Using of software programmable macros in competitive games

[Clockwork]

He's researching into them to brainstorm ideas for new behaviour mechanisms to be added to the main game. FOR EXAMPLE: drawining the path is genius and would be very beneficial as part of the core game and I think a github ticket needs to be created for it. He is not using it to gain unfair advantages in the game as he has described. I quote the last bit " I really hope some on the function i coded would be consider as a step to better the ingame function instead of starting some damaging witch hunt." if any of you wanted to read what he actually said instead of having a murder boner over a script.

But it seems the damaging witch hunt has already started

This is how things improve and advance in all parts of life. Someone breaks it and someone repairs it to make it better. Inf Queue macros broke the game and the repair and improvement to the system is a repeat queue which has been suggested numerous times in the past. If implemented it would make the game better. This implementation would probably not even be acknowledged if it wasn't for an inf queue macro.

What Whocares is doing here is breaking the game with scripts by showing better ways of doing things in the attempts that the new way of doing it is adopted into the base game. How many of you have ever tried an attack move waypoint? You must press A then shift then right click then repeat. A macro can revert that to just shift clicking A moves. Now wouldn't this be a much needed improvement in the base game over the manual way of doing it?

[lawANDorder]

(Content was not helpful for the discussion.)

[SirCake]

Happy, Thats not how it works. You add functionality from the inside, for everbody to use off the bat, not from the outside, for a few knowledgeable people.

The problem is that whocares doesn’t state that he never uses his macros without asking for permission or even revealing that he is using them in a particular game. If players mutually agree to use macros before a competitive or semi-competitive game, then its fine.
Else it’s straight up cheating.

[WhoCares]

As stated, I don't play competitive games anymore (i stopped before starting to code macros) and even in my casual games I don't use them. I also stated that i will test them vs people who will rightfully know it and would give me feedback. and also as stated i'm not promoting it or encouraging it. I just share my feeling that having them ready to use don't make it easy to use or i don't even gather any proof of their real effect so on paper all seems cheaty and "awesome" but i have no proof to really show it. That's all i'm trying to explain, theory and practice are very distinct. All my creation works on paper in a skirmish debug games.

I do have said soscared that i might join a competitive event in unplugged and try to do my best with them as a final test but forfeit and withdraw any prize pool in case of sucess. Still i realized afterward that even so, eleminating people (if i win wich is not even sure) and prevent them to ascend to the top of the event is not right either and droped the idea to use those in any sort of competition.

I'm sorry if you feel i'm doing something evil, I don't plane to hurt anybody with what i did neither give what i did in access so somebody else malicious can do. I diden't expect to be cheered but I diden't expect to upset people by revealing what your are trying to detect and ban /or tolarete, whatever you chose as groundrules.

I totally agree that i'm in kindergarden sandbag of coding and for all the coders and programers of the game it seems little and lame. I still enjoyed what i did to realize some fonction from scratch and all what i had to think about to make them happen. And i'm pretty sure the most of those people will agree that coding something that is not meant to be used or not used in the end is something common and still makes the work enjoyable.

And if people express the wish here out of fear to see external scripter/cheater ruin the game, i'll not make a thread if you feel that even by not giving any code it could inspire people to do it themselve and in the end ruin the game. just say the word, i don't even mind to delete my posts here if you think it only brings negative things.

I will still experiment my stuff because i enjoy it and i'll find people who will agree to play with me "using those" to be able to judge them. And as suggested when and if i feel ready, I will see if i'm any good to pretend to contribute to the game itself.

I'm also available on discord if you want more precision on what i did, if and how i used them, ect. I'm open and have nothing to hide (or i would not post any of this here). And for the better coder than me, for those who are curious i could even use an external eye to critisize my stuff or give it if it helps in the macro detecting or whatever.

[lawANDorder]

(Content was not helpful for the discussion.)

[maceman]

Whats wrong with trying out ideas as scripts? He's clearly not doing it to hack or cheat. If it works well maybe it could get developed in?

[kyrylo]

Thanks for the explanation, @WhoCares.

I do feel like these scripts can have detrimental effects on the gameplay although I recognise your courage in experimenting. I think the build scripts are especially powerful because consistent builds is an art to be mastered. Sometimes you just build a wrong army because of misclicks in the heat of battle, or maybe you build nothing because you forgot to queue up. It is a skill and using a script for that feels like you have 3rd hand doing just that. I wouldn't want to see this built into the game, though, so everyone could use it. Like I said, building armies is an art and requires skill.

Cancelling production sounds useful and harmless, it allows rapid build order switching, so I like that. I actually always wanted something like that.

The fast recon script sounds like something that the game engine already supports (check the settings). Even if I am wrong, I don't think it's harmful and could be a nice feature for the engine itself.

All in all the scripts you mentioned seem to be harmless except the first one. That said, I think RAGL should *explicitly* prohibit them because everybody should have equal opportunities. The scripts can boost your power or make you weak (because they only waste time). It actually doesn't matter because it would be unfair (either to you or to your opponent).

I have a question about the scripts you wrote. Do you use some program that allows you controlling your mouse in your OS? That is, when you invoke a script, does your cursor move fast (and visibly), or is this just a fraction of a second? Just curious how it works.

----------

It seems like @WhoCares haven't shared those scripts to anybody yet, right? I can see that people are complaining about some other scripts. What are they? Or maybe it's the scripts by WhoCares?

[WhoCares]

I did shared the whole script to some players i trusted to play vs me but they are even more inactive than me now and went inactive before we could even test them. and they needed my help to set it up with their controls (wich we never did) so no i don't think anybody else have those "working".

I pmed you the other informations you asked, I can post it here if people wish but i don't want to make the thread deviate further if unneeded.

[FiveAces]

(...)
autodeploy mcv : place cursor on desired spot, press one key : sequence : right click, center view on unit, center mouse on screen, hold shift, right click, release shift. (i would never have coded that one if the game allowed to queue this order with shift + "deploy shortcut")

autoregroup : select each group 1 by 1, if a unit in that group is still alife, script will select all unit of that type and regroup them. process is fast up to 3 groups, take 3 times more up to 9.

rework of repair function "instant repair": point the unit, press one of key, script will call repair function, issue a right click, degroup the selecte unit by putting it in group 0 , mouve the mouse few pixel away, left click to unselect the unit and/or remove the repair icon. (same for unpower and sell, ... beware instant sell can cost you a game if you wanted to repair instead)

(...)

The funny thing is, there's hotkeys for those three functions (I use them religiously, especially the repair key). So your script does allow you to skip pressing a button... by pressing a button. Solid.
(Granted, you'd have to press "select by type" two times and then issue a move order to regroup, and shift-queuing the MCV is finnicky at best)

So to sum it up, the most impact macros would have on the game is by freeing up APM that others have to use on managing production queues.
This does, however, come at the cost of production flexibility - this game has around 60 different units to play around with, and if anyone wants to limit themselves to only building the same 4 over and over again, that's their choice. Give me a hijacker rush over that any time of the day.

Where does that leave us?

If you ask me, we should simply establish consensus that macros are completely fine outside of competitive play.
Maybe repeat queues will be implemented one day, making macros 100% irrelevant. Until then, the advantage those scripts give you is, in my opinion, miniscule, but I think no matter how small their impact, we would all like to play on an even battlefield in RAGL 7.

[kyrylo]

Thanks. Btw, you have disabled private message receipt, so you may want to change that in case people want to reply

[avalach21]

He's researching into them to brainstorm ideas for new behaviour mechanisms to be added to the main game. FOR EXAMPLE: drawining the path is genius and would be very beneficial as part of the core game and I think a github ticket needs to be created for it. He is not using it to gain unfair advantages in the game as he has described. I quote the last bit " I really hope some on the function i coded would be consider as a step to better the ingame function instead of starting some damaging witch hunt." if any of you wanted to read what he actually said instead of having a murder boner over a script.

But it seems the damaging witch hunt has already started

I deeply agree with Happy's sentiments.

I don't understand all the animosity towards WhoCares to be honest..

Just as someone might do a quick mock up of a UI change as a proof of concept before actually coding it all in, using the macros to simulate potential improvements to controlling OpenRA demonstrate a proof of concept that could eventually be hardcoded into the game as an improvement.

One of OpenRA's development goals seems to be to improve the control and playability of the game over the original. There have been many improvements to the way building/queuing units works as well as many new input possibilities over the original engine. Why are the changes made so far over the original ok, but going any farther is blasphemy? Where do we draw the line and say, that's it, that's enough control improvements over the original game... we are done now. With this being an ongoing open source project, IMO we should always be open minded to new improvements. Rather than just writing about them in the forum, I think going the extra step that WhoCares has to demonstrate how they would actually work out is a great thing, and I hope he includes some Gifs/vids to show us them in action.

[netnazgul]

Well, to defend WhoCares, stuff like cancelling tab production, MCV deploy, patrolling and superstop are just crutches that wouldn't be there if it were properly implemented ingame.

Putting the Good Witch Hunting aside, I see there might be an easy-to-use tool to check replays for suspicious ordering. So I guess this uniform tool might be used to reliably detect production macroing and thus ban macroing from competitive events.

[SirCake]

The macro kings hear cringing your gravelly verdict, Nazgul.

[WhoCares]

The funny thing is, there's hotkeys for those three functions (I use them religiously, especially the repair key). So your script does allow you to skip pressing a button... by pressing a button. Solid.
(Granted, you'd have to press "select by type" two times and then issue a move order to regroup, and shift-queuing the MCV is finnicky at best)

So to sum it up, the most impact macros would have on the game is by freeing up APM that others have to use on managing production queues.
This does, however, come at the cost of production flexibility - this game has around 60 different units to play around with, and if anyone wants to limit themselves to only building the same 4 over and over again, that's their choice. Give me a hijacker rush over that any time of the day.

Where does that leave us?

If you ask me, we should simply establish consensus that macros are completely fine outside of competitive play.
Maybe repeat queues will be implemented one day, making macros 100% irrelevant. Until then, the advantage those scripts give you is, in my opinion, miniscule, but I think no matter how small their impact, we would all like to play on an even battlefield in RAGL 7.

Well, i said I was trying to reinvent the wheel, not that i suceeded :p. The script for repair/sell/unpower, is not meant to really save, just to see a different use, instead of decomposing in "selecting, applying, unselecting", you press one key and it's all done at once with your cursor free again and cherry on top, if it is a unit you send to the sd it is taking out of its group control by being put in group 0 making him not recall by following group orders of your beloved tank squad.

auto regroup does not mean you send your unit on a waypoint, it means all the existing group are redone automatically by pressing one key. Example : i have 1 rifle left in group 1, 2 rocket left in group 2, 0 tank in group 3. I first have to add a tank in group 3 manually then i just put my view on my reinforcement and i hit the magic key and all unit will be assigned in the proper group. Next time i hit the group 1 shortcut i no longer have 1 rifle but all of them, same for rocket and tank. Downside, if you are too lazy like me to do your groups in the first place this script is totally useless as they are no existing group to reinforce ...... auto-group-renforcement might be a better name ?

@kyrylo, private message enabled again.

Thx to avalach and netnazgull to understand my motivations (and happy).

I'll try to make some gifs or little video from my pov to see what actually does a script when triggered if that actually help someone or apease some curiosity.

[avalach21]

I think people really need to take a step back and look at why these macros even exist. I don't think that cumbersome clicking mechanics enhance the game in any sort of way, so I don't see any issues with streamlining some of these processes. The game is a strategy game after all.. not a click spam fest. So if these improvements allow players to focus more on both micro and macro strategies, then I see no issue. Maybe we also need to take a look at the overall meta design... such as weakening huge infantry blobs so that people dont want to endlessly spam them? While the original RA might have been too "tank rushy" maybe openRA has become too "infantryBloby"?

To be honest I was always bummed how useless infantry seemed to be in the original game so I don't mind that they are obviously more useful in OpenRA.. but it's a point worth discussing.

Also count me out from having buildings repair on one click... if that same logic is applied to selling buildings I am going to end up with a lot of pissed off moments when I accidentally sell my building