g_game.look() often "misses" looking at creature

[BastardofWinterfell]

Priority

Medium

Area

• Data
• Source
• Docker
• Other

What happened?

Issue

When bot is turned on, if the Check Players option is enabled in the Extras menu of vBot_4.8 (accessed via the vBot Settings and Scripts button for those unfamiliar) and another player appears on the screen while already moving, the script (which uses g_game.look(creature)) often "misses" looking at the player, especially if the player moves through the screen quickly. Instead, it looks at whatever is on the tile the target was when it entered the screen. Here is what I mean:

2025-01-16_21-55-19.mp4

As you can see in the video above, the script "looked" at the wrong thing and because of that, it did not draw the text with level and vocation over the character as it should have.

This "missed look" doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough (especially with faster moving players), but it should not happen at all.

Expected Behavior

With the Check Players option enabled, when another player appears on the screen, whether moving or not, the script should ALWAYS be able to "look" at the player to find out his/her vocation and level and draw it over that character, regardless of the speed of that player, ping, fps or any other variable.
In fact, I'm certain that before the commit that introduced changes leading to the stackPos issue mentioned in #1045, this issue with "missed" looks never used to happen. The terminal error from #1045 has been resolved with PR #1047, but the Check Players option in vBot 4.8 is not working as intended reliably as is.

Environment

Using: Unmodified latest main (commit 20a0bec)
Client: OpenGL x64 compiled using VS Solution
Operating System: Windows
Server/Protocol: TFS-based 10.41

What OS are you seeing the problem on?

Windows

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[mehah]

Did the previous change @kokekanon made solve your problem?

[BastardofWinterfell]

The previous change by @kokekanon solved the terminal issue from #1045, but does not solve this "missed" look problem for me, unfortunately.

I've also tried with both changes at once, but that does not fix the problem either.

This issue with looking at the wrong thing happens very often and it can happen as the target character appears in the screen from any direction. The faster the target character is, the more likely it is to "miss" looking at it and end up looking at the tile instead of the creature.

2025-01-17_02-48-49.mp4

2025-01-17_02-48-24.mp4

2025-01-17_02-44-50.mp4

2025-01-17_02-44-16.mp4

[kokekanon]

main repo , solution proposed by mehah
in my test
terminal error is fixed and the vbot feature works

Canary 13.40

level 855 speed 964

level 4.027 , speed 4.136

<flag setmaxspeed="1" /> speed 65.535

TFS 10.98

level 605 , speed 714

test on different protocols and different speeds and the main repo works

---

Don't you rule out that it could be a server-side error?

[BastardofWinterfell]

Don't you rule out that it could be a server-side error?

I am not sure, but I don't think that is the case.
In OTCv8, the Check Players feature from vBot 4.8 never looks at the wrong thing.
Tested with same server, same ping, same characters, same everything except different clients.
As far as I can tell, the extras.lua script is functionally identical in both, so I thought there might be some difference in how the clients handle "looking".

In any case, I've done further testing and managed to get it to always look correctly at the target player by changing this:
extras.lua#L571

- g_game.look(creature)
+ g_game.look(creature, true)

If I'm not mistaken, this makes the g_game.look() function perform the look in the battle list.

2025-01-17_12-57-44.mp4

I don't know if this is the best solution, but it seems to fix this issue of "missed" looks for me.

[mehah]

@BastardofWinterfell
Well, if that's the solution, it would be interesting if you opened a PR for this fix! :)