Overview

SkunkWorks is a Decal-based scripting tool for Asheron's Call. It allows you to automate aspects of your gameplay by writing macros in a variety of popular languages, including VBScript and JScript. Such macros have access to various elements of game state such as inventory and character stats and can control gameplay by issuing keystrokes and mouse clicks. SkunkWorks macros are event-driven and can receive notification of game events such as monster spawns, melee attacks, chat messages and other interactions from NPCs or other players, etc. For purposes of this document I'm going to assume you're familiar with the concept of macroing and what it's good for; if that's not the case, see the Links page.

Those of you familiar with ACScript should feel right at home with SkunkWorks, which was designed from the ground up as a plug-compatible ACScript replacement. It fully supports the complete ACScript API, and also offers some features and capabilities that ACScript never had, such as:

• An in-game control panel for starting and stopping scripts.
• A hotkey interface for sending commands directly to your script without using tells.
• The ability to output text directly to the in-game chat window, without using tells.
• Script-level access to the Decal UI. Your script can now display a custom control panel in-game and receive events from it.
• Direct access to skill and attribute information.
• Direct access to information about clothing and equipment your character is wearing or wielding, not just what's in your packs.
• Built-in coordinate conversion so you can work with location data in familiar latitude-and-longitude form. Full ACSUtil functionality is built into SkunkWorks.
• Built-in pixel-checking functions so your script can see what's on screen.
• Accurate equipment type and merchant category information for every game item.
• Additional parameters on many events to provide your script with as much information as possible. No more guessing whether a given merchant will buy a particular item; you can check the categories yourself and find out for sure.

SkunkWorks consists of four components: a Decal plugin (SWPlugin.dll), a Decal netfilter (SWFilter.dll), a COM component embodying the scripting API (Skapi.dll), and a GUI interface for managing and launching scripts (SWConsole.exe).

Though SkunkWorks is built on top of Decal, writing a SkunkWorks macro is not like writing a Decal plugin. In Decal, your plugin runs in the same process as the game itself, and is therefore tightly coupled to game events. You receive an event, you react to it quickly, you get ready for the next event. This is great for some purposes, such as warning you when monsters or loot appear. It's less convenient for carrying out a complex series of actions, such as a food or potion recipe, because the recipe algorithm must be unnaturally chopped up to fit Decal's action-reaction paradigm. Because you're running in process, you can't take time out for lengthy computations without bringing gameplay to a halt. Also, bugs in your plugin can crash the game.

A SkunkWorks macro, in contrast, runs in a separate process. The SkunkWorks plugin contains just enough logic to queue game events for use by your macro, and to receive keyboard and mouse commands from your macro and carry them out in game; everything else happens out of process. Because gameplay continues while your macro thinks, you might not always hear about an event the instant it happens. On the other hand, you can take as much think time as you need (within reason), and code your algorithms using whatever logic seems most natural, including loops and recursion. And if your macro bombs or hangs, it won't take the game down with it.

There are two ways to use SkunkWorks:

• You can use the SkunkWorks console to run scripts written in any Windows scripting language, including JScript, VBScript, or even third-party languages such as Perl or Python. Since SkunkWorks fully supports the ACScript API, macros written for ACScript should run without modification under the SkunkWorks console.
• Alternatively, you can access the SkunkWorks COM interface directly from any COM-capable programming platform. Build your bot in C++, VB, or Delphi, or code it in script and embed it in a web page.

In either mode—console-hosted script or COM-based automation app—you have access to the full ACScript API as well as the native SkunkWorks API.