member
I like to think that if you could combine an 31337 scroll with a stone of eXtreme power, this is what you'd get ;)

This is a script I made to be a highly customizable all-purpose farming script. Basically I was sick of making constant changes and tweaks to the script I was using, so i wanted to make one that could be changed easily and did some of the things I always wished my old one could do.

Here's some of the features of my script:
  • Can be set up to farm items or meat at any location
  • Has options to drink, eat, spleen, and perform rollover activities
  • Optionally, it can do the days bounty hunt and if you have a spooky putty you want to farm it can do that for you (I assume a lot of people might be wanting to farm rock monsters for a little while...)
  • Bounty hunting and putty farming can be run separately from the main script, if you just want to use those parts
  • Allows you to customize almost everything just by editting text files or changing some constants at the top of the scripts. (you can choose what outfit you want to use for farming, what familiar, what items skills and buffs you want to use, what to do with the items you acquire, and more)
  • The initial setup might take a little while, but once it's configured to your needs, making small changes and tweaks should be very easy
  • Lots more stuff, download it and check it out!!!

Feel free to use parts of the code in your own script as long as you cite the source, and of course any donations would be appreciated. (Speaking of citing, the bounty hunting portion of this script is based heavily on izchak's bounty hunting script, so thanks to him for all his work) I should also point out that by default, this script is set to prompt the user to make a donation to me. The amount can be easily adjusted or it can be turned off all together. However, I would appreciate it if you leave it on, making this script was a lot of work.

Check it out and let me know what you think! If find any bugs or have any feature requests let me know. I can't promise I'll get to it right away, but I'll try. I've tested all of the parts my player is capable of testing and they seem to work fine.

*** UPDATES ***
09.19.09 - Fixed some inaccuracies with the profit calculation and changed it to prompt for donation before putting on rollover gear. (Only made changes to farm.ash)
08.25.09 - Fixed a small issue with puttyfarm.ash and bountyfarm.ash, they should now be able to be run separately and still work.
08.24.09 - Added a confirmation box before it donates in both farm.ash and puttyfarm.ash, If you find the confirmation annoying it can be turned off.
08.24.09 - Changed donation in farm.ash to be % based (This way it's more fair to people who make less) Once again donations can be turned off, although I prefer you leave them on.
 

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I'll have to try this out when I'm at a higher level/out of ronin.

The "it will automatically make a donation to me" part you mentioned does, in my opinion, sounds a little shady. Yes, you do warn us, but it might be better to have the amount set to 0 by default and courage people to raise it.
 
Yeah, I considered setting it to 0 by default, but I figured nobody would go out of their way to turn it on. So I just put a warning and made it easy to turn off. It's right in with all the other constants you change to customize it, just set FARM_DONATION to 0 (or PUTTY_DONATION if you're just running the puttyfarm.ash file separately)
 
I (of all people) have no problem with requesting or even requiring compensation for using a script. But I'm VERY uncomfortable with anyone distributing code that programmatically sends themself stuff by default. I agree with CK. This needs to be off by default.

(This script automatically sends 10,000 meat to the author every time you run it.)
 
I seriously don't get what the big deal is, I'd say this is somewhere between requesting and requiring. Yes, by default it donates but I made no attempt to hide this fact. I stated it in my post, in the readme, and in the comments, and I made turning it off as simple as changing a constant.
 
10,000 is, in my opinion, rather steep... I'm not a great player at KoL, but I typically cannot farm more than 80k in a day, and 10k is a rather large cut. I know you want compensation, but why not set the auto-donate to something more like 500 or 1000? If you get a dozen people using this script daily, you can still earn thousands of meat a day, which will add up over time.

Ethically speaking, having a program that subtly sends money to the author is sort of like a program stealing your bank info and slowly draining out small sums. To the careful person, they will notice this and stop it. To the careless, though, they might lose a lot of money before even realizing the problem is there.

Although you provide warning of this operation, the fact that the default is not set to 0 implies (whether or not this was your intention) that you would take advantage of the careless mafia user, who might not realize there is an automatic transfer going on at all. I know you want reimbursement for your hard scripting work, but I feel this "hidden fee" should be removed or replaced with a static, flat rate similar to the dj_d's ascension.ash script.
 
Really? I usually get 200k/day by running this script (which would make 10k just 5%) I guess I didn't take into account that other people might not have as good of farming gear... (mine if you're interested is: ancient turtle shell helmet, poodle skirt, coily, natty blue ascot, wossname, pulled porquoise pendant) I guess I could make it a % instead of a fixed number.

As for the second point I don't agree, I made it very clear that the script does this, and anyone who wants to use it has to go through and configure it first anyways. The donation amount is right in the same section of code that they have to read through and modify, so I don't believe that this is a "hidden fee". Also consider this, you would have to run my script over 500 times for it to donate as much as dj_d's required donation... doesn't look like so much when you think of it that way. Anyways my reasoning for having it on by default is that I don't think it's very likely anyone will turn it on if I have it off by default. Having it on by default is my way of saying, "I'd appreciate if you would donate, but you can turn it off if you really want."

I will update soon with a % based donation to take into account people who don't make as much as me from farming. (I thought about doing it this way originally, but then I thought that wouldn't work so well for people who set it up to item farm rather than meat farm... but if there are people only making 80k I can see how the current method is unfair.)
 
There we go, donations in farm.ash are now % based. (puttyfarm.ash is still just a static amount because the i expect most people to puttyfarm for items, not meat) and I'll say it again, the donations are easy to turn off, just change the FARM_DONATION or PUTTY_DONATION (depending on which file you want to run) to 0 and it won't make a donation. I'd also be interested to hear what people think of the script aside from the donation part...
 
Also consider this, you would have to run my script over 500 times for it to donate as much as dj_d's required donation... doesn't look like so much when you think of it that way.
Click to expand...

Well, to be honest I'm fairly reluctant to shell out $10 or some 6M meat for the ascension script already, but I might end up doing it later because it promises to be a very powerful script. You do have to consider the number of free scripts and quality of it, but I'm not going to get into this since your script can easily be set up to be completely free.

Anyways my reasoning for having it on by default is that I don't think it's very likely anyone will turn it on if I have it off by default.
Click to expand...

I suppose this is more of a personal preference, but people who somehow do fail to read the code or modify it to change the auto-donate feature might feel cheated out of their 10k, or 30k, or however much it is before they realize what's going on. Yes, it's stupid of them to not notice after the warnings and clearly-noted warnings, but this is what I mean by the (not particularly hidden but potentially accidentally glazed over) fee. To me, it's better to ensure that you gain less meat and don't leave anyone feeling cheated than to gain a little more and frustrate/anger some of the less-careful script users.

I'll leave you and other posters here to continue on this discussion, or open a new thread regarding ethics elsewhere, or whatever you wish to do.

EDIT: I haven't read through the revised script yet, so this post only applies to the first of your two posts. I'll have more to say in a few days when I'm able to run this.
 
I don't care how much you charge! People will pay it if they think it's worthwhile, and they won't if they don't, no harm done.

But I think that auto-sending stuff to the script author crosses a line, regardless of disclaimers. I'm happy to show you how to password-protect a zip file reliably so you can do the same thing that I did, and charge whatever you want for it.
 
I don't want to password protect it and charge people. I don't like the idea of forcing people to pay for it (especially before it even does anything for them) I think my way is more fair. It only sends me a small cut after it already makes a profit for the user and it can be turned off if they want. This way they're only paying for results and only if they want to.
 
well. i'm not going to say he's an ahole. but it would be nice if their was a new update to ascend.ash so it worked without commenting out parts of its functions. that would make the Mr. A. more worth it.

ultimately, i would prefer the percentage method, but with it turned off by default and placed at the very top of the script or as a popup with a voidmain. in the long run you'd make much more that way, especially with more people using it, and actually get to try before you buy.
 
Could you just add a user confirm check before sending yourself meat?

Shown within your script:

Code: 
void main() {

	if (farm()) {

		int profit = my_meat() - start_meat;

		if (profit > 0) {

                    if( user_confirm( "Are you happy to make a donation to the_great_cow_guru?" )
                     {
			donate(to_int(profit * FARM_DONATION));
                     }

		}

	}

}

Alternatively, as has been suggested, include within void main:

Code: 
void main( boolean give_meat )

And in your donate section, only donate to yourself if give_meat (or whatever you call it) is true.

Using your own script, this would produce:

Code: 
void main( boolean give_meat ) {

	if (farm()) {

		int profit = my_meat() - start_meat;

		if (profit > 0 && give_meat == true) {

			donate(to_int(profit * FARM_DONATION));

		}

	}

}

Another option, would be to do it by percentage, and have that as a void main() argument. Eg:

Code: 
void main( int FARM_DONATION )

If they just click ok, then it's 0%, but it gives the choice to donate and reminds every time. Using this method, I would encourage you to build in a maximum percentage, so as not to punish typos or misclicks unduly. Also note you would need to add a condition whereby it didn't try to donate 0 meat to you, as would happen if you just put the argument in as written. This allows people the choice, while still keeping an active reminder in front of them that it was you who did the grunt work.
 
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Thanks for the info Grotfang! I didn't know you could do the confirmation boxes like that. I put confirmation boxes before it donates which can be turned off if you find them annoying.

Hopefully this will be satisfactory to everyone and then maybe I can get some feedback on the actual script itself instead of just about my donating mechanism
 
One thing - you might consider using eatdrink.ash for food and drink. It will optimize much more efficiently given what's currently cheap in the mall for maximum return on farming. If you really want to be clever, calculate your average meat earned per adventure, and feed that in to eatdrink.ash as the value-of-adventures, and know that you're getting the mathematically ideal diet given whatever your farming regimen is.

But you don't have to go to those lengths - you'll increase your profit considerably just by using eatdrink for consumption out of the box.
 
Grotfang proposes, in my opinion, a satisfactory solution.

And I will run your script soon in a few days once I'm done with quests 11, 12, 13, so I can give you some better feedback then. Sorry for the wait--I'm still very new to mafia (still figuring out how to set up Wossname.ash) and might need some shepherding to get things working correctly.
 
Any solution where hitting "OK" or accepting the defaults does not result in money being sent to the script creator is fine by me as well FWIW.
 
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