Thaumcraft 4 Research Bot

This is a screenshot-based bot to automate the Thaumcraft 4 research minigame (Minecraft 1.7.10).
Made for the Gregtech: New Horizons Modpack (uses TC Research Tweaks addon)

• Let me know if there's any other decent 1.7.10 modpacks using Thaumcraft 4, adding support shouldn't be much work Meant to replace the various Thaumcraft Research "Helper" websites

Preview

0035913.mp4

Features

• Pixel-based puzzle recognition
  • Custom Resource Pack required
• Fast, Efficient universal puzzle solver
  • Tested to work on all research puzzles in GTNH
  • Generates solutions that use simple aspects
  • Optimized for speed (for a python project...)
• Automatic mouse control to quickly input found puzzle solutions
• Automatic mouse control to craft undiscovered aspects
  • Experimental

Usage

Some technical know-how currently required.

• Install uv (python runner / package manager)
• Download the code of the project and unzip it into a new folder
• Prepare the Game
  • Install and activate the required resource pack ("tcbotresourcepack.zip")
  • Open a Research Table and put in an unsolved Research Notes item
    • There shouldn't be any aspects on the puzzle board except the initially given ones
  • Make sure the game window is on your main screen and is large enough
  • Make sure a large item tooltip isn't covering up the game board
    • You may want to hide NEI (default keybind in GTNH: O)
• Open a terminal in the project folder (Windows Terminal/Powershell/CMD)
• Start the project with the command: uv run main
  • The bot will now:
    • Bring the game to the foreground
    • Take a screenshot
    • Parse the puzzle board from the screenshot
    • Generate a solution for the puzzle
    • Move the mouse to place the aspects according to the solution
• After it's done placing aspects, put in the next unsolved Research Notes and press enter in the terminal to solve the next board

Limitations

• No Linux Support
  • I don't want to deal with finding a universal way of taking screenshots and performing mouse input
• Solver algorithm currently doesn't scale well with many (7+) given aspects on large boards
  • It gets quite slow. On the largest boards (9+ given aspects) it may currently take minutes to calculate
• No detection for how many Aspects the player owns
  • I don't want to deal with fiddly OCR on the tiny minecraft font
  • This also means which aspects the algorithm considers as "Expensive" and "Cheap" currently doesn't consider things you may have a lot of (like Instrumentum)
• Currently no way to reduce the mouse interaction speed
  • The current speed works consistently for me, but might break on laggier machines.
• Not well tested on different GUI sizes & Screen Resolutions
• Currently not very user-friendly. Missing:
  • A no-code way to configure custom costs for aspects
  • Pre-bundled .exe releases
  • More comprehensible error messages

FAQ

Q: The mouse control is going wild! How do I stop it?
A: Smash your mouse into the top-left corner of the screen for an emergency stop

Q: Why not just pre-compute the best solution for all puzzles?
A: The "holes" in the puzzle board are randomly placed when creating the Research Notes, so puzzles aren't always the same.

Q: Why Python?
A: It's the only language I know where I could find decent libraries to take screenshots and perform mouse input.
Even these aren't good, though: the screenshot library just fails when the Window is at negative screen coordinates?

Q: Why isn't this a mod?
A: That's too cheaty in my opinion.

Issues, Contributions, Contact

Use Github.
When encountering a crash on a specific puzzle, include the generated "debug_input.png".
You may also find me on the GTNH discord server.