So I said a while back that I was going to be making a GUI version of the cavebot, but that never actually materialized, lol. So, now, finally, I've finished making the thing. Disclaimer: With this program, I'm not trying to mess you up, but if you get messed up, then please don't mess me up. That said, there's probably a lot of minor, unlikely-to-occur synchro bugs that I'm going to pretend don't exist, unless you guys come across any of them. Really, if you find a bug, let me know.

http://www.freewebs.com/cavehelp/cavebot2.zip
If you click that and you just get redirected back to this page, you'll need to copy-paste that link or open it in a new tab to get it to work. It's a known Interguild issue.

To run the program, extract all the contents on the zip file into the same folder. From there, double-click on the file called CAVEBOT2.bat. A cmd window will come up and hang around for the entirety of the time that you have the cavebot open. The program will not run if you do not have the latest version of java, so if you've followed the instructions correctly up until this point, but it doesn't run, that's likely your problem.

So the purpose of the program is fairly simple. It's attempting to search all the Neopet's usernames for usernames that have caves on them. Now, if we were actually going to search them ALL, with the speed this program runs, it would take billions of millennia. Luckily for us, the usernames with caves on them are much more concentrated within the shorter usernames, and thus, there's still plenty for us to find. Every couple of hours of running this program, you're likely to find at least a couple.

After the program has loaded, you will then enter the username where you wish to begin your search into the "Start Username" box. If it's your job to search just a certain interval, you can fill in the "Stop Username" box (not sure why I bothered with that, lol, seems kinda useless). Last time, you'd enter in the username immediately prior to the one that you'd like to start your search at (and last time you had to put into a text-file too, lol, but luckily, those days are over), but this time, you enter in the username with which you will start your search. Also, the "Stop Username" is inclusive, so it will be searched as well. The program will not start unless both the stop and start username are within the character limits (3 minimum, 20 maximum) and if the start username comes before the stop username in searching-order.

When you're ready, click "Start", and the CAVEBOT will begin searching for caves. Note that this program searches with an order different from that of the usual ordering used by computers. The order is
" abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890_". Note that the space, " ", is first, so that shorter usernames are considered to occur prior to longer usernames. If you wish to pause your search, you can click stop. When you do, the program will not stop right away -- it will first finish searching for the current username. After it has finished its business, the next username to check will be filled into the Start Username box, so that you'll pick right up where you left off next time you click start.

Unlike the previous iteration of this program, this version does not crash when it encounters an error while searching for caves. It will however (obviously) stop searching. You will know that it has encountered an error if the status changes to "Not Working". If the problem was intermittent, and is resolved, the program will continue searching where it left off. If you click stop, it will continue to try and get the current username before doing so. This should not be a problem, since it's basically stopped anyway.

Over in the upper right is a list of the caves found since the cavemaker was opened. Is you select "Current Search", the text of the currently-searched username will display in the large text-box to the left. If you instead click on one of the found usernames, that username's cave will displayed instead, allowing you to browse through the found caves. Doing this does not interfere with the current search.

Once you have finished with your searching for the day, click on the X in the top right of the window to close the program. It is at this moment where you will be asked if you wish to save the results of your search to the files. The data in the found-cave list will be appended to the masterlist.txt file, and the next username that you would have checked will become the new contents of nextcheck.txt. It is important that you close the program normally, or else this data will not save. If there's a bug in the program that crashes it and prevents you from doing so, consider that incentive to report the bug to me. If there's a problem with saving the file, you will be alerted of this and asked if you still want to quit. Next time you open the program, the contents of nextcheck.txt will attempt to be loaded into the Start Username box.


Changes in First Update:
In this update, you can manage all of your "instances" in the same window. By default I've packed in 10 threads, but if you can compile java files, you can change the "NUM_THREADS = 10;" to whatever number you want, at your own risk, of course. The disadvantage is that, with them all running in the same window, there's an increased chance of synchro bugs. Likely, there's a lot of unlikely bugs hiding in the various crevices, but -hopefully- *crosses fingers* they shouldn't interfere with precious username lists and last checked data. Also, the masterlist file will now be completely disorganized by the threads adding their own finds onto the list willy-nilly. As long as you finish all the usernames that you've bitten off (or at least, pasted us the contents of your nextcheck.txt file, if you don't), this shouldn't be a problem, since the cavelist itself is sorted.

So, now there's ten start and stop username boxes. I've organized each one into its own tab. Only the currently-view tab's thread will display it's current status, checked username, and, if <current search> is selected from the cave list box, the currently-searched text. Each thread also has it's own start/stop button, but, for convenience I've added stop and start all buttons that stop/start all running/idling threads. Also, each thread's start and (also) stop username's will be saved into the nextcheck, and all of them will be loaded next to you open the CAVEBOT. In order to get a new start/stop username to want to save itself to the file, you must actually start the thread, but don't ask why, 'cause I'm not really sure...

Also, and IMO this is the best part, I've added a button where, you click it, you enter in a start and a stop username, and the range of usernames between them will be evenly divided across all threads. So, if you have a range to search, all you have to do is click "Fit Username Range to Threads", type in a start and stop username, and then click "Start All", and now you've got 10 threads all working towards the common goal. It's just that easy. And you wouldn't believe the -ABSOLUTE HELL- I went through to get you this feature. Two straight days of punching walls Kitti-style is what it was.


I think that about covers everything. Please, if you find a bug, report it. If you find something annoying, let me know. If you think of a feature that you'd like to see added, suggest it. Also, please feel free to organize the collaborative searching of caves below:

Completed Usernames:
***
****
*****
af**** - ah****

The following people have claimed the following usernames:
aa**** - ae**** - canadianstickdeath
ai**** - ak**** - Livio

Please, if you do not plan on completing your allotted search-range, let me know, so I can take you off the claimed-usernames list.

When I click on the link, it redirects me to this page.

As previously, copy+paste the link into your browser. Known Interguild issue.

Open in a new tab. How often does this have to be repeated?

I'll continue with b****.

I guess you guys don't realize that I was joking when I said that...

Oh well.

Jell, you can be a b****...

I know how wrong that sounds.
We need a new wildcard.

Like . here on the Interguild? b.... seems better than b**** to me.

*is working on b.... in four seperate windows*

Lol, I forgot to put that you might have to open that in a new tab...

Jell, do you still have the list of usernames from however far you got last time? And is anybody besides jell willing to claim a range of usernames?

I'm starting over fresh. I didn't get very far anyway.
And it appears I have to increase the windows I have open. At this rate it will take me 3 straight days to finish b....

Edit: First account found!
babse

YAY! Is it any good? *already knows answer*

It'd be nice for Acce to have given us a way to mass-add usernames to the cavelist.

Yes. Best cave I've played in months. Quirvy could learn a lesson from this gal.

It's pretty stinking awful, lol. At least it's better than snowdude. No wonder though, that the cotw's suck, when it's pretty likely these are the types of caves they have to paw through.

I call c*** - d***
Also, CSD, Would you mind if I made a linux port? Just in case another linux member came that runs HATPC in a vm.

Eh, .... (which includes c... - d...) is already taken and searched. No need to search that one.

Sorry. I ment c**** to d****

I ran c**** all last night. I was really surprised when I woke up this morning and it was still running, lol.

cad2u
caesh
cah99
caidi
calar
camdp
capig
cap17
casva
catle
cavpm
cav3s
caw52
cbbdd

If you do c****, start with cbgbd.

Shouldn't it already run on linux? I mean, I'm not sure about the .bat file, but other than that...
And I added yours to the claimed usernames list.

Oh I forgot to mention that, for people using multiple windows, that it's probably not a good idea to open multiple copied of the same window, since the program has only one copy of nextcheck.txt, only one nextchecked username will be able to save. masterlist.txt should work out fine, but if there were any duplicates masterlist will save those too. If you want to run multiple windows, probably it'd be best to copy the entire folder and open each copy of the cavebot only once.

This gave me an idea, though. Maybe it'd be an interesting idea to have the cavebot use threads to check multiple caves at once? I'm not entirely set up for it at this point, but it shouldn't be too hard... Let's see, make a bunch of new threads, make some instance variables local to the methods, make variables that wouldn't work like that into arrays, make it so that, when you start, the usernames to search are evenly divided amounts the threads... Could be a bit of work, but I could probably get it working. How many threads should it have? 3? 5? 10? 20? 100? 10000?

I manually do the last checked and masterlist thing, so that isn't a problem for me.

Well, I have a version running with 10 threads, and it appears to be working correctly, but there's quite a few things that I need to figure out before I can release it.

First, I'm not stopping the threads properly, and with 10 threads, the processor usage for them all to be in tight infinite loops becomes noticeable. See, I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, lol. I should NOT be messing with threading, lol.
Second, the "Status" label isn't properly set up to work with the threads, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
There seems to be some rare problems with the threads stepping on each other toes, a little bit, so I'll try and figure out where those problems are and I'll try to fix them.
Finally, I'd like to add a button that takes evenly divides a range across all the threads and starts them all for you.

But then again, I'm not really sure at all what I'm trying to accomplish....

I also want e**** - h****, as I can run 6 instances at a time and each needs a different job.

Lol, you do realize that each letter is going to take a while, right? Maybe you'd be better off focusing all 6 instances on the same letter??

I'll put you down for them anyway, though.

If I were to run b.... on a single instance, it would take me over 500 hours just to finish that. It will probably be the same for you.
I've finished ba... and bb... and am now about 65% through bc...
So far I've found:
-babse
-baluu
-bal49
-bamoo
-bayam