Testing Bots on the Build Server

[Phase]

In early 2015, I started my first Minecraft bot: PhaseBot. This bot worked on by many members of the community, including John and Gio, on and off until early this year. A few weeks ago, I started another bot. This bot was met with praise from members seeing Owk return to ORE, and work was going rather swimmingly with the new codebase being written in Kotlin instead of Java.

All of this came to a sad end when Nickster258 logged on IRC. He noticed my commands to the bot in chat, and swiftly shutdown the project. Owk's permissions were removed and he was made a visitor, giving him no rights to break or place blocks. Nick quickly told me that I was not allowed to test Owk on ORE, and I had to continue development on another server. I bargained with him, saying I could remove chat commands by implementing private message parsing, and I could remove relogs with code hotswapping, but this wasn't enough for Nick. Not long after my bot was prohibited from joining the server, another bot logged on. An IRC bot, owned by none other than Nickster258.

I'm here to ask for permission to test pabot, the newest incarnation, on ORE. As previously mentioned, I can take many precautions to make pabot as silent as possible, while also making something the community can enjoy together.

[Nickster258]

get your facts straight:

1) I was not the only one expressing concern about this bot. Nonemu was there also and expressed equal concern.

2) My bot is an IRC bot that only PMs people while this bot has, at least in the past, messaged publicly. As I told you at the time, an in-game bot with the permissions capable to destroy the entire server is not quite *ideal*.

3) After some short discussion between you and Nonemu that day, we agreed that removal of those permissions while retaining access to the server seemed okay.

k den...

I am willing to *consider* giving it more capabilities but at least not to the full extent of a builder. Maybe a custom rank (with precautions against worldedit, blockplacing floodrates(?), and chat) and not just "builder" given the [Bot] tag.

[VoltzLive]

Nickster, a Player could just as easily destroy the entire server.

Ultimately, Phase would be responsible for the bots actions. It's no different than himself doing it.

[Nickster258]

Nickster, a Player could just as easily destroy the entire server.

I think there is a difference between a bot and a player, if I am not mistaken.

[VoltzLive]

Elaborate then, What could a bot do that a player couldn't? Or a player with tools such as a modded client.

I see it like this, The bot is one of your accounts, and You are ultimately responsible for the actions of your client. Why should it be any different to a bot?

[Phase]

I would have to explicitly send StartDigging and FinishDigging packets hundreds of times to do any real damage. That's not just "break the block at x, y, z", I need do all sorts of calculations involving tool times and block faces. Players also have a reach limit, so I'd need to move to any location I want to break. This is a lot to do "accidentally". A malicious script could do this, but Voltz and I, the only people currently on the whitelist, aren't going to make nor run such a script. Limiting his abilities limits his usefulness. What if I want to run WE commands to do complex rotations of objects? The more the bot is allowed the do, the better we can build it.

Private messages are manageable, meaning it would take less than 15 lines of code to make the bot completely silent.

[Nickster258]

You are right, the bot is under your control and whatever it ends up doing, you would be held liable for it.

I am willing to give it special permissions. As I said, a new rank so it will no longer be classified as a "member" but as a "bot", so the permissions behind it can be set according to not only your bot, but potential, all be it highly unlikely, bots later down the road.

I do ask though: what is the functionality of this bot? Does it create things others have already created, or do your building for you? I personally don't see the full usefulness of it other than a really cool programming project, so it is hard for me to sympathize to this specific thing.

[Phase]

The end goal for it will to be able to run survival on its own. In the meantime, I would like it to do some creative things. Having it build complex redstone circuitry, that it understands, would be awesome. The project will evolve in time, and goals may change.

Edit: Private Messages are done

[Nickster258]

Having it build complex redstone circuitry, that it understands, would be awesome. 

Definitely interesting.

Staff will be opening up discussion on this bot, and future bots for that matter.

[VoltzLive]

Isn't that what this thread is for?

[Nickster258]

Traditionally speaking, "opening up discussion" usually means Staff will talk, not necessarily publicly, regarding this issue. So normally in the RhB.

[LordDecapo]

Nick... isn't this one of the reasons we have the "world edit anywhere" command toggle?
A bot rank could essentially have that ALWAYS enabled. So it doesn't matter what he does, it only ruins phase's plot.
Ando i do remember u playing with owk when it was originally on the server nick...

Also, I deranked owk and had like a 2hr conversation with phase in like February telling him how conservative he must be with the bot and warning him of issues it could bring up.

[Nickster258]

Nick... isn't this one of the reasons we have the "world edit anywhere" command toggle?
A bot rank could essentially have that ALWAYS enabled. So it doesn't matter what he does, it only ruins phase's plot.
Ando i do remember u playing with owk when it was originally on the server nick...

Also, I deranked owk and had like a 2hr conversation with phase in like February telling him how conservative he must be with the bot and warning him of issues it could bring up.

The "/wea" command was introduced with a plotSquared update a couple months back. From what I remember, it was mandatory.

[Apuly]

Nick... isn't this one of the reasons we have the "world edit anywhere" command toggle?
A bot rank could essentially have that ALWAYS enabled. So it doesn't matter what he does, it only ruins phase's plot.
Ando i do remember u playing with owk when it was originally on the server nick...

Also, I deranked owk and had like a 2hr conversation with phase in like February telling him how conservative he must be with the bot and warning him of issues it could bring up.

The "/wea" command was introduced with a plotSquared update a couple months back. From what I remember, it was mandatory.

If with mendatory you mean that everybody needs to have it enabled, than no. Just no.
If with mendatory you mean that we cannot override the command with a specific permission, you would be correct.

[Nickster258]

If with mendatory you mean that we cannot override the command with a specific permission, you would be correct.

Mhm

[MW3_587786]

I for one would like to see the bot use deep learning to make logic circuits

[LambdaPI]

Please do not bump threads like this. This is 2 months old, and the idea has probably been dropped if no one has picked it up so far.