When I want to host, i just rape everyone else's wireless in my house and hook the external modem right to my computer. haha.

apos, you might try this: http://www.kratronic.com/tools/recorder/functions/index.html

Looks more functional and has a free 90 day trial, which should be plenty.

I made my first test! Well it's not much but it's still pretty good.
In order to make it work, you will need to start starcraft and go to any channel. Once this is done, start the file and it will do a couple actions.
It will start by typing Hey in the channel, if it doesn't type that, you will need to restart.

I made a simple icon for the program.

Edit: You will need to be on Brood War
Edit2: I made it using Chaos Luncher (Starcraft in a window) it seems like it doesn't work as well without it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 10 2010, 9:18 pm by apos.

I was able to start making a Stealthbot script. Right now, it can start my macro and move a map from the download folder to an other folder I named "Host". What I'm, planning to do with this is once the map is moved, the macro can, via starcraft, go to that specific folder and select the map.

I just wish I wasn't banned from online games, or I'd be testing and using this. Good work apos!

Any progress on the bot?

Are you going to let anyone use your hosting bot? Or is it just going to be people who ask and you like?

This is actually an interesting concept.
I might take a look at the battle.net protocol, and also the in-lobby communication (I know some simple things about them, bnet uses TCP, lobby uses UDP links between each player, if anyone can point me to specifics of the protocols so I don't have to figure everything out for myself, it would be a great help.) and write an efficient program to do this without requiring starcraft running, and run it off my dedicated server.
Source code will be available to all.

You might be able to find info about all that at bnet dev, or the place that hosts Zynastor's map hack. I can find links if you like.

I have found information on the client to battle.net protocol. I'll start by implementing that, and move on to the client <-> client protocol once I can properly authenticate to BNet, and handle communication.

That's pretty good, I'm going to add soon a verification to my script so that it can verify if the map that was asked to be hosted exists on the computer and if not, it will tell that it doesn't exists. I just want to know how your program will work exactly though.

This would be so nice. I am always just connecting and reconnecting my Ethernet when I want to host, then my room mates get pissed at me when they are deprived from the wireless that I let them suckle from.

I plan to connect to the BNet server with the specified credentials, then listen for a whisper with game details (Map, Game name, password, etc)
Then create the game, giving the requester access to various commands to control the game (kick/ban, close/open slots, start game, etc)
Once I figure out the peer to peer protocol used in the lobby, I will start development on it.
And yes, verification that the map file exists is a must. I might make it possible to specify an optional argument in the command to start a game, as a direct URL to the SCM/SCX, however that is very easily abused (people giving it a huge, multi-gigabyte file to tie up the bot, and the bandwidth of the server is one of my fears.)
Better yet, a download map command, access for which would be given to trusted people only, would probably work better too.