SRL Archive - Discussions and Debates

Hey all :)
In the next week or so, I plan to release ClarityDG. I've been spending a lot of time thinking how I want to release it, and am sort of at a standstill on what to do. There are many things to take into consideration. So I wanted to ask for everyone's opinions…we've talked a bit on Skype about it but I'd prefer to have a forum discussion.

Stuff to think about

• Floor theme limitations by rank (e.g. members get full access, jr+ get frozen-ab2, registered+ gets frozen only)
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• Complexity limitations by rank (e.g. members, jrs get full access, registered+ gets only C1)
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• Dungeon size limitations by rank (medium/small for members, small only for registered+)
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• Group dungeon feature - highly ambitious…not coming out with the first release, but I'm interested in figuring out how to link 5 bots together to do a large dungeon. Would probably restrict this.
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• In order to enforce the above two things, something like an authorization system a la @DemiseScythe's would be required - an idea I like for preventing leaking of the higher tier script versions. I have a website for this, but am a total newbie with website security, mySQL, and PHP, so it would be awesome if people gave me tips there
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• Attracting unwanted attention from Jagex to SRL (bad) - the more public the release, the more Jagex might take a look at both the script and our entire community - if Jagex decides to "kill OGL hooks" as Olly said might happen, the whole script becomes useless, unless I recreate it in color (which I guess I could…in a year)
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• Attracting more people to SRL (good) - more public the release, the more people we attract to our community
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• Attracting leechers vs. attracting potential scripters - strong restrictions on the public version help attract the right demographic
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• Installation EXE - this is a feature I'd like to have, to help avoid all the "n0th1ng w0rks cl4r1ty ur scr1pt SUX l1k3 th3 k1ng bL4CK DRAG0Ns balls" posts on the release thread - what are the rules regarding posting EXE files? I would release an EXE that fully installs Simba with all necessary includes, plugins, and script files, as well as an EXE that only installs the script/includes and plugins. I know of some installation builders, but I don't know how I would get my hands on the source code for the resulting applications.
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• Related to the above…could it be a bad thing to make it too easy to use?

So while I get on finishing the script, it would be cool if people weighed in on what they think I should do!

Thanks in advance for your thoughts :)
~Clarity

ill post my opinions in a sec @Clarity; !

edit:

registered users: c1-c2
jr members: c3+

installation (with exe): no, its a simple process to set everything up, if people fail to do that then its not worth it.

I wanna get in on these skype convos…

Anyways.

• I don't like the executable idea.
• Restrict by complexity. c2 for public, c4 for jr mem, c6 for mems. This makes the script useful to everyone, but better for those with more access. The other way (c6 for all but limited floors) makes it basically useless for those with lower access.
• I don't think anti-leaking measures need to be taken. This is up to you.

I vote full release to the public.


There aren't many negative benefits besides like, complaining on the thread of people not setting up.


Just don't see a valid reason to keep it from others, as it's not going to ruin the economy. power to srl

From: NKN
I vote full release to the public.


There aren't many negative benefits besides like, complaining on the thread of people not setting up.


Just don't see a valid reason to keep it from others, as it's not going to ruin the economy. power to srl

The negative effect I am mostly concerned about with full public release is drawing Jagex attention.

From: Clarity
The negative effect I am mostly concerned about with full public release is drawing Jagex attention.

What's Jagex going to do?

It's not like they're going to see people move from Powerbot or Epicbot and then zap out SRL, they're already trying real hard to stop bots. not to mention it isn't the first dung script. (for here, it is. :D)

From: NKN
they're already trying real hard to stop bots

I disagree, I think if they really wanted to eradicate bots they would have by now.

Maybe they think bots have a place in the economy, maybe they don't want to lose all the money that bots give them, or maybe they just think that it isn't worth losing people who still may enjoy the game but don't play completely legit.

The amount of people playing RS is down compared to previous years, they might have just decided that as long as they keep the highly visible bots that the players complain about down that that's good enough.

As for the DG script, here are my thoughts:

Complexity limits: I think if you are going to limit script usage by rank that this would be the best way to do it, but there is a lot to be said for a full public release.

Installation exe: I don't think this is necessary. Unless I'm missing something it's not that hard to install Simba and the OGL related plugins/include. The main difficulty in my experience happens when your graphics card (or absence of) is incompatible with OGL as a whole, and an exe would not fix that.

Authentication: DemiseScythe's authentication method of withholding model and texture IDs combined with confusing variable names was quite effective at making sure that nobody unauthorized could use it, but it came with the disadvantage of only being serviceable by the author. One of the things that I like about SRL's current standards of script releases is that if someone else's script breaks and the author is not around to fix it (or doesn't want to) then you can fix it yourself.

Attracting leechers/potential scripters: While attracting a lot of people who learn to script would be ideal, there will usually be more people who don't learn to script. For example, say of the people attracted by scripts, 10% try and continue to script, 40% never try scripting but post bugs, post proggies, or contribute in some other way, and 50% of the people download the script, use it, and never make a post. If you attract more people overall, you get more people in all of those categories. Also I know for me personally, I probably wouldn't release any scripts if nobody used them.

This might have rambled a bit but maybe that will help you in your decision. :)

You could just do something simple like what I did with the LRC methods (had it default to only drop ores, but if you changed a simple variable you could make it bank). That way you don't have to maintain an auth system or w/e and it's still easy for nubs to fix. Just add a boolean areYouALEECH and hide it somewhere in the script or something like that.

Also, I don't think just having this script public will cause extremely more attention from Jagex.

TLDR
Full public release w/ simple antileech to unlock all features


That way you get the most testers and what-not. But then again it's your script you can do what you please!

From: Ashaman88
You could just do something simple like what I did with the LRC methods (had it default to only drop ores, but if you changed a simple variable you could make it bank). That way you don't have to maintain an auth system or w/e and it's still easy for nubs to fix. Just add a boolean areYouALEECH and hide it somewhere in the script or something like that.

Also, I don't think just having this script public will cause extremely more attention from Jagex.

TLDR
Full public release w/ simple antileech to unlock all features


That way you get the most testers and what-not. But then again it's your script you can do what you please!

This 100%

I agree with what Ash said. Although definitely lower profile, my Evergreen script was default chop + bank trees which could get about 150k/hr. I had all of the code to make shafts out of the logs though, which at the time was >200k/hr. I had a variable "Fletch := False" set about 3 lines under the "***Do Not Touch Below***" line of my script, and nobody had ever mentioned it to me for about a month, at which point I just released a version with the option at the top.

Point is, if you hide a variable in your script somewhere, it's extremely unlikely anyone will actually look through your code. If you put it in an unsuspecting place or name it something that sounds like it's for another purpose, nobody will ever find it (except maybe the SRL members who have now read my secret method, but that's the point).

Kinda offtopic, but what does this script do? :)

-Home

From: Home
Kinda offtopic, but what does this script do? :)

-Home

DG => dungeoneering

:D

From: NKN
I vote full release to the public.


There aren't many negative benefits besides like, complaining on the thread of people not setting up.


Just don't see a valid reason to keep it from others, as it's not going to ruin the economy. power to srl

Agreed with NKN, since this is supposed to be a open source community I think that if you release it to a group of select members (whether it be JR or mems) you should just release all of the features with it.
Simba has been sterotyped as being:

- A closed community (script wise having to be JR+ to get access to some scripts)
- Hard to use
- Sometimes too much learning based where it is not needed (Example: Somebody requests a script in the script request section… and then everybody pretty much tells them to write it themselves.. so why even have that section?)

That being said, I think it should be for everyone, the more people using it the more popular SRL becomes. Also, remembers leeches are bug testers. As vague as they describe their problems lots of times they still contribute to the building of the script and don't forget that. If you make it SRL +, let's be honest how many people are going to use it, even JR+? Most SRL members don't even log on to Runescape anymore. Setup should be as easy as possible, I believe someone did a .bat or .exe that automatically installed SRL-OSR and it helped tremendously with the leeches not being able to install all the different includes and crap.

Let's be real, simba is the hardest Runescape macro to set up. It may be easy for us JR+ but most of the users are not going to have much DIY experience and I think you should cater that to an extent - because SRL is also about learning. Maybe don't add a GUI (I don't know if you have) or make the GUI JR+. But I don't think it should be forced learning, either somebody wants to learn how to script or they want to just run the script. Look at when Oldschool Runescape came out, and when the Botnuke happened. Thousands of people rushed to SRL and though most of them just wanted to bot, we still gained hundreds of people that got into scripting to some extend. Yes, a majority of the new people where leeches but it doesn't matter because a lot of them became scripters and learned something - which is the point of SRL.

Ultimately it's up to you, you can make it difficult to set up and use (as if setting up openGL wasn't annoying enough), and make it SRL+ where less than 10 people will use it. Or you can make it public and easy to use and get plenty of feedback and use. What's the fun in spending months scripting something that hardly anyone will use?




Tl;DR should be public and I don't think Jagex cares about SRL.