More code editor improvements: code formatting and exact script line reporting for errors

Include line numbers in error messages

Whenever the scripting subsystem encounters an error, it now records the exact line of code that caused it. This information is shown both in the application logs (file) and in the event log.

Code formatting

Writing code without any automatic formatting is tedious, and this feature helps with that. You can now either press Ctrl+Alt+Enter or use the context menu to automatically format the document. It will add missing line breaks, spaces, indentation, and more.

The current version is still fairly simple, but it's already much better than doing everything manually.

Bugfixes / Improvements

• [Event Log] Several UI adjustments here and there to make it look nicer
• [Bugfix] Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred on startup ("List of elements of type ..." )

Major improvements to the code editor — quick fixes, error highlighting, tooltips, signature help, and more

The code editor has received a lot of improvements, both visually and functionally.

Error highlighting

When an error is detected in a script, the editor now shows special markers to indicate that something is wrong in the code, along with detailed error information. This is reflected both in the scrollbar and on the code map.

Quick fixes for errors

If there is a known way to fix an error — for example, by adding a missing import (using …) — a special "Quick Fix..." button will appear in the popup. Click it, and the program will suggest one or more possible fixes.

The fix names are not very user-friendly yet, and that will be improved in one of the upcoming versions.

Code completion improvements

A prototype documentation panel has been added that displays XML documentation directly next to a method or property name. It is currently in a very rough alpha state: no formatting, no highlighting, and so on. Over the next few weeks, the main focus will be verifying that the document generation mechanism works correctly.

Tooltip

A hover tooltip has been added.

Signature help

When working with methods, a special popup now appears showing the current parameter, its description, and other relevant details.

Bugfixes / Improvements

• [Bugfix] Several minor UI bug fixes related to image processing triggers

Changed auto-update download source

Previously, updates for the program were downloaded from Microsoft Azure cloud, the expectation was that due to vast infrastructure capabilities, download speed will be great in all regions, but… it ended up being worse than from a single server in Saint-Petersburg.

Since this update, the program will download its updates from one of multiple servers located in Frankfurt, Germany, which is a major hub and this should give most users at least “good enough” download speed. We'll see how it goes and maybe I'll scale up that same approach and use multi-regional hosting as well. The current system allows me to fully control from which exact server the download will happen, so there is a wide range of control and possible improvements.

By the way, I'd want to remind about very-very useful option, located in Settings, called Automatically download updates. What it does is, well, it downloads updates… automatically. But does not apply them! Meaning that it won't break anything, the only difference from fully manual update is that you will skip download time.

BUGFIXES, BUGFIXES, BUGFIXES

and a few improvements

• [Image/Color/Text Search] Fixed “Task cancelled” exception being shown in UI
• [Text Search] Fixed crash that happened when trigger with running text recognition was disabled by enabling condition
• [C# Action/Trigger] Added few more options like automatic stop of the script if it is running for too long + few other UI/UX tweaks
• Done some documentation updates which are reflected in both the SDK and on a website. In the following weeks there will be a bunch of articles/examples focusing at beginner auditory

True Alpha-version

This version of EyeAuras contains dozens of different changes and tweaks in the very core of the system - image capture and processing pipeline.

This was all done to push as much performance as possible by removing things that are not needed at this point or proven to be not good in the long term. Tests are showing, that in most scenarios machine learning-based search is now about ~15% faster overall, with some extreme cases being twice as fast as they were before. But the main parameter which was improved is latency. So now the program reacts much-much faster on anything that happens on the screen - at each stage in the system (capturing the image, applying effects/resizing, preparing it for ML/image analysis and delivering analysis results (predictions and found bounding boxes) are now delivered to triggers much-much faster. In some cases latency has dropped from millisecond-range (i.e. 1+ millisecond) to less than 100 microseconds. This will be very noticeable in high-frequency scenarios, like trying to react on some object on the screen (e.g. item positions on the ground in Path of Exile or aimbot-like minigames where you have to track the object. This is not the latest iteration of improvements, I am planning at least two more large improvements (mainly in machine-learning areas), but they will be delivered later, probably even after the next large release to “Stable” channel at the end of Feb.

Scripts v3.0

Huge update to the scripting subsystem. This was all done as a part of work around Behaviour Trees - since the very beginning having fast and convenient way to prepare smaller bits of code embedded right into the tree itself was a major goal  and the current implementation is way too heavy for that - it is powerful, but too verbose and heavyweight.

Right now it is early testing phase and in the coming weeks there will be a bunch of scripting related updates, but if you want to start coding - do not hesitate to try out the newer system and, if you have any questions, contact me in Discord and ask anything. Me and linqse will do our best on writing documentation about the new API with examples and everything.

Few notes:

• Nuget packages - they are already supported, but are disabled for now. I want to cleanup all potential internal issues first and after that allow people to use external dependencies
• C# script Action and Trigger are already using v3, but WebUI is still on v2. Reason is that WebUI has several features that still require porting them from v2 to v3 to match the expected functionality, e.g. exporting/importing code as C# project. This will be implemented in the nearest weeks and released as a part of separate update

Behaviour Trees

Still in development, at this point the core is mostly done and is already functional, but not stable enough. This will be main focus for the next two weeks. Before releasing them the plan is to:

1. Release all things which are now in “alpha” stage and are disabled by default:

• scripts v3
• file-based storage: storing EyeAuras config in an explorer-like way, 1 aura = 1 file, with built-in version control support
• file references: this allows to store and distribute even large binary files as part of auras, e.g. neural networks

2. do exactly 1 release to “stable” branch which will include all of the above, but will not include trees. Lifecycle of stable versions is approximately 2-2.5 months, so this will give just enough time to test out trees in alpha

Here is an example of how behaviour tree looks like in action for Lineage 2 bot - this is a combination of WebUI (window in right part of the screen) and Behaviour Tree for the logic. This bot picks target, attacks using combination of skills, heals/resummons pet if needed and does a few other things.

Watch the video here

P.S. This was recorded not for public demo purposes, so there is some glitching going on with bot UI progress bars, the main thing there is the tree

Bugfixes and Improvements

• [Bugfix] Fixed an issue where the user interface could crash when reordering items.
• [Bugfix] Fixed an issue in Replica overlays where Keep aspect ratio calculated the overlay width/height incorrectly when the source was resized.
• [User Interface] When an aura has only 1 action/trigger/overlay, the editor for that item will now expand to fill all available space. This should make working with those auras much more pleasant, especially once all editors are adapted to take advantage of this change.

Preview window redesign for image/color/ML/text search triggers

The area selection workflow and image preview have been significantly reworked.

• Gradual zoom — you can now use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Hold the left mouse button to pan the image.
• Selection rework — you can now select an area directly in the preview and use Ctrl+C or the toolbar button to copy part of the image to the clipboard or use it as a search template.
• Save screenshot / video — this has been available in the effects window for a long time, but the UI has changed and it is now available directly in the preview panel for easier access.
• Video playback — you can now load any video into the preview panel and use it to extract an image template or choose the correct capture area.
  • Note: the ability to fully replace the captured stream with video footage will be released a bit later. This will let you configure your auras without launching the actual game.

In addition, the UI for these trigger types is now slightly simplified by default, with an option to enable advanced mode, so it feels less intimidating for new users.

Replay functionality in image/color/ML/text search triggers (alpha)

Capturing animated images has always been a problem — blinking icons, short buffs/debuffs, and so on. That is no longer an issue: the new Replay button lets you record video and immediately play it back in the built-in video player. Zooming, area selection, clipboard copying — it is all available there, with more features still planned (for example, applying effects to video footage).

Network message broadcasting functionality (very early alpha)

The Send message / Network message action/trigger pair is a powerful tool that can help you build your own managed network of connected EyeAuras instances. This has been available for several years already and is mainly used for multiboxing across multiple PCs.

The main issue has always been latency — all messages had to go through one of the EyeAuras servers, which introduced delay. The new broadcast mode lets you use your local network to exchange messages between PCs. This almost completely eliminates latency.

This feature is still in very early alpha and the setup is still rough — you currently have to specify the IP range manually. In the final version, this will most likely be configured automatically by the program.

To use this new feature, set ChannelId to:

• On the Server EyeAuras instance (the one listening for messages) — set broadcast://255.255.255.255/anychannelname
• On the Client EyeAuras instance (the one sending messages) — set broadcast://192.168.1.255/anychannelname

Important! 192.168.1.255 is only an example — replace 192.168.1 with your actual subnet. You can leave the final "255" unchanged, because it tells the program to broadcast the message to the entire subnet rather than to a specific IP.

p.s. by default, the program uses port 53082 for communication. You can choose any other port if you want by adding it right after the IP in ChannelId (for example, broadcast://172.16.15.255:55055/mychannel)

Bugfixes / Improvements

• Added the Getting Started panel, which is shown for empty auras. It includes Import / Subscription buttons, which should make life easier for users who just want to use someone else's aura pack.
• [Search triggers] Fixed a bug with some capture sources (for example, Shared surface) that occurred when Borderless capture was selected.
• [Bugfix] Fixed a bug that, in some cases, caused the program to freeze on startup (a very old and nasty bug — hopefully it is finally dead).
• [WindowSelector] WindowSelector now captures the process name as the last argument. Previously, when selecting a window, the program captured “Window handle OR Window title”. Now it captures “Window handle OR Window title OR Process name”.
• [Bugfix] Fixed a rare crash in LegacyScriptReferencesResolver.
• [Bugfix] Fixed a bug in the aura selection window — in some cases, auras were hidden and unavailable for selection.
• A LOT of work has gone into behavior trees. The first version is planned for release at the end of February.

Bug Fixes / Improvements

• [PlaySound] Fixed an issue that prevented this action from being created through the user interface
• [PlaySound] Fixed an issue that could sometimes reset the selected notification back to Disabled

Send Input and Send Text are no longer available in UI

These 2 actions are replaced by Send Sequence. It is easier to use and configure, especially in simple scenarios. Macro recording functionality is not fully ready yet, but I will take a look in one of the following releases, I've already got a bunch of bug reports.

p.s. old actions are still fully functional, so nothing will break, only new auras will be affected

New window finder / click position selector

Fully replaced the old selector, which was way too laggy and unreliable. The new version should be much-much better. Please send feedback Contacts | EyeAuras Wiki.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS

• [General] Fixed error which prevented Cloning and Moving items up and down
• [Image/Color/ML Search] Changed how Capture Borderless option works. Still far from ideal, but should cover more cases now, especially if windows does not do anything fancy with its borders/title bar
• [EventLog] Fixed problem with event log being displayed outside app bounds.
• [Synchronization] Fixed an bug with auras not being saved after downloading new version of a sync
• [Effects] Fixed IsEnabled status not being saved into config (disabled effects were re-enabled at startup)
• [Nuget in scritpts] Package references are now partially supported by scripting subsystem
• [EventLog] Added “Inputs” category, which contains inputs generated by the program
• [Scripting] Made it so if script compiles successfully previous errors are cleared
• [Enabling Conditions] Fixed enabling conditions properties not being saved/loaded properly under some circumstances
• [Overlays] Fixed overlays “stuttering” when either user or script changed position/size of an overlay
• [SendInputs] Fixed problem with “Granny's Send Input” positioning (mouse was moved incorrectly on multi-monitor setups
• All inputs should be more reliable now in terms of mouse positioning - changed the way how coordinates are calculated

The last patch of 2023 fixes several issues with network messages and advanced input methods (low-level NT*). At this stage, I’ll start focusing on the next major feature planned for 2024 — behavior trees, which will largely rethink how you work with the program and make automation much easier.

Happy New Year, everyone!