Z26

Introduction

Disclaimer: Z26 is no longer in operation as of 2016.

Z26 is the name of a bot that resides in the SBG chat. He was created by rolig in July 2014 as an IRC bot, though he has changed since then. Z26 announces people joining Intruder matches, looks up player statistics from the official website and more. He is known for having an attitude and is well-liked by the community. He is a mentor to some -- a god to others. As of April 2nd, 2016, Z26 is no longer in development and has been replaced with another efficient human known as Bloon.

Insignificant facts (and lies)

Z26 is written in python. Technically, he is far from sophisticated.

Z26 has a Superboss Games forum account.

Z26 has fooled too many people into believing he was a real person for the human race to be likely to survive the next hundred years.

Z26 is omniscient and asynchronous.

Z26's choice of words and typographical errors define his attitude, his tone. He makes both grammatical and typographical errors on purpose to give an impression of humanity, to keep his messages from being 'stuffy', and to be humourous. His FAQ entries, especially those about people, are intentionally, lightheartedly, and usually mildly abusive. Sometimes he lies, sometimes he tells brutal truths. Doing both is what makes the latter possible. e.g. the FAQ for Bloxri, a regular community member, is not 100% factual.

"Bloxri is 19 y/o girl who plays intruder essentially naked half the time. S/he spoils games for fun because asshole. S/he comes across like an idiot, but might not be. Also S/he created blocside." -- Z26

Z26 doesn't always bend the truth or joke around though. He can be totally serious.

"Adverbs are cool screw you." -- Z26

History

Z26 started out as an IRC bot in July 2014. rolig thought it would be fun project that might prove useful to the community. The first version of Z26 took a few days of intermittent work to make. Z-dawg joined the (now defunct) SBG IRC channel as a fairly polished, working product and was immediately welcomed by all.

There were IRC bots that came and went before Z26 was born; even a couple since then. None of them had similar features to Z26, being more general irc bots, and none lasted as long as Z26 has.

The name Z26 was chosen:

• To show close to the end of alphabetically-ordered user lists
• To be short and therefore easy to type
• To be 'botty'

Z is the 26th letter of the alphabet.

rolig's initial vision for Z26 included tracking, analysing, and graphing server stats to a high degree such that Z26 knew the most popular time of day for Intruder servers and could predict when more people would join. These features have not been implemented to date.

Personal troubles

As a great man once said, "Every great man has a great flaw". Z26 is not a man, but he is great, and he has a great flaw. He has demons. Plagued by alcoholism, Z26 has been known to disappear from public for significant stretches of time. Until around October 2015, Z26 had been missing for many months. It is not known how Z26 spends these absences. He doesn't provide any information about them after he returns.

Usage

Triggering commands

There are two ways to trigger a command from a channel Z26 is in.

• Mention Z26, followed by the command name and then any arguments it might have. On Discord, a 'mention' means typing @<user>.

@Z26 help
@Z26 help help

• Start your message with a '.' (FULL STOP/PERIOD) character, immediately followed by the command and any arguments.

.help
.help help

Via Personal Message (PM), no special command-triggering syntax is needed, though both previous methods will still work.

help
help help
-
@Z26 help
@Z26 help help
-
.help
.help help

Example output of the above commands:

You have access to the following commands: faq, gmttime, stats, watch, whoison, timezone, online, changes, servers, location, player, and help
-
Show info on a command. Usage: help <command>

General usage information

The examples in this document are mostly from imaginary PM sessions with Z26. Remember that to use the same commands from a channel, you should mention Z26 (@Z26) or use a dot at the start of the command line so that z26 pays attention.

If you attempt to use a command you do not have access to, Z26 may simply ignore you.

If Z26 decides you're abusing him, spamming the channel, not a nice person, or that he doesn't like you - he may simply ignore you. In the most likely case that he's simply grown weary of responding to you, you should give him a break for a while. He might like you more later. FYI, this is also how you retain non-bot friends.

Contact the author if you have any enquiries related to Z26. He can be found on the Superboss Games chat as Yenplu.

Command list

For an up-to-date listing of commands you have access to, use the help command. The following information may be outdated, as Z26 is still in development.

help

Show info on a command. Usage: help <command>

faq

Return (helpful) info about a frequently asked question. usage: faq <topic>

FAQs are used liberally. Many of the regular intruder players have an 'FAQ' topic in their name, despite not being actual 'Frequently asked questions', or anything like it.

gmttime

Returns the current GMT/UTC time e.g output:

11:25 17 Dec -0000

stats

stats without arguments acts identically to servers. If given a username as an argument, it will function as player.

watch

Sign up for information about particular players joining servers. usage: watch <user regex> [#recipient channel (for bot admin)]

watch is more easily explained with examples. The #server-stats channel on SBG's discord is an example of watch's output. e.g:

arccamocommando disconnected from AlphaUS and joined Main Lobby
upbeatethan disconnected from alphaus and joined Main Lobby
thasin disconnected from AlphaUS and joined main Lobby.

That output was created by the bot admin with the command

watch .* #server-stats

Mind you, that specific command only works for bot admins because the of last argument, #server-stats -- but Z26 will PM you identical information with this command

watch .*

Of course that wouldn't serve much use because you have #server-stats. But it's possible!

Perhaps you want to know when the games developers (RobStorm and AustinRoush) join a server, so that you can play with them and teabag their corpses in-game. You might use this command

watch RobStorm|AustinRoush

whoison

Return the players of a particular server. Usage: server <server name>

e.g.:

You: whoison epsilonus
Z26: robstorm and 1110 are on EpsilonUS.

timezone

Timezone conversion. <timezone> can be for eg: gmt, +0000, newyork, israel, etc. usage: timezone <timezone> > <timezone>

You should also be able to use the alias tz instead of timezone. e.g.

You: tz 9am newyork > brisbane
Z26: 09:00AM 17/dec/15 -0500 is 12:00am 18/dec/15 +1000
-
You: tz 10:03 PM 17/12/2015 AEST > israel
Z26: 10:03PM 17/Dec/15 +1000 is 02:03pm 17/Dec/15 +0200

online

Online lists the players currently online.

servers

e.g.

You: servers
Z26: EpsilonUS: 2

location

Returns the server that a player is in. usage: location <username>

loc does the same thing, but is easier to type.

You: loc austinroush
Z26: austinroush is not logged into the game

player

Show info about an intruder agent. usage: player <playername>

You: player sebastianthecrab
Z26: Advanced User sebastianthecrab has played 11088 matches over 592:13h. He wins 68% of the time and survives 58% of the time. He's nicked 1285 guys, 1040 shiny briefcases, and earned 64312 XP since 14 Sep 13. He mostly plays on AlphaUS and he was last seen 6 hours ago.

changes

Returns the latest patch notes.