Hello! Looking for some coding friends who also play Neopets!

[diamondbadge]

Hey all

Active Neopets player here - work in tech by day, which affords me some time to goof off. From a few years of legit play, I've been able to hit ~100m from buying/reselling retired items. Also recently hit a passable trophy and avatar count!

I just was hoping to make more friends that play the game who are curious about what's going on under the hood of Neopets. I've lurked on the forums for a while but was a little reluctant to post. Reddit seems to be a bit more strict about following the unclear rules that TNT laid out.

Though I like to create Neopets OCR/computer vision scripts to practice coding, I don't ever use them because I just tend to lose interest in games when I feel like I'm winning

Hobbies:

• Singing - I love jazz style vocals!
• Writing chatbots / other NLP technologies. Not really viable on NP unless its automated forum posting. Generative models kinda suck though even with modern advancements.
• Collecting Pokemon - I felt like I should scratch this once because I collected a lot more prior to covid. Pokemon Stamps have been a really fun (and affordable) new fixation.
• Other games: overwatch, online chess (awful at both)

Within the scope of Neopets, some hobbies include:

• Trophy/avatar collecting - I hit the point where it's starting to get tedious!
• Trying to figure out backend logic of NP. I'm positive others have done it before me, but I was able to backsolve Donny's free repairs... imagine the dozens of neopoints you could make from profit! I've been working on a ML model for Food Club for a bit, but it has had the opposite effect of making me not want to play until I can reasonably predict results (which are very likely to be just RNG).
• Trying to predict item price jumps and buyouts - note: I have nothing to do with PB/MP/stamp buyouts; way too poor for that.

Somehow, I never got into cosmetics.

Best,
DiamondBadge

[kittyray]

Welcome to clraik! We've got quite a few code-lovers in our midst!


Might not be viable for any sort of profit-making or objective on-site gains, but I think it would be fun and hilarious to make some sort of neoboard chatbot. Just let it run loose and watch the show. See how it performs on different boards. I know next to nothing about NLP/ML stuff, but I'm a fan of it. Especially seeing how far it's grown in my lifetime.

Looking forward to seeing you around.

[Cinnamoroll]

Hello!

I also am at the point where trophy and avatar collecting is tedious. I mainly have stamp avatars left which are soooo expensive

[Shawn]

Hello! Welcome to clraik

A few very experienced users here definitely have a very good idea of what goes on below to hood on Neopets, maybe the conversation will float up in the future with you here!
I'm pretty interested to hear about what kind of computer vision / OCR scripts do you use on Neo?

Neo has definitely been a great playground for me to practice and improve my casual coding

[Aglett]

Welcome to ck

[diamondbadge]

Welcome to clraik! We've got quite a few code-lovers in our midst!


Might not be viable for any sort of profit-making or objective on-site gains, but I think it would be fun and hilarious to make some sort of neoboard chatbot. Just let it run loose and watch the show. See how it performs on different boards. I know next to nothing about NLP/ML stuff, but I'm a fan of it. Especially seeing how far it's grown in my lifetime.

Looking forward to seeing you around.

Hahaha I seriously entertained the idea of a bot that just tried to get in the middle of UC pet trading drama, but it's soooooooo nuanced. It would require a lot of effort just to give it context.

Hello!

I also am at the point where trophy and avatar collecting is tedious. I mainly have stamp avatars left which are soooo expensive

The STS mystery pic prize has given me hope, but I understand most of them have already been scooped up by the rich neopians. Fingers crossed that we start seeing some regulation.

Hello! Welcome to clraik

A few very experienced users here definitely have a very good idea of what goes on below to hood on Neopets, maybe the conversation will float up in the future with you here!
I'm pretty interested to hear about what kind of computer vision / OCR scripts do you use on Neo?

Neo has definitely been a great playground for me to practice and improve my casual coding

My most recent was mostly a bulk user shop buyer with an emphasis on trying to generate natural mouse movement. Rather than beautiful soup scraping, it works off of image screenshots to do regular checks on where it is and what to click. Definitely not the most efficient, but it would shine if TNT ever took bot countermeasures a little more seriously.

I understand that mouse event data isn't difficult to implement with the html5 architecture. Additionally, a lot of advanced sites such as stubhub, where botting runs rampant, have been able to detect headless browsing - from what I've read, it appears that Selenium has some detectable elements. Would love to discuss in depth if there is a dedicated thread for it haha

Welcome to ck

Appreciate the warm welcome!!

[Shawn]

My most recent was mostly a bulk user shop buyer with an emphasis on trying to generate natural mouse movement. Rather than beautiful soup scraping, it works off of image screenshots to do regular checks on where it is and what to click. Definitely not the most efficient, but it would shine if TNT ever took bot countermeasures a little more seriously.

I understand that mouse event data isn't difficult to implement with the html5 architecture. Additionally, a lot of advanced sites such as stubhub, where botting runs rampant, have been able to detect headless browsing - from what I've read, it appears that Selenium has some detectable elements. Would love to discuss in depth if there is a dedicated thread for it haha

Hmm you could be behind the recent CC junk item hoarding/sales then

I don't think TNT even measures mouse movements, but having to implement natural mouse movements reminds me a lot of bots for another game (Runescape), where that's super important.
There's always the fight going on between headerless browser emulation vs detection, its an endless cat and mouse game.

We do have a programming section, and if interesting topics pop up there I'm sure it'll attract replies and discussion!

[DarkSkies]

Hello welcome to the forum!!! Another tech user, we have some here and I always enjoy reading your talks and experiments!!

I'm not that deep into coding but I'm also curious about the vision perspective you have. Hope to see you around

[Bat]

Welcome to the community, @(you need an account to see links)!

Coding threads around here tend to take the form of "help me with a thing that I don't understand", or "look at this thing I'm building", neither of which makes for a very compelling conversation. An actual discussion about coding techniques, and the pros versus cons of certain approaches would be a breath of fresh air. We'd be happy to accommodate fledgling coders who are interested in learning how to get their concepts off the ground! If you have a question, or if you're looking to start a dialogue, then you'd be welcome to create a thread in (you need an account to see links). It's a ghost town over there because of the wide divide between enthusiasts and "professionals", but who knows! The right topic might help to generate a discussion.

[TsUNaMy WaVe]

Welcome to ck!