Cherbot Philosophy

Design goals

Low Profile

A bot is only a bot accepted by players if it keeps low profile. This means, that the bot will not shout anything unless told otherwise. Except for getting food regularly, the bot does not do any actions automatically.

Natural interface

Most bots only understand simple commands. CherBot still is stupid, but it understands complete phrases, as long as they are correct English and not too complex. All commands except the basic help commands are phrases. You may start them with an uppercase letter and end them with a "." or "!" if they are commands or with a "?" if they are questions. All phrases are checked against regular expressions to find the corresponding command and execute it. A next version of CherBot might also get a facts database and a Prolog interface to implement proper grammar of the English language not by regular expressions but by artificial intelligence.

Usage

In-game Usage

To talk to Cherbot, you may choose betwee:

• Saying something near Cherbot so it can hear it.
• Telling something to CherBot.
• Shouting, with "Cherbot ", "Cherbot: " or "Cherbot, " as the first part of the shout.

Cherbot will nearly always reply with a /tell to the speaker, so it does not annoy other players. In some rare cases, Cherbot simply says something. Cherbot never responds on /shout. Cherbot only uses /shout to warn players that a person that just entered the game is a known criminal.

If you're talking to Cherbot, the following things can happen:

• Cherbot doesn't respond, which means Cherbot doesn't understand the command.
• Cherbot responds with something like "I don't want to.", which means the command was recognized but you don't have the permissions to perform the command.
• Cherbot responds with a text that tells you the command was executed.
• Cherbot crashes (unlikely, but certainly possible)

FAQ

When does the bot shout?

In short: (nearly) never. CherBot currently shouts on the following occasions:

• A player with a configured greeting enters.
• A player with a configured lament dies.

Although CherBot could shout on the following occasions, they are not available at the moment:

• CherBot enters. It could greet all players. But during the test phase, CherBot enters often and then its greetings would only spam.
• A player without a configured lament dies. Some players disliked it and this feature had been immediately disabled.
• A player with know uncleared criminal records enters. The crime recording is not yet implemented.

CherBot is designed to be silent and helpful. It is not designed to annoy players by spamming on shout.

Does the bot run around?

No.

Will the bot run around in future?

No. Not until someone gives a good reason why it should.

Will the bot kill mob?

No. It doesn't now and it won't in the future. Mob is for players, not for bots.

Will the bot heal players?

No. It could, that's easy to implement. But it doesn't and it won't.

Last modified: 2005-03-16T12:56:57.004+01:00