Reddit Placebot

Anything that can be automated should be automated

Place has ended. It was a good run, thanks everyone that supported the project!

This is a bot I made for the Reddit /r/place event of 2017 April Fools Day. I just wanted to make a simple quick script because I expected it to last until April 2nd. It lasted a total of 72 hours.

Originally made this bot to protect our national flag on /r/argentina. But you can use it for your artwork or evil deeds, with your own account, your other 4 throwaways, or the 1000 accounts dump you found on Pastebin. The Placebot is impartial and doesn't discriminate.

The /r/place final board

Non-tech install

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

Go to nodejs.org and download and install the latest version
On this page, click the green Clone or download button and then on Download 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 the examples (and erase the examples)
Run one time: install.bat (Windows) or install.sh (Linux or Mac) and wait until it finishes
Run every time you want to use it: start.bat (Windows) or start.sh (Linux or Mac)
Configure stuff if you need to on config.json, or open the start scripts and add command line arguments there

Para la imagen oficial de Argentina usen start_argentina.bat o start_argentina.sh

Installation

You need to have NodeJS installed

git clone https://github.com/zequez/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>

Target Oficial Argentino

Este comando es nosotros boludo:

npm run start --argentinaTarget

This uses the file at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Zequez/placebot-argentina-target/master/official_target.png

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')
- 'LEFTTOP': Will draw from left to right and top to bottom
- 'RANDOM': Will draw at random points

Testing

LOL

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.

Zequez / reddit-placebot

readme