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[garbitos]

Hopefully not a stupid question.

How hard would it be to build a parser for CryEngine games like FarCry and Crysis/CrysisWars.

I am an old fan of the original FarCry and would like to attempt this if it seemed doable. My experience mainly is with PHP, and LUA.

CryEngine operates with a Rcon connection and is capable of outputting rather detailed serverlogs. Also it would be possible to build a Mod or Community Patch with extended commands and vars built in for b3 to control.

Please advise

[Courgette]

Hi garbito.
As long as the game server log file contains parsable info, this seems doable.

If you can provide me with a big fat logfile, I will have a look at it and assess how difficult this would be.
If the logfile is too big, my email is courgette at bigbrotherbot dot net

Also, can you estimate how big and how active is the farcry server admin community and what admin tools they are already using ?

Sent from my HTC Legend using Tapatalk

EDIT: also something which is not relly mandatory but highly recommanded is to have a rcon command to send private message to individuals. This is to prevent the bot from spamming the chat zone.

[garbitos]

If you can provide me with a big fat logfile, I will have a look at it and assess how difficult this would be.

Yes i will provide log files from original farCry (Patch 1.4) as well as logs from some Mods/Community patches that have been developed to enhance server functionality. Please stand by for this so i can gather some good logs for you.

A  few projects worth noting:

Community Patch 1.6: mainly developed for German and Euro community focuses heavily on re-claiming anticheat functionality and some other great additions like Map file redirect (auto-download). URL: http://www.badboysplayground.de/

FCAM: This is a Mod that will be turned into a community patch as well, developed mainly by euro/australian devs. Adds literally 1000's of fixes and many server optimizations. Alot of core fixes/optimizations are shared by these projects. URL: http://www.moddb.com/mods/farcry-addon-mod-fcam

XASSM: This is a project maintained by me it is a strict server-side-mod for farCry patch 1.4 which adds many server-side customization options. Most importantly for this discussion it has extended log output of clients, chat, kills and stats. URL: http://farcry.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=9814

Contest Island: this is a project maintained by a Dev named "Mixer" it is the provider of many scripts and fixes that you will see in all the above modifications. Truly a unique and inspiring project. URL: http://farcry.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=9426&threadview=0&hilight=&hilightuser=0&page=1

Also, can you estimate how big and how active is the farcry server admin community and what admin tools they are already using ?

There is some clans and server-based communities still very active and competitive in FarCry. Although many many players left FarCry after PB support ended, also Patch 1.4 was infamous and seemed to cause a division between many players. It is still a good community as you can see if you visit http://farcry.crymod.com with many dedicated and smart mod dev's and server admins.

Consider this...CryEngine1 is still a great engine for those who favor fun over eye-bleeding graphics. A b3bot addition could help build the community, also provide fun and safe game servers for those who only want to spend a few dollars on a game and play on slightly older PC's.

Most of the projects above support virtual lan servers over programs like Hamachi.

[garbitos]

Sorry it took so long to reply...so many distractions...

Here are some logs from a FarCry dedicated server.

(attached)

[attachment deleted by maintenance]

[Courgette]

Hi,

B3 is meant to read a single log that must contain notifications of the following events:
* player connecting to server
* player joining the game
* player kills
* player team changes
* player disconnection
* game round start
* game round end
* game map change

from what I see of your logs,
* log_WinSV.txt does not contain any useful info for B3
* xassm_chat.log : only chat
* xassm_kills.log : only kills

Even if you could come up with a live merge of both xassm_chat.log and xassm_kills.log, the info they both contains is not complete enough to have a working B3 bot.

From there, what can you do ?
1 - find a way to obtain a single log file with all required info
2 - exploit the lua scripting capabilities of the engine to glue the engine to b3 python code

For both paths, we would need some experience modder/scripter for this engine. Maybe you know one that would be willing to have a look at B3 ?


EDIT: also, B3 needs a mean of talking back to the game server. With Quake3 based games, this is done with RCON. Does the CryEngine have such a facility ?

[garbitos]

Yes CryEngine has Rcon commands for remote administration, currently only through the console. I have not seen any 3rd party management tools like b3.

I have seen scripts for CryEngine Lua to work with MySQL also XML parser, but have not seen anyone attempt a python extension. I will try to get some friends to look at this thread

I am confident I can adjust log output via server-side scripts to meet the single log requirements. The "Log_WinSV" files does contain some of the info you mentioned, maybe just not in a familiar output.

 The best route maybe is to make a server-side command to output a special "b3_log.txt" with clean formatting of the required events. This I can do.

To start I will try to get some more detailed logs, and highlite the required events for you to see if they are useful.

I will start this project in FarCry/CryEngine1 with hopes of bringing it to Crysis/CryEngine2 platform in the future.


What files inside b3 would I find useful for examining the parser functions?

[Courgette]

To make B3 able to interact with a new game a 'parser' dedicated to this game must be created in the 'parsers' folder.
The parser is a class that must inherits from the Parser class : http://github.com/xlr8or/big-brother-bot/blob/master/b3/parser.py#L1030
and implement the methods you can see from lien 1030

We can help you with the parser.


We also need a mean of talking back to the game server. This might be the most difficult thing to achieve in your case

[garbitos]

CryEngine1 Admin can use the following commands from the in-game console to administer the server remotely (not playing on the server).

cl_rcon_port
cl_rcon_serverip
cl_rcon_password

Entered correctly and the Admin can control the server with many of the usual command vars... i tried to upload a PDF listing the vars but fail

[grosbedo]

i tried to upload a PDF listing the vars but fail

You mean here, on this thread ? Zip it and you should be able to upload the file here.

[GrossKopf]

Well, this would definitely be interesting to follow! Good luck with it!

[garbitos]

From there, what can you do ?
1 - find a way to obtain a single log file with all required info

Work has begun on this, we have a scripter with experience making a log formatting script for Quake based games and he is confident he can make FarCry produce a q3 style log for use by b3. Combined with Rcon and the ability to extend Rcon commands if needed. I think this is worthy of pursueing so please stay tuned  

EDIT: Please find the default FarCry 1.4 'Server Command Table' attached. These are all the commands that will work over Rcon. There are also some server-side mods that extend this list of commands, also there are a few that are not listed by CryTek for whatever reason.

[attachment deleted by maintenance]