Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: The droid programming language (first draft)
You would write a little BASIC-ish program for a tank, get a program from a competing player, put the two tanks in a random battlefield and see who wins. The programming language had simple "IF - THEN" conditions that could be used to check for & damage and the presence of obstacles or enemies. The programs people came up with were pretty clever... it was a fun little mental exercise Giving us DEs even the simplest programming or macroing language for our droids would breathe new life into our profession. It was also do much to differentiate our droids from the CH pets. Unfortunately, that is the very reason why this may never get implemented.... if droids "inherit" the CH pet code, then I think there's no way they'd go to the effort of creating a runtime-interpreted language/macro that'd only work on a small percentage of pets.
Then again, here's a GREAT usage for the "geeky personality chip". The description for it says we can program custom responses with this chip. (Of course you have to wait until you reach Master DE to discover this feature isn't implemented yet... DOH!)
Anyway, this droid programming idea has VAST potential.... if we can get past the initial hurdle of the Devs buying into it. Hopefully Sintrosi can post about this on the new "private correspondents' forum" that was recently announced.
I've got to agree that this would be a great addition (though I do doubt it will ever happen). The main benefit I see for it besides providing more usefulness with droids is making each individual DE stand out. As it is the only thing that differentiates on DE from another of the same skill is there prices, which just promotes undercutting to the point of profit loss (though I'm amazed I haven't seen this yet). But I would say you would have to spread the commands out through the skill tree, that way people have more to look forward to as they advance in skill.
Jenden Morn - close... so close to master DE - Mos Espa, Tarquinas
Owner, Operator, and Founder of DarkStar Inc, your source for structures, droids, guns, meds, and hired help.
I hate to be the downer here and all, but though it's an interesting idea, it's overall a bad one when you consider the Player Base.
Not everyone is a programmer, nor do they wish to learn to program. Implementing something like that would immediately alienate anyone who isn'ta programmer, and more than a few who are who get tired of doing that all day and don't want to do it in their "Relaxing" time.
It's very similar to the MOB_PROGS I implemented on several MUDs I used to code for back in the day. You could create simple scripts for the MOBs to work with and then they would execute whenever there "triggers" where hit (words, actions, events, etc). Not really that hard to program in, I'll send the DEVs the old code for it if they want (*wink*).
Regarding therearentan's comments:
That's true, but since the program is put onto a disk, it would be easy for a DE to mass produce several disks with commonly requested programs to pass out to their customers. Additionally, not everyone SHOULD be able to program a droid, it makes sense that not everyone in the game can do it. It wouldn't be a requirement, but if you are willing to put in the time then your game/character would be enhanced by it, otherwise you could just play as you had been.
Of course I'd love to program my own droids, and write useful programs for other people's droids, it'd be a nice side business selling software, and also writing bespoke software.
It'd be another way of making a name for yourself in game, "Go see ... he writes the best droid software in the Galaxy."
So, what exactly about htis proposal makes it worthy of having a sticky? There seem to be dozens of people with ideas and treatise length proposals on how to "fix" this profession. I think the thing we all need to make peace with is the fact that the Droid Engineer profession is going to be more or less like it is now forever. They may add a few new schematics here and there, but it is highly unlikely that any drastic changes will be made.
It'd be the only way droids would really be valuable. It already seems that if you want combat, go for a pet. Perhaps this would provide the droids with a real useful and independent function.
The DE profession is evident of something that they didn't even have working by the end of beta. The need to actually finish it is the only thing the DEs have riding for them here. It also gives a slim chance of them improving this profession (unlike most the others, which are set in stone).
Course there's also a very real chance that it could also be locked in stone. But hey, it doesn't hurt to try.
DUD-73Y wrote:
Not everyone would have to program, only DEs would have to ability to program droids, and if you really didn't want to program your own droid, I'm sure there'd be plenty of people willing to post simple programs to these boards, or on websites that you could copy and paste into your droid to add whatever functionality you required.
Of course I'd love to program my own droids, and write useful programs for other people's droids, it'd be a nice side business selling software, and also writing bespoke software.
It'd be another way of making a name for yourself in game, "Go see ... he writes the best droid software in the Galaxy."
i'm wondering how your going to cut and paste into this game. I've not seen a way to do a ctrl+v to paste text, let alone a ctrl+x or ctrl+c to grab the text in the first place... I dont want to sit about either programming from scratch, or typing in someone else's program
not to mention the "hacker" and "exploit" holes this would most likely open. Nay friend, the DEVS would need to add whatever functionality to the droids that they wish us to have and add options to the radial menu or / commands for us to use said options.
I *really* love this idea. It would bring so much customization and usability to droids, an inherent aspect of the Star Wars universe.
I myself have only dabbled in programming, and can only do HTML relatively well. The possibilities of hacking or crashing the client are too scary as well. HOWEVER, if they can have macro functionality in the game, it seems to me they could use the same type of process for programming our droids. It may be too simple to achieve every thought offered in this excellent thread, but it may be the best way to handle it. Macros are also easier for people to understand who havent had any programming background and can still be creative enough to give each DE a market edge for their own "software".
In short, I would love to see this idea implemented. Kudos Capn
Mabinogi wrote:
I *really* love this idea. It would bring so much customization and usability to droids, an inherent aspect of the Star Wars universe.
I myself have only dabbled in programming, and can only do HTML relatively well. The possibilities of hacking or crashing the client are too scary as well. HOWEVER, if they can have macro functionality in the game, it seems to me they could use the same type of process for programming our droids. It may be too simple to achieve every thought offered in this excellent thread, but it may be the best way to handle it. Macros are also easier for people to understand who havent had any programming background and can still be creative enough to give each DE a market edge for their own "software".
In short, I would love to see this idea implemented. Kudos Capn
Aye - Macro's I would go for
I really like the idea of programming droids, but to be realistic i think limiting them to the same type of commands players can use, such as /tell /say. And add a couple that would be more droid specific would be more reasonable and within the current game limits and allow the non-programmer to understand them.
Examples:
there would be2 seperate scripting areas
normal operation:
all normal operation
attack mode:
overides normal operation when under attack, or when commanded to guard or attack, can be used to tell the droid to flee to base, or to have it fight back, if it can
added droid commands: (they already have normal player commands that can be put in just like macros)
all cammands are executed in order and wait untill one is finished before executing the next
goto(xcord,ycord,[distance]) # the droid goes to those coordinates and then executes the next command, staying (distance) away from any aggresives (optional) (would require some pathing coding from developers)
retrieveharvest()# retrieves all resources fromthe closestharvester, permissions are checked just as the owner
dropinventory() # drops all inventory, permissions are checked just as the owner
guard(seconds) # puts the droid into attack mode for the specified time, 0 means to forever until attack mode its exited
flee() # flees from anything that is agressive and continues once it is no longer under attack
attack(boolean,seconds) # attacks only aggresive creatures / npcs in rangeif false, if true attackseverything in range - waits untill (seconds) before continuing, 0 means forever until the owner resets
those commands would cover just about every use for droids that i can see at the moment without having to provide a complete programing language to allow us to do everything. although if possible i loved the first idea =)
It just seems to me that you really like perl, because a lot of your notation seems to be borrowed from it.
Here's my thoughts:
1) I like the idea of a "disk drive" and associated media for droids. I think that this would be very usefull for programming your droid to go to patrol specific locations and being able to store the patrolpoint data.
2) I think a whole droid programming language is a bit overboard.I mean, what do you do if the droid engineer who you bought the datadisk from wrote buggy code? My guess is that people would take it back to the DE they got it from and request that they re-write it. I know from my experience as a programmer, that there are folks out there who just don't write good code, or it's really sloppy. Do we really want this kind of reputation to spread through the profession?
3) I think that a lot of people would also use the "data disk" format to keep personal notes in the comments section of the code. Meaning there would need to be a way for someone to be able to read the code off of the disk. This could also bring forth another use for a 3PObased droid who can act as a "note keeper."