Helpful Imp

[Bananadine]

A while ago some thread or another about a new version of Dominions 3 devolved into complaints about blood slave management and I decided to try to automate the transfer of blood slaves amongst commanders within one province (since that involves something like twenty clicks per province and struck me as being the most annoying task in blood slave management, and also the easiest one for a computer to perform unsupervised).

Shortly after that I did indeed write a script, for a free automation utility called AutoHotkey, that can perform this task automatically, with one click and one keypress. The script is attached. Instructions for its use are inside it, at the top.

I'm posting about this here because I thought other people might be interested in using such a tool. If this script were completely friendly and fast, then I'd just recommend it to everybody; unfortunately it has some serious limitations:

1. It's run by AutoHotkey, which only works in Windows.
2. It needs to know the locations of some elements of your Dominions 3 UI. I've made it smart enough to handle a game window that's the size I like, which turns out to be about 1030x800, and also smart enough to resize a window to that size if need be. It wouldn't work for windows of other sizes. (But it could conceivably be taught to deal with a window of any size--I just didn't want to go to the trouble, without knowing whether anybody was interested.)
3. It's activated from the unit description view for the commander you want to take all the slaves. But it needs the background to be black, so you can only use the script from the F1 listing, and only with animated backrounds off.
4. It's reasonably fast, but you might still have to wait a few seconds per province. (Still, watching the pointer dance around is much more fun than moving it around yourself.)
5. It probably fails (probably somewhat gracefully) in some unusual situations--for instance, when there are like twenty commanders in your blood-hunting province, but no lab there.
6. It's only been tested on my computer, so it may well fail on somebody else's setup for some reason I haven't anticipated.

All that said, the script is actually a pretty easy thing to use, and I think that it might be able to help a Mictlan (etc.) player a lot. Give it a shot if you're interested, and if you don't mind adapting yourself to its ways (see 2 and 3 above). And if you do, tell me what you think (or how it failed, if it failed--see 6 above).

[Fantomen]

Transfer blood slaves between commanders? You mean it can automatically transfer slaves from hunters to scouts for example?

[Bananadine]

Yes, that is the purpose of the script. You'd scroll down through your F1 view (of all provinces and commanders) and collect your slaves on your scouts with one or two keyboard/mouse actions per province (instead of one or two actions per slave, which is the norm).

[Gandalf Parker]

WOW. I knew that AutoHotKey could be used to allow us to fill in gaps in the "wish there was a key for this" list. But yours is way beyond what I could have done. and THANKYOU for the extensive documenting in the file. I look forward to more from you.
Maybe you can browse the wishlists?

On the windows thing..
I started my scripts with a mass of mouse movement toward the upper left corner of the screen. More moves than I would ever need. Then movement from there would always be relative. Altho I admit I never tested it in multiple screen sizes so I have no idea how that would affect it.

One that I did was for an RPG game of Dom3. It created the same god over and over and over so that I could finally get one with random titles that I felt I could role play. It was fun to watch it generate 20 gods in the blink of an eye.

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Maybe you can browse the wishlists?

I've done that in the past but I forget what was in them! Like I said in the other thread, the things that bother me somewhat are scripting mages, placing mages on the battlefield, and slave transfer within one province. Most Dominions 3 UI operations that bother others don't bother me much! And I don't know how to do a good job at improving the mage stuff without alteration to Dominions 3 itself.

So, I don't have any more good ideas for scripts. Is there a particular thread that talks about potential UI improvements, as opposed to changes to any old aspect of the game? I'd be glad to browse that again.

Also I'd like to see people demonstrate interest in this script, before I tried to make any more! This one, at least, I will use myself.

[Bananadine]

Well, I did think of a couple ideas: A command that would totally strip a commander of items, and a script that would put a single worn item (whichever one was under the mouse cursor) into the local lab. Those would be nice, and maybe not very hard to make. (Of course in many cases it's already fast and easy to put away a single worn item, but when many researchers are present, the lab is at the bottom of the item destination menu, and you have to awkwardly scroll down to reach it....)

Has anybody used the Helpful Imp yet? I haven't, except to test it! I am in some very long games, and it'll be a while before I change nations.

[thejeff]

Apparently you think like the developers. As of two? patches ago, "l" moves a single item to the lab.

[Bananadine]

Wow that's awesome! That's way better than a script. Okay I don't have any ideas anymore.