If your immediate question is: “What the heck is a Nixbot?!” then please check this post for details.
Next question: Why would Nixbot need your help?
Well, the thing is that there is currently no easy way for Nixbot/Boundlexx to get the details for a world regarding whether public edit permissions or public plotting/claim permissions have been set. As a result, when people are trying to find the best worlds for a specific resource, they commonly run into the problem of the world having public visit permissions, but no permissions to actually edit the blocks to get said resources!
How do we fix this horrid situation?!
Ideally with an officially supported API source! But such a thing is not currently available…
The next option is to put it out to the people! One such step was to create forum posts for your world indicating whether you have set public edit and plot permissions. Useful but pretty cumbersome.
The next solution, you can hop onto the TNT Discord server and tell Nixbot directly! The best part about this solution is that you don’t need to feel awkward about reporting it for a world that isn’t your own, it’s actually highly encouraged! On top of this, all world reportings are sent to Boundlexx itself so anyone using it will have access to the information.
Head to the #nixbot-news-events channel to get instructions on how to use the command
Head to the #boundless-commands channel to use the command
Hopefully in the long-term we will see a solution that doesn’t rely on such methods, and can retrieve all the information for all the worlds, but for now it kinda seems like it’s this or nothing.
Do you guys have your version of nixbot on github or a public place for others to use in their guild chats? Or is this for TNT discord use only? Just wondering.
would be great if you contacted managing people of official Boundless discord so they make nitbox available there - or whatever way it works for easier and wider access to the tool
Yea I am going to message Soju and ask him. He might know who I can talk to. It would be great if they could make it available to other discord servers to help encourage not only capturing more information like what they are seeking above but extend access to it.
As said by Angellus, Nixbot is my own mod of Nadeko bot. As of right now, the modded code is private and I’d prefer if it stayed as a TNT exclusive bot. There are, of course, no restrictions on who is allowed to join the TNT Discord server or who can access the bot.
Also, something that is super highly related, you can also get this data into Boundlexx/Nixbot by posting your world as well following the format that Gorilla and I came up with. I pull the permissions from any Sovereign world posts that follow this format.
You can add/remove things to the post template if you want. My personal recommendation is to post anything additional in the first post afterwards (you may have seen a number of people “reserve” the first comment for future postings). That allows you to quickly update the original post.
Understood! I am part if the TNT discord and I use it there myself.
Nothing against anyone by any means but guild loyalty is hard in this game so I like to have tools that my guild members can use from our guild areas as well to entice folks to stay active in our guild. No biggie though, as a coder I totaly understand.
For starters, I would have to remove any and all TNT specific code. While not a big deal in itself, I would then have to rebuild those section to be more generic for no actual gain.
I would likely have to guide people through the set-up process. While I did it myself, it just worked with next to no issues. If someone else where to do it… well I’ve worked in tech long enough to know that no two installations are the same
I’d rather there weren’t different versions of Nixbot floating around. If I made an update, but another host decided not to take that update, then there would be inconsistent versions out there. There’s also the possibility that others would update their version, possibly taking it in a direction I’d prefer it didn’t go.
Not allowing Nixbot on other servers:
Simplest and biggest reason, it would increase my server costs. Discord bots, for those who don’t know, are sent every single message that occurs on a Discord channel that they have access to, whether they are meant to respond to it or not. If Nixbot was on multiple servers, being sent every single conversation, I’d have to upgrade the server which means increasing my costs. Again, for no actual gain.
For those who really want to have their own Discord bot that is able to do the things that Nixbot can do, I highly recommend building one. Building a Discord bot is actually a pretty easy thing to do, even from scratch. I personally took a version of the Nadeko bot and started from there. It’s written in C#/.NET Core but if you have any OOP experience then you wouldn’t have any trouble with modding it. The support peeps for Nadeko are also incredibly helpful.
As for the Boundless specific stuff, Boundlexx is pretty simple to use and anyone with any level of experience using APIs shouldn’t have any trouble. I’d be happy to give any pointers and Angellus himself is also a very helpful guy.
This goes back to a discussion I had with someone else about the forum template. A third state just kind of complicates things. Even more so in a Discord bot. If there was a third state of “On Request”, well then, who do you make the “request” to? What if the world does not have a Forum Post? We cannot track world owners unless the owner decides to make a forum post.
If there is a forum post and there are special requirements around plotting, does a third “On Request”/special requirements state makes sense? If you are already in a forum post, why not just spell out the rules for your world and state “plotting only available for Guild members” or whatever they may be. If you are able to state the rules, then “No” can imply “On Request”/special requirements. If there are additional rules posted, then it is “On Request”/special requirements or if there are no additional rules, no plotting is allowed.
Everything is asked as question both to kind of make you think about and because I honestly want to hear what you think. Personally, I do not think additional states for plotting makes sense because, in any case I can think of, just posting “if you want to plot on this forum, here are the rules” in the Forum Post covers them. I am open to hear more thoughts or ideas though.
