There's lots of smart people here doing lots of interesting work on ParagonChat and on the CoX client. Just some of the projects I've noticed the past few weeks!:
- Arcana wrote ArcanaBot (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10947.msg185173.html#msg185173), a basic ParagonChat XMPP API in Python
- Dyne and Slickriptide are also writing their own bots, having been inspired by Arcanabot
- Kyriani, Phocks and others wrote about DB hacking (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11076.0.html)
- Noyjitat's work on discovering and publishing a ton of NPC costume pieces (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11165.0.html)
- FloatingFatMan's work on Config emotes (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11110.msg187175.html#msg187175)
- I wrote Jerrichas DB tool (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11197.msg189486.html) (soon-to-be API into the DB)
- And many, many, many more that I don't even know about!
A few trends I notice:
- Everyone is super friendly and eager to share their solutions
- People are open to all questions! There are no stupid questions (TM)!
- Python seems to be the language of choice for code.
- Python 3 seems to be preferred Python flavor. For you guys who don't know about Python, there are two major versions: Python 3 and Python 2. They aren't compatible with each-other
- Don't be afriad of Git and Github! (http://readwrite.com/2013/09/30/understanding-github-a-journey-for-beginners-part-1)
The community would benefit HUGELY from having a central repository of all of these solutions. Repository would host code, data files, and walkthroughs.
I'm proposing a sticky-thread for now, and maybe a Github organization. This would be hugely awesome in leveraging each-others work, and growing our solutions as a community.
What do you guys think?
Yeah organization is always nice. As of now work is keeping me pretty busy and I'm only posting updates from time to time for the thread I started. But I'm all for putting it in an easy to search location.
Heck I enjoy using some of these previously unusable costume parts as well :)
Quote from: Jerricha on August 06, 2015, 07:27:39 PM
- Dyne is using Arcanabot for their own bot project
I'm not, actually. I'm writing my own (as is slickriptide). I did borrow a few bits of code that Arcana was kind enough to post in the technical side conversation thread (mainly the sleekxmpp class definitions and the underlying structure of the costume parser), but I've written just about everything else myself. Otherwise it'd have been a visible character days ago instead of about 20 minutes ago. :)
It's a bit early for me. Right at the moment my code is all held together with tape and baling wire and only barely works. It mostly serves as an example of why I don't make my living as a programmer. :)
Quote from: Dyne on August 06, 2015, 08:34:48 PM
I'm not, actually. I'm writing my own (as is slickriptide). I did borrow a few bits of code that Arcana was kind enough to post in the technical side conversation thread (mainly the sleekxmpp class definitions and the underlying structure of the costume parser), but I've written just about everything else myself.
Oops, sorry about that Dyne. I fixed that in the post!
Well, if you need help making your code more modular, or need help with git, feel free to ask =) [/list]
I'm not opposed to dumping my code into a public repository of some kind, but its a bit premature for me. Unlike your project, say, which is designed as an end user product, mine is more of an exploratory one, trying to push the limits of Paragon Chat and exploring the Paragon Chat protocol in ways normal users can't with the game client. In the process, I've helped spot some subtle bugs in Paragon Chat itself, but the project is really about learning the protocol and what it can ultimately do. My code gets refactored practically weekly and there's no helpful user interface or manual. To the extent I'm discussing my work, the target is more other programmers that are interested in similar projects, such as slick and dyne.
At some point, and that point may be far off depending on Paragon Chat's development trajectory, I may start to make ArcanaBot more end-user friendly, but that's not likely to happen for some time. As an educational tool, its still in its infancy. Even I don't know if everything I do the way I do it is a good idea, because new things keep popping up. For example, I've done keyboard control three different ways already. I'm also using a lot of shortcuts I don't advocate as being good programming technique, because I needed the speed to bootstrap the learning process.
Also, mine is written in Python 2. Because trying to keep unicode conversions straight on top of learning a library that's based entirely on string manipulation was a bridge too far for me.
Quote from: Arcana on August 10, 2015, 08:03:15 AM
I'm not opposed to dumping my code into a public repository of some kind, but its a bit premature for me....
Understood ^^ I don't mean that everything should be aimed at the end-user. Other coders can benefit from each others work, as well as seeing the diffs propagate through. I'm super interested in what you've come up with for the bot, Arcana. Once I wrap up Jerrichas to a state I want, I'm prolly going to start my own bot project (likely aimed at the end-user again, that's just how I roll!) =)
Thanks, everyone who has skills like these which I do not, in helping make PC a more fun and user friendly place! :)
Lyc~