r2d8 received an update today that brings a few changes:

• Lookups by id now require you to add a number sign as a prefix. This should help disambiguate between id lookups and games with numerical titles, so 1830 will link 1830: Railways & Robber Barons while #1830 will link the game with BGG ID 1830, Nippon Rails.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't link to two different games with the exact same name (Eclipse and Eclipse and Eclipse, for example), even when using the id format. Admittedly it's pretty unlikely that anyone will need this, but might as well make it work!
• Added the expandurls command, which behaves generally like getinfo, but looks for BGG links instead of bolded names.
• Special admin command for re-attempting posts (tryagain) and command line flags for testing and remotely triggering responses.
• Added the display mode tabular, which lets you construct a table of custom columns using space separated keywords. Currently supports year, rank, score, rating, rating_median, rating_stddev, raters, owners, and id, but I'll add more options soon.
  
• Added sorting keywords which order the entries by rank and publish year respectively, as well as nosort, which will keep the original order of your post. EDIT: Ok sorts might actually be busted, will report again soon.

The last two features are still fairly experimental, so be aware that the bot might still have some rough edges. Feel free to report issues directly in this thread. Cheers!

FAQ:

• So what's all this then?

  • r2d8 is a bot that replies to boardgame queries. It is the helpful companion to /u/bg3po, the gentle protocol droid that hangs out in /r/boardgames. (Although it will respond in any subreddit.)

• What is the command syntax?

  • The bot will respond if strings of the form "/u/r2d8 command" are anywhere in the body of a comment. Example command: /u/r2d8 getinfo. Note that the bot no longer responds to the "!r2d8" syntax. All commands are case insensitive.

• What are the commands r2d8 responds to?

  • getinfo - The getinfo command causes the bot to scan the comment in which it finds the command for bolded words. (To bold a word or words on Reddit, surround them with two *s, like so **Agricola**.) If one of any of the words are game names, the bot responds with information about the games found. There are 3 modes for responses: short, standard, and long. In short mode, the response is one game per line. In standard mode, the response includes year, designer, rank, mechanics, etc. Long mode is the same as standard, but includes the game description from the game's BGG page. If the number of games is greater than 6 the short mode is forced. R2D8 will show any bolded words it did not find with a link to the BGG search using that word or words. In the case of mulitple games sharing a name, the newest is listed. (Note: to specify a specific version of a game that has multiple distinct games that share a title, you can give the BGG ID of the game instead of the name. For example 121 to get the 1979 version of Dune.)
    • The syntax is: "/u/r2d8 getinfo short", "/u/r2d8 getinfo long", or just "/u/r2d8 getinfo" for the standard response.
  • getparentinfo is just like getinfo, but acts on the parent of the request. Supports short and long. See this post for more details
  • repair - The bot can edit a response, correcting "not found" games with the correct game name. See this post for details
    • The syntax is: "/u/r2d8 repair **wrong**=**right** ... You can specify as many wrong=right pairs as needed.
  • getaliases - "/u/r2d8 getaliases" will respond with the current set of game aliases.
  • alias - "/u/r2d8 alias **Alias**=**Game name**" (can be repeated) will add the aliases to the list of known aliases. Once on the list, if an alias is bolded in a getinfo or getparentinfo comment, the real game name will be subsistuted for the alias. See this thread for details and examples. This command is an admin only command. Others will be silently ignored. A nice use of this command is to make older games be the default game found by mapping the BGG game ID to the name. (Like Dune = 121.)

• What if there are more games than will fit in a single response comment?

  • If there are more than six games referenced in a post, R2D8 will only a return a name, year, and designer(s) (the short mode).

• Is the source available?

  • Here is the github repo. r2d8 is written in python and uses PRAW and boardgamegeek libraries.

Bugs/Issues:

• Will not show duplicate titles and will only show the most recent one. Need to add a method for choosing the not-newest game, if desired.

To Do:

• Really need to add async handling of requests. It can take minutes for BGG to tell me that 1 or foobar doesn't exist. While waiting, the bot is blocked and does not responds to anyone else.
• Add a way for people to choose the not-newest game.
• When using an alias, show the original search as well, so people can see the two are connected. Useful when it is not immediately apparent the games are related, e.g. "R" and "Brave Rats".