From nward@sccs.swarthmore.edu Thu Apr 1 14:35:56 2004 Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 15:07:07 -0500 From: Nicolas Ward To: The Oracle Subject: [oraclebot] Version 0.80 It's looking like I won't be available for the first part of IRC on the Eights, so I'd better explain the various changes made to the bot. First, there are a lot of behind the scenes changes that you don't have to worry about. I switched the bot over to the Net::IRC library, so we shouldn't have any more excess floods, and you should see a general speed up, since Net::IRC seems better at queueing messages. But that's probably not what you care about... For bot admins, the new version is installed on Osprey in /usr/local/games/. You may have to update your $PATH accordingly. I've completely changed the command line options, so run "oraclebot -h" to get an explanation. I changed the way e-mailing works slightly, so you'll probably want to check out ~nward/.oraclebotrc and change yours to match. Assuming you have your file set up as you want, you'll probably want to run "oraclebot -i", which will send invites and e-mails. Also for admins, I changed !START! to work like the older more intuitive version: !START! 6 gives you 6 Qs and 6 As, not 3 and 3. Likewise, !START! 12 would give you 12 and 12, not 6 and 6. I'll keep the list informed about version changes in the future. If you're really interested, you can read the end of the oraclebot file on SCCS, which has a pretty good description of the various changes I've made. For players, the biggest change is that now the admin does not do !ADD! or !ADDALL! during the setup phase. Rather, each interested player should /msg the bot with !JOIN! as the only command. This way the admin doesn't have to keep asking who's in or out. Also, voting is much less strict. You don't have to vote, and it will accept things like "yyyyy!!!!". Voting is still on by default. Finally, you can !JOIN! mid-game. You won't start a new sheet, but sheets being passed around will get to you. The stability has been massively improved. First, the bot now autosaves the game every time someone changes a sheet. The file will be called DATE.TIME.botdata. See "oraclebot -h" on how to restore a game from a file if the bot crashes. Second, if a player leaves the channel for some reason, the bot will pause the game and wait until they return, or until someone takes their place with a /nick. You can also !RESTART! or !QUIT! and use the saved file when the person is available later. Third, you should be able to change your nickname at any point during the game. All of your queues will be reassigned to your new name, but the sheets will have your old name up until the change. A few people have already played a game with the new version, so they might be able to answer some of your questions. Obviously, if you know Perl, you can read the code yourself :oP. Planned changes for Version 0.82: -Add !STATUS! command to display current location of all sheets during Play Phase -Add !HELP! commands everywhere, for both players and admins -Fix the "Hi, oraclebot" regexp -Automagically delete autosave files after the game completes successfully. Nicolas Ward '05 Swarthmore College 763.350.3202 --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nward/index.html The small attachment is my GPG key, which ensures my digital identity. You can get my public key here: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nward/pubkey.txt [ Part 2, "This is a digitally signed message part" ] [ Application/PGP-SIGNATURE 193bytes. ] [ Unable to print this part. ]