Reddit Placebot

I forked this bot to protect our national flag on /r/canada

Easy install instructions

These are the step-by step instructions for non-tech people:

• Go to nodejs.org and download and install the latest version
• Download this repository from this link: https://github.com/sambostock/reddit-placebot/archive/master.zip
• Uncompress the downloaded zip file
• Go to the uncompressed folder
• Rename the users.example.json to users.json and open it up to put your Reddit user names and passwords in the same format as the examples (and erase the examples). Make sure there is a comma on every line except the last, like in the example. If you have only one account, you don't need any commas.
• Windows: run install-and-run.bat
• Linux or Mac: run install.sh and wait until it finishes. Then every time you want to start the script, run start.sh

Troubleshooting

If you get an error something like this, then it means your users.json file has issues with commas. Please double check the instructions above.

Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.
If you do, this is most likely a problem with the reddit-placebot package,
not with npm itself.
Tell the author that this fails on your system:
    node src/run.js --harmony
You can get information on how to open an issue for this project with:
    npm bugs reddit-placebot
Or if that isn't available, you can get their info via:
    npm owner ls reddit-placebot
There is likely additional logging output above.

Advanced

Installation

You need to have NodeJS installed

git clone https://github.com/sambostock/reddit-placebot
cd reddit-placebot
npm install

Users

Change users.example.json to users.json and add your username and password of your account and all your throwaways.

Usage

Any command line options will override the options on config.json:

  npm run start
  npm run start --remote --target <REMOTE_TARGET_URL>
  npm run start --target <LOCAL_TARGET_FILE>
  npm run start --target <LOCAL_TARGET_FILE> --startX <targetStartX> --startY <targetStartY>

Configuration

The Target Image File

It can be a PNG, JPG or BMP file of any size or compression.

To change the position of the board you want to paint the target in:

• targetStartX: 0-999
• targetStartY: 0-999

Transparent pixels are just transparent pixels in PNG, or #ff00ff (for legacy reasons) and will be ignored by the bot.

Colors

You can use any colors and will try to find the closest match. The available board colors are visible in the file /src/colors.js. But it's better if you use and eyedropper tool from a board image.

Target Location

The bot downloads the board each time it's time to draw, so it only changes the necessary pixels that don't match the target.

Remote (for multiple people)

You can configure the target to be downloaded from a remote URL:

• useRemoteTarget: true
• REMOTE_TARGET_URL: "http://example.com/remote_target.png"

The image will be downloaded before painting and saved to images/remote_target.

Local (just for your own bots)

images/target.png

• useRemoteTarget: false
• LOCAL_TARGET_FILE: __dirname + '/images/target.png'

Bundle up changes

If you want to wait until multiple users are available to paint and do the changes all at the same time, change the config:

• bundleAccounts: <Number 1-Infinity> (default = 8)

Drawing Mode

• drawMode: <mode> (default = 'RANDOM')
  • 'TOPLEFT': Will draw from top to bottom and left to right
  • 'RANDOM': Will draw at random points

Testing

My initial intention was to make a simple script, didn't expect it to last, so testing manually was feasible. Now I should be writing tests, because it's getting tedious, but I don't know how long will /r/place last for.

Other Projects

Thanks to trosh/rplace to figure out how to actually read the bitmap from the server. I just ported that to Node.

Thanks oliver-moran/jimp for a Node image processing library without any kind of binary dependencies.

Thanks dtao/nearest-color for the nearest color matching.

License

The Reddit Placebot is released under the MIT License.