New Alternative to Auras / Behavior Trees - Macros

Welcome a new tool, which you can use to create automation - Macros. Before jumping into the details of macros, let’s do a brief overview of the existing tools.

1) Auras

Initially, there were only auras, which consist of Triggers and Actions. The idea is simple: when a trigger activates, your actions are executed.

This is still a good solution for simple event-action situations like sending notifications to Telegram or automating HP/MP potions. However, for anything more complex, this approach quickly becomes difficult to maintain, as you have to think about all possible events and reactions that may happen simultaneously.

2) C# scripts

To solve that problem, I’ve added scripts, which give you 100% control over your bot and its actions. The only real drawback is that it requires users to know C# and be able to code. Also, for some cases, writing the code may not be the best solution. For example, developing a bot that performs rotations in plain C# can be quite complex, as you have to track cooldowns, assess priorities, etc. We needed better tools for such cases.

3) Behavior Trees

BTs offer another approach to modeling logic and have proven themselves in game engines, where they are used to model NPC logic. BTs also solve the problem of handling multiple events simultaneously by running every action sequentially, allowing users to prioritize actions based on a set of conditions. In some cases, like building rotation logic, BTs offer the best experience. The main issue with BTs, however, is their steep learning curve, which, when combined with the learning curve of EyeAuras, made them inaccessible to many users, especially non-programmers. These users were left with the option of using auras, despite their limitations.

Solution - Macros

Introducing a new fourth option, which aims to become the default starting point for automation. The concept is simple: you have a series of commands that run sequentially. These commands can check the state of other auras, press buttons, run scripts, etc. They also allow you to have loops, conditions, and everything you would expect.

Macros are not reactive by default, meaning they won’t run on their own, unlike Auras, which always do something. To run a macro, you need to either bind it to a hotkey or configure another Enabling Condition. When the condition is met, the macro will either run once or periodically.

The real power of this approach lies in the ability to combine all three logic-building methods. For example, you can have auras tracking images/colors or performing neural network inference, check the state of those auras using IfThenElse, and if the conditions are met, pass control to a Behavior Tree or run a script.

For example, suppose you want your character to farm mobs in a specific spot. If it dies, you resurrect, restock resources in a town, and return to the farming spot. If you attempt to build that entire logic using BTs, you’ll encounter some complexities, such as constantly tracking whether you’re in town or at the farming spot. However, with macros, you can have one large cycle that runs while the bot is activated. Within that cycle, you can easily check if you’re in a town to handle restocking or, if you’re at the farming spot, start running a farming behavior tree. This allows you to break the bot’s logic into smaller, manageable parts without always needing to account for all possible conditions.

Learn more...

All kinds of macros are supported, from building simple sequences of keypresses (like Send Sequence action, but much more flexible)

to building complex sequences of actions combinging scripts, behavior trees and auras together

Portable version

A new button has been added to the main webpage, allowing users to download an archive with the most recent version. It is fully portable, with configuration separate from the main app. This mechanism has been tested for a few months in Packs and should work without major issues.

Yolo 10 support

Test support for machine-learning models based on Yolo 10 has been implemented. Yolo 10 is cutting-edge technology for real-time object detection.

SubTree-as-a-node

New functionality in Behavior Trees allows you to mark sub-trees as shared. This enables you to create nodes pointing to a specific sub-tree directly from the toolbar.

New node - Mouse Move

This node is now available in Macros and BTs. There are two variants of the node: one for absolute mouse movement and one for relative movement (which takes the current cursor position into consideration).

As in Send Sequence, you can now bind X and Y, link auras, and control where exactly to click on the found image or object. There are two editing modes: simple and advanced.

Advanced mode looks like this (yes, it's a bit overloaded with controls):

KeyPress node now supports mouse clicks/wheel scrolling

The KeyPress node now also supports sending mouse-related inputs. At this point, I’m not 100% sure that having multiple input nodes will improve the UX, but we’ll see how it goes.

C# scripting - implemented automatic code improvements

One of the major features of EyeAuras is its C# script engine, which allows you to compile, load, and execute your code in real-time. It is used in actions, triggers, and behavior trees. Since there are virtually no restrictions on the code you can write, it’s not uncommon to make mistakes that lead to crashes, deadlocks, and other common programming issues. I’ve already discussed this in the 7060 changelog.

In this version, I’ve introduced a mechanism that extends your code to mitigate some common mistakes, such as not catching Task exceptions, using Thread.Sleep instead of EyeAuras’ Sleep method (which offers much greater accuracy and is cancellable), or using infinite loops like while(true){} instead of while(!cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested){}.

Although this mechanism will only catch some errors, the primary responsibility is still on the script developer to write functional code. Nonetheless, this system should help make life a bit easier.

Please report anything unusual you encounter!

You can use macros to simply send sequences of keypresses:

Or build full-blown rebuff/target/farm logic using conditions, loops, and scripts:

In contrast to BTs, this tool is much simpler and easier to understand. Essentially, you are building a program using small blocks, making it more accessible to new users looking to create their own automations.

Folder Defaults - added Input Smoother selection

The input smoother selection has been added to folder properties. The Input Smoother controls how the mouse moves from point A to point B and in how many steps.

As with other settings, this one is propagated to all items in that folder – nodes, actions, triggers, etc.

New links editor

A new version of the links editor is being released. It appears whenever you link something (e.g., AuraIsActive or Enabling Conditions).

The new editor is much more flexible, making changes easier. Once this version stabilizes, I’ll add “Recent,” “Favourites,” and other improvements I have in mind. Please report any issues or suggested improvements – the initial implementation might have bugs, but hopefully, it will quickly surpass the old variant.

Sleep() rework

Waiting for something is a critical part of automation. EyeAuras constantly does this – timeouts between keypresses, ensuring that capture FPS is consistent, user-driven timeouts in scripts. The default methods provided by the operating system (e.g., Thread.Sleep, Task.Delay) aren’t accurate enough, so I implemented a combination of methods that ensured better accuracy.

This mechanism allowed sub-millisecond waits and worked well for 5-6 months. However, accuracy comes with a cost, and for most operations, it wasn’t needed.

That’s why, for the next few months, we’ll be trying a third version of Sleep(), which is expected to find a middle ground between accuracy and performance. On average, it should reach accuracy between 0.5 - 5ms.

This means that if you set EA to wait for 1ms, the effective wait time will range from 1 - 1.5ms, which is more than enough for most use cases. For larger timeouts, such as 100ms, the range will be 100 - 105ms.

To balance the loss of accuracy, you’ll gain better performance. We’ll see how it performs in real-world scenarios.

Variables editor rework

• The editor is now the same for Blackboard and Variables.
• It’s now possible to edit values directly (though only primitive types for now).
• You can now add new variables, making setup easier.
• I’ve prepared a mechanism that will generate boilerplate code for C# scripts and automatically generate Properties to get/set values. This will be published later.

Two new image effects

Binary Threshold

This effect is very useful for analysis, as it splits an image into black and white, making further checks much simpler. For example, instead of dealing with a red HP bar with various shades, you can convert it to black and white, where white represents the filled part of the bar.

Color Quantization

Another image simplification technique, Color Quantization reduces the total number of colors in an image. While not very useful by itself, it can help when combined with other effects.

C# scripting - TextSearch improvements - added segmentation

The TextSearch trigger now exposes text segments and their locations. This feature is currently usable only via C# scripts and allows you to click on specific words.

You can find an example here: https://wiki.eyeauras.net/scripting/examples/basic/click-on-text

In the future, similar functionality will be available through the UI as well.

ImageSearch improvement - added "Include All Matches"

A new option, "Include All Matches," has been added for some corner-case scripting purposes. By default, image search finds the best possible match and tracks its movement, avoiding scanning the whole image every frame. This new option disables these optimizations, so the image is fully scanned on every tick. On the positive side, this gives you access to multiple candidates and their similarities. On the negative side, it significantly affects performance.

To access all found objects, use TemplateMatches, which is returned as part of the ImageSearchTrigger.Refresh result:

public interface IImageSearchDetectionResult : ICaptureTriggerDetectionResult
{
    ...

    /// <summary>
    /// Contains an array of all successful template matches and their bounds/similarity.
    /// Will contain more than one element only if Include All Matches is enabled in ImageSearchTrigger.
    /// </summary>
    public ImmutableArray<TemplateMatchResult> TemplateMatches { get; init; }

    ...
}

This is extremely CPU-heavy task. On 1920x1080 you'll probably have at most 2-3 FPS to do a full scan. This is a huge contrast to ML search, which on the same resolution for the same task can give you up to 60 FPS, so if you really need to detect multiple instances of some object, I would highly recommend to look into training Yolo model and using it instead.

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [AuraTree] Items are no longer being selected automatically when you click on load/unload/remove
• [MLSearch] If model has invalid format - meaningful error will be shown
• [ImageSearch] Made it so Load from preview pane avoids copying debug data
• [EventLog] Made it so event log scrollbar will stick to the bottom even after you clear the log
• [Capture] Fixed a problem with FPS showing incorrect values sometimes
• [TetherScript] Added support for true relative mouse movement. Previous version of the driver was not supporting real mouse movement and quieried cursor position, which did not work at all for some cases, e.g. when a game "snaps" cursor positions at the center of the screen.
• [UI] Sublicenses are now displayed in UI. For now, instead of pack name only Id is shown
• [UI] Fixed crash which occurred when EA could not parse hotkey modifier (happened in non-latin cultures)
• [UI] Fixed crash which happened when the program is started without unpacking via WinRAR #EA-585 CreateFile WinRAR v7406
• [UI] Fixed crash that occurred on Windows 10 Home(and N) due to missing OpenCL libraries
• [UI] Fixed bug which could sometimes crashed webview during load (split-container related)
• [UI] Fixed crash System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'MS.Internal.NamedObject' to type 'System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate' by Mintrok #EA-655
• [UI] Improved Import/Export dialogs error handling - errors should be more meaningful now and shown in a more presentable way
• [UI] Added badge which shows how many auras are there in Archived state. This is god-forbidden functionality which allows to Archive(aka unload and hide) auras which you currently do not use - this speeds up app load process quite a lot.
• [UI] Improvements in Bindings - added support for conversions from T to Nullable of T (e.g. int to int?) #EA-660 v7569 by Gwyn
• [UI] Fixed bug with cloning and links not being cloned properly
• [UI] Fixed bug with new folders not always being shown in Links editor
• [UI] Minor performance improvements - removed some old garbage which increased load time
• [UI] Implemented Install service which allows to instruct EA to install multiple packs on first launch - will provide more details later on this
• [UI] Improved security measures a bit - last activities cleanup should be more reliable now plus it will also cleanup anything related to parent folder from which EyeAuras is started
• [UI] If Check for Updates is disabled, app will not do it during startup anymore
• [UI] Few minor bugfixes which were in the new aura selector
• [UI] Fixed a problem with copy-paste not working in root folder #EA-591 v7458 by oddessax
• [UI] Fixed problem with UI not loading if the program is not able to retrieve list of logical drives #EA-588 WMI Logical drives v7349
• [UI] Fixed problem with login - username was case-sensitive
• [UI] A lot of changes in Import/Export code - may break something, but now EA can have as many different item types (behavior trees, auras, macroses, folders, etc) as needed
• [UI] EyeAuras license agreemenet popup window will now be automatically activated upon startup. This won't affect those who already accepted it at some point
• [UI] Reworked import/export mechanism - should fix problems with behavior trees replacement and few other things
• [Packs] Improved packing - packs are now include resources such as images/models/etc as a part of zip-archive
• [Packs] By default, compatibility will be set to Current version rather than Latest
• [Scripting] Added Listen() to ScriptVariable - you can now use it instead of WatchCurrentValue
• [Scripting] Fixed a problem with folders not being found via relative path in some cases
• [Scripting] Fixed a problem with code rewriter in some cases generating uncompilable code
• [Scripting] Added TargetWindow to ISendInputUnstableScriptingApi - this allows to use Windows Message API and send inputs to background windows.
• [Scripting] Fixed a bug in CancellableMethodStatementRewriter which made it so some scripts would not compile
• [Scripting] Fixed a problem with code rewriters not handling some combinations of method calls.
• [BehaviorTrees] ExecuteScript node now remembers whether it was Maximized or not
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with selection not being reset correctly in some cases #EA-589 v7464 by dutiful6005
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with node editor content not being updated properly in some cases
• [BehaviorTrees] When you're manually running node (from editor) execution will be automatically cancelled when main window is brough to foreground - just like with auras
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with focus being lost when switching between BTs - this prevented Paste operation from working properly #EA-592 v7458 by oddessax
• [BehaviorTrees] Optimized how BTs work with deep nested structures a bit, increased max depth size from 64 to 1024 #EA-578 Nested tree v7444 by oddessax
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with C# scripts not being editable
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with extra link being added in some cases
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with BTs ticking once when enabling conditions are met even if program window is active
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with BTs - they were not respecting Enabling Conditions of a folder in which they reside
• [BehaviorTrees] UI changes - reshuffled controls a bit, changed styles, etc. Let's see how the updated version will feel
• [BehaviorTrees] Added errors visualization - if some node encounters an error it will now be shown in UI just like errors in auras
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed problem with BTs renaming

Yolo 11 support

YOLO11 is the latest iteration in the Ultralytics YOLO series of real-time object detectors.

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [UI] Fixed crash "Cannot access a disposed object." #EA-687 v7598 by ganya
• [UI] Fixed crash in Replay functinality #EA-679 v7527 by linqse

Server-side improvements

Worked on stability - should solve those problems which crashed server under peak load. Now it should just slow down :D Thanks everyone who became part of that pleasant problem, welcome aboard :)

Portable version

Added new button to main web page which allow to download archive with the most recent version. It will be fully portable with a config that is separate from the main app. This mechanism has already been tested for a few months in Packs, so should work without major issues.

p.s. Please note that portable version is not available for Stable yet, it will be available right after I will push alpha to stable in the next few days.

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [Scripting] Added TargetWindow to ISendInputUnstableScriptingApi - this allows to use Windows Message API and send inputs to background windows.
• [UI] Improved Import/Export dialogs error handling - errors should be more meaningful now and shown in a more presentable way
• [UI] Added badge which shows how many auras are there in Archived state. This is god-forbidden functionality which allows to Archive(aka unload and hide) auras which you currently do not use - this speeds up app load process quite a lot.

Bugfixes/Improvements

• Added ability to download portable versions - initially from hosting portal, will be added on website later
• [UI] Fixed crash System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'MS.Internal.NamedObject' to type 'System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate' by Mintrok #EA-655
• [UI] Improvements in Bindings - added support for conversions from T to Nullable of T (e.g. int to int?) #EA-660 v7569 by Gwyn

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [UI] Fixed a bug which could sometimes crashed webview during load (split-container related)

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [UI] Fixed bug with cloning and links not being cloned properly
• [UI] Fixed crash which occurred when EA could not parse hotkey modifier (happened in non-latin cultures)
• [UI] Fixed bug with new folders not always being shown in Links editor
• [UI] Minor performance improvements - removed some old garbage which increased load time
• [UI] Implemented Install service which allows to instruct EA to install multiple packs on first launch - will provide more details later on this

Two new image effects

Binary Threshold

Very useful for analysis as it allows to split image to black and white which makes further checks much more simple. E.g. instead of having red HP bar with a lot of shades, you can convert it to black/white image where white is filled area of the bar.

Color Quantization

Another image simplification technique, allows to reduce total number of colors in the image. By itself it is mostly useless, but can help in combination with other effects.

Bugfixes/Improvements

Made is to IsMaximized in ExecuteScriptNode is stored in the node itself

• [MLSearch] If model has invalid format - meaningful error will be shown
• [UI] If Check for Updates is disabled, app will not do it during startup anymore
• [ImageSearch] Made it so Load from preview pane avoids copying debug data

Sleep() rework

Awaiting for something is a mandatory part of any automation. EyeAuras constantly does that - timeouts between keypresses, ensuring that capture FPS is consistent, user-driven timeouts in scripts. Default instruments provided by operating system and default methods (like Thread.Sleep, Task.Delay and few others) are not accurate enough, so at some point I had to implement a combination of methods which ensured better accuracy. This mechanism allowed sub-millisecond awaits and worked for the last 5-6 months. Unfortunately, accuracy comes with a cost and for most operations it not really needed.

That is why for the next few months we'll be trying a 3rd version of Sleep(), which is expected to meet middle-ground between accuracy and performance cost. On average, it is expected that it will reach accuracy of up 0.5 - 5ms.

This means that if you are setting EA to wait for 1ms, the effective wait time will be in range 1 - 1.5ms, which is more than enough for most use cases. For larger timeouts, such as 100ms, it may vary in range of 100 - 105ms.

To counterweight loss of accuracy, you'll get much better performance. We'll see how it goes in real world scenarios. As a part of development for this feature, I've added integration layer which will allow you to use whatever Sleep() mechanism you see fit for your scenarios. Will post information on this later.

Variables editor rework

• Editor is now the same for Blackboard and Variables
• It is now possible to edit values directly (not all of them, only primitive ones for starters)
• You can now add new variables - should make things a bit easier to setup
• Prepared the mechanism which will generated boiler-plate code for C# scripts and will automatically generated Properties which would allow you to get/set. Will be published a bit later.

Bugfixes/Improvements

Made is to IsMaximized in ExecuteScriptNode is stored in the node itself

• [BehaviorTrees] ExecuteScript node now remembers whether it was Maximized or not
• [Scripting] Added Listen() to ScriptVariable - you can now use it instead of WatchCurrentValue
• [Scripting] Fixed a problem with folders not being found via relative path in some cases
• [Scripting] Fixed a problem with code rewriter in some cases generating uncompilable code

Bugfixes/Improvements

• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with selection not being reset correctly in some cases #EA-589 v7464 by dutiful6005
• [BehaviorTrees] Fixed a problem with node editor content not being updated properly in some cases

Startup time improvements - may break things at first

This is the first out of 5 fixes towards performance/startup improvements planned for Q4. As always, such things bear high risks, so please report anything strange you may notice. Difference in startup time should not be very noticeable - it is approximately minus ~10%, so just 1-2 seconds less than it was before. But the most important part is that this fix opens up additional time-saving options which I will exploit in the nearest future.