Suggestion: Fun House Bot

Malfhok · **Posted:** Thu Feb 10, 2011 6:54 pm

(Props for this idea go to my younger brother who plays Uru under the name of Esreton.)

What if there was a bot in The Fun House that could do simple hack commands to the Hood when instructed by explorers?

It would be limited to things that are known not to cause trouble, such as "Spawn a cone", "Make me jump really high", or "Set fog color to purple". And it would have a stupid test to make sure nobody does anything potentially damaging ("The Hood already contains 50 Eddies. That's the limit. I won't make you any more.")

This would allow anybody to get in on the fun without having to know how to hack or wait for a hacker to do stuff for them. And if the list of commands is created and screened by the Grey Hats to be non-damaging, it would be nice and safe.

I don't know what all would be involved in making this, or even if it's plausible, so… What do you think?

Karkadann · **Posted:** Thu Feb 10, 2011 7:22 pm

Kinda like a hands on museum, where you get to interact with the display.

It sounds good but what do the Gray Hats think of it.

pokemon71096 · **Joined:** Tue Mar 09, 2010 4:08 am **Posts:** 1185

there should be a way to make sure people don't argue ove the fog color, say only change it every 5 mins.

Zenoc2 · **Joined:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:19 am **Posts:** 49

An excellent idea! This would quell some of the arguments about the Gray Hats being given an elite position (as in "hey, look, regular players that don't know any code at all can have a say in the special effects too"). At the same time, as long as there are some limits on what the bot would be able to do (and inevitably there will be, since you really do need to know coding to, say, spawn a Yeesha avatar and make it walk around) the real hackers would still have room to test and show off their creativity and skill.

PaladinOfKaos · **Joined:** Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:55 pm **Posts:** 625

We've got a couple of ideas for bots and bot-like objects floating around... More specific details will come if/when we figure out what those details will be. Or maybe just when one of us bothers to write the code.

OHB · **Joined:** Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:28 am **Posts:** 1247

Once again the URU community is on the ball!

The idea of having either a bot or other mechanism which would allow everything to play with things in a controlled fashion has been on the idea board since the hoods opened. I didn't post about it because a) we're not 100% sure how to make it happen yet and b) I was gonna make it a surprise!

Carl Palmner · **Joined:** Tue May 30, 2006 5:45 am **Posts:** 183

Wow! That is a seriously awesome idea! Two little things that occurred to me right away (and which have probably already occurred to the gray hats as well but I'll post them anyway):

1. It should be possible for gray hats (and probably only gray hats) to easily disable/enable the bot. Come to think of it, that would probably be as simple as taking its avatar offline, so maybe this is an unnecessary suggestion.

2. It should only be in the Fun House, NOT the Hood of Illusions. If it's in the Hood of Illusions there's too much potential for it to interfere with the scheduled events there--and it's unnecessary anyway as long as players can access the one in the Fun House.

Zaphodi · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:26 am

If it is bot, then I think it should be able on and off.

On: Standing and ready to do what it do.
Off: AFK (like charging batteries or something)

Just thought.

Zap

Malfhok · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:11 pm

OHB wrote:

I was gonna make it a surprise!

Awww. Sorry to spoil your surprise.

Alien · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:39 pm

I'd also like to suggest that the bot is able to undo anything it can do.
Otherwise someone will fill the Fun House with Eddies and not be able to undo it.

Also give it a "reset to default" command to undo everything.

My apologies if I have no idea how difficult that would be,
but if it's possible to do something it should be possible to undo it.

And if you've already thought of it, I hope you don't mind me suggesting it.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:46 pm

And/or set an internal timer for OHBot - if no new command is received within T minutes, the hood is reset to its default state.

Or the opposite - if no new command is received within T minutes, OHBot links to random Ages and causes them to explode . . .

Then we will rename him, SpeedBot.

RandomLindsay · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:49 pm

Good idea. =) It would be fun to have a Bot there.

Would it only be able to do things that the GreyHats did last Saturday at the FunHouse? Or would it have more?

lteyn63 · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:12 pm

I was actually in the fun house this evening. There were about 7 other people there and the chat was all in French. At first I wondered whether there was a translation Bot there, which was translating what everyone else said, so I asked if everyone was speaking French and my chat was in English. Very peculiar.

Nothing much was happening so I left. However I noticed a strange glitch when I was in the community room in third person view. My avatar left the room but the camera view didn't, so I was kind of trapped in the room until I switched to first person, at which point I was outside the room.

lteyn63 · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:13 pm

I was actually in the fun house this evening. There were about 7 other people there and the chat was all in French. At first I wondered whether there was a translation Bot there, which was translating what everyone else said, so I asked if everyone was speaking French and my chat was in English. Very peculiar.

Nothing much was happening so I left. However I noticed a strange glitch when I was in the community room in third person view. My avatar left the room but the camera view didn't, so I was kind of trapped in the room until I switched to first person, at which point I was outside the room.

tanshin · **Posted:** Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:30 pm

lteyn63 wrote:

I was actually in the fun house this evening. There were about 7 other people there and the chat was all in French. At first I wondered whether there was a translation Bot there, which was translating what everyone else said, so I asked if everyone was speaking French and my chat was in English. Very peculiar.

Nothing much was happening so I left. However I noticed a strange glitch when I was in the community room in third person view. My avatar left the room but the camera view didn't, so I was kind of trapped in the room until I switched to first person, at which point I was outside the room.

They were likely talking in native French. If you'd like them translated for you take a look here: http://uru.orangehairedboy.com/babelbot/

Suggestion: Fun House Bot

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