Question - Question about a program I built

[kausi21]

I built a program that, whenever I right-click an item, it just auto searches a local DB and if it finds the item, it tells what it will sell to the vendor for. The program doesn't use injections, hooks, dlls. Doesn't require MQ. The program will run even if EQ is running or not. It's just an observer or having a wiki open on a second monitor, doing searches. I built it mainly for new TLP launches, so I can see what trash loot is worth and know what to keep and what to leave behind during long grinding sessions.

I'm not familiar at all with how hardcore Daybreak is on quality of life programs, and my question to you guys who are way more experienced than me is, would Daybreak actually search for this and ban me? I read their EULA, and it states prohibits things like "modifying game files," "interfering with the game client," and "automating gameplay. This doesn't do any of that.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Sic]

that sounds cool

how is it "right clicking and then searching"? like using python to read the item and then open a thing and search for it?

depending on how you're doing it all, i can't imagine that this would be a problem

unfortunately despite "this doesn't seem like something they would take issue with" it doesn't mean that anyone's feelings on the matter supercede's dbgs tos or their stance on 3rd party apps.

DBG's Terms of Service
or
You can read their stance on 3rd party apps here

 

[kausi21]

So it's Python and Tesseract. When I right-click on an item, it knows to search that "area" where the item popup window happens. Then, behind the scenes, it just searches a local DB. If it finds the item, it shows that image on top of the EQ window. It all happens within milliseconds, but that's kind of the concept. If the local DB (which is about 120,000 items) doesn't find it as a backup, I have it scraping p99 wiki, Lucy, and eqresource. Then comparing the prices, and just throwing up the avg. It's not going to be 100% accurate because it doesn't do a CHA check, the average pull data, etc. It's close enough for what I need it for, though.

"unfortunately despite "this doesn't seem like something they would take issue with" it doesn't mean that anyone's feelings on the matter supercede's dbgs tos or their stance on 3rd party apps."

As you said, I don't want to get banned for some dumb price checker, so I guess the real answer here is, do I risk it and report if I get banned lol.

 

[Sic]

So it's Python and Tesseract. When I right-click on an item, it knows to search that "area" where the item popup window happens. Then, behind the scenes, it just searches a local DB. If it finds the item, it shows that image on top of the EQ window. It all happens within milliseconds, but that's kind of the concept. If the local DB (which is about 120,000 items) doesn't find it as a backup, I have it scraping p99 wiki, Lucy, and eqresource. Then comparing the prices, and just throwing up the avg. It's not going to be 100% accurate because it doesn't do a CHA check, the average pull data, etc. It's close enough for what I need it for, though.

"unfortunately despite "this doesn't seem like something they would take issue with" it doesn't mean that anyone's feelings on the matter supercede's dbgs tos or their stance on 3rd party apps."

As you said, I don't want to get banned for some dumb price checker, so I guess the real answer here is, do I risk it and report if I get banned lol.

i would, but that is my personal risk profile.

python and tesseract are pretty common things to automate stuff like fishing in various games (ive made a few myself), but i really doubt dbg is doing anything to detect that - but who knows other than dbg

 

[boxbuddy]

If you're not sending input to the game and just screen reading with tesseract, I imagine that it is fine. I see no reason for eq to care about screen readers as it's essentially just a screenshot & parsing text (something I imagine is seen quite often since a lot of people keep eq running 24/7)
Just be careful if it starts to hold up your game/cause performance issues, it could be falsely flagged as a debugger being present or something.

 

[kausi21]

So I changed how it works: I disabled the auto-detect Tesseract system and replaced it with a log scraper. Now I have a window on my other screen, and when I loot an item, it just pops up on that screen to show me the value, then I can delete it from my inventory if it's junk. Then I just added a little loot tracker that keeps track of how much money I have looted based on the sell value of the item from the DB, so I know in each grind how much money I expect to have when I go sell for spells, etc. If they are going to ban for this, then they may as well start banning for GINA, and the DPS trackers, cause its just reading a log file now.

 

[1everdude]

The odds of catching a ban for anything that doesn't hook into Everquest itself are exceedingly low, especially if it's not something that can be detected by outside observers. Anything is possible, but I would be genuinely shocked to find out about DBG knowing or caring about this when I've gotten away with using autohotkey to forage for days on end.

 

[reedreddington]

When I was first reading your post I was asking myself why not just pull it from logs and be safe about it. Seems like you had the same thought.

 

[Trinost]

So I changed how it works: I disabled the auto-detect Tesseract system and replaced it with a log scraper. Now I have a window on my other screen, and when I loot an item, it just pops up on that screen to show me the value, then I can delete it from my inventory if it's junk. Then I just added a little loot tracker that keeps track of how much money I have looted based on the sell value of the item from the DB, so I know in each grind how much money I expect to have when I go sell for spells, etc. If they are going to ban for this, then they may as well start banning for GINA, and the DPS trackers, cause its just reading a log file now.

wow this looks super useful for the purpose you proposed in early game where files are not yet set to how valuable things are and if trash or not. Actually, I can see this useful all throughout the game. Bagspace is precious and ppl pay $15+ to get new bags.

 

[kausi21]

wow this looks super useful for the purpose you proposed in early game where files are not yet set to how valuable things are and if trash or not. Actually, I can see this useful all throughout the game. Bagspace is precious and ppl pay $15+ to get new bags.

Yeah, it’s been evolving little by little. Once I switched to a log scraper, I realized I was already pulling in all the relevant data anyway — including when a player zones into a new area. That got me thinking: what if I built something similar to a WOW AtlasLoot-style addon for EQ.


So now, whenever you zone into an area, it automatically populates with the “notable” NPCs in that zone. You can expand their details to quickly see their loot tables. Similar to EQProgression, you can mouse over an item, making it easy to glance at item details without digging through websites.


I also added a checkbox option for Random Loot TLP servers, which lets you view the potential random loot pool that NPCs can drop as well.


*Edit - Next step is to make it have a drop-down where you can select any zone, like AtlasLoot does, regardless of what zone you're in.