#openttdcoop

After a bit playing around with screenshot maker and Autopilot, this is what came out:

(If the server is active, you get a new image at least every 15 mins.)

I guess, there are some other possibilities with this feature, I am looking forward.

Our lovely member Progman did it! A config tool for a easy way to set our start options, no thinking about diff_options anymore.

Because the NewGRFs will also be managed over this tool, we need a new system for saving our GRFs, they need to have the right orders. Trainsets have to be after narrow gauge track i.e. etc.

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Last night, I managed to get autopilot 2.0 out of the flat and into the great wide world. All the features you expect from a robot whose job is to sit at the openttd dedicated server console all day. He says hello to people, and he even remembers to unpause the game when people join.

Of course, he was only used to Linux computers, because that’s all I have. So, the first time he saw a Windows computer with OpenTTD, he panicked and managed to crash the server. After a couple of training sessions over the course of today, led in part by tt-forums user glx, he managed to get the hang of a specially adapted server and quite enjoyed himself in the end, earning himself two minor revision numbers.

He’s also quite talkative on IRC. He certainly has a lot more to say than his predecessor. Not only that, but he dilligently writes down everything that people say in the in-game chat for later review and potential blackmail.

Hopefully he won’t go bananas like the last one.

This evening, the sandbox server was upgraded to the newest version of autopilot: Version 2.0

This new version is a little more stable, a little less buggy and has a good deal of new features. Here’s what it does for the Sandbox server:

• Pauses the game when there are less than two players
• Greets all players as they join, giving a message of the day, including a link to the Wiki and an admin email in case of trouble
• Logs all of the in-game chat to a database, so that the game’s conversation can be followed on the web
• Automatically changes the server password every five minutes, to keep the server free from casual vandals and other disruptive types (the server’s password being available through the wiki or from members on IRC)
• Connects the #openttdcoop IRC channel with the in-game chat, allowing people in the IRC channel to converse with players int he game, and vice versa
• Provides a plethora of commands to IRC users, including the ability to see who’s playing on the server, and in which company, and to request various URLs for the community.

Commands are given in the IRC channel by preceding them with a ! or by sending a private message to sandbox. A quick rundown of the commands:

version shows the autopilot version

newgrf (currently disabled due to extreme verbosity) lists the newgrf lines you’d need in your openttd.cfg

companies lists the companies that are in the game

players lists the players that are int he game

url gives the #openttdcoop web site address

wiki gives the URL of the wiki

blog gives the URL of this blog

email gives the email address of an admin (er, mine, as it happens…)
revision shows the revision number of the openttd server

playercount shows you the number of players inthe game

companycount shows you the number of companies in the game

There are a couple of others, too. Commands can be added, modified and removed by the server admins as they see fit.

The software will be released to the general public for testing once the documentation has been written.

Autopilot was supposed to be a labour saving excercise. Just like a real robot. Trouble is, when a robot goes beserk it trashes your furniture and scares your cat, then goes on a rampage through town until it gets stopped by tanks.

That’s what happened to the sandbox today. The autopilot was run in a loop to restart it in the event of failure. Then the game crashed. The same crash happened when it was reloaded with that saved game, and autopilot didn’t know better than to try again. It was joining and leaving the IRC channel several times a second when it was stopped by tanks – an IRC Op k-lined it.

Now I’m thinking that running it in a loop is not such a good idea. In future, when it fails it’ll fail safe – and wait for human intervention.