BlendoBot is a Discord bot intended for fun uses. It has a modular design such that it can dynamically load in any DLL that uses a common framework. The project is split into two major outputs; the BlendoBotLib DLL, which exposes interfaces for modules, and the BlendoBot executable that connects to Discord and operates with the modules.

You will require the ability to compile and run .NET Core 3.1 programs. Please follow the instructions for your operating system on how to setup .NET Core for your commandline. Alternatively, Windows and Mac OS users may choose to open the BlendoBot.sln file in Visual Studio 2019 and simply run the program from there.

If you can run dotnet from the commandline, simply:

• Clone the repository using:

git clone https://github.com/Biendeo/BlendoBot.git

• Change to the cloned directory with:

cd BlendoBot

• Create a file called config.json and set the fields (more detail in #Config).
• Finally, simply run:

dotnet run --project BlendoBot/ -c Release

BlendoBot will now begin running. If everything is successful, you should see a message such as:

[Log] (2019-03-20 04:19:22) | BlendoBot (0.0.13.0) is up and ready!

You will also see an individual message for each module available in the program such as:

[Log] (2019-03-20 04:19:21) | Successfully loaded internal module About (?about)

This should allow you to know whether any modules are currently in your program. By default, the solution should compile and automatically put all modules into the same folder as the BlendoBot executable.

In order to run BlendoBot, you will need to include a config.cfg file in your root folder (i.e. with BlendoBot.sln). If you do not have one, running the bot initially will create the below template and exit for you. The file should contain the following section:

[BlendoBot]
Name=BlendoBot
Version=0.0.1.0
Description=Smelling the roses
Author=Biendeo
ActivityType=Watching
ActivityName=clouds
Token=sometoken

The fields are as follows:

• Name - Determines the name of the bot. This is not the name used on Discord, just the internal program name that displays in ?about.
• Version - A version number that can be specified, to help identify what version the bot is using. This appears in ?about.
• Description - A brief description to help describe the version. This appears in ?about.
• Author - An author for the bot itself. This appears in ?about.
• ActivityType - The activity that the bot will supposedly be doing. These are the few terms that can be used by a client to indicate that they are doing something on the side. Use whichever one is the most appropriate for your case. Valid terms are: Playing, Streaming, ListeningTo, and Watching.
• ActivityName - The name of the activity that is used write after the type.
• Token - Your Discord bot token. This should never be disclosed or anyone can use anything to log in to Discord with your bot!

BlendoBot comes with a few commands that are labeled as internal. These commands are simply baked into the BlendoBot executable and are available to all running instances of BlendoBot.

The about command simply tells you information about the current BlendoBot instance and individual command modules. Using it without any arguments tells you about the running client (set in config.json), and using it with the name of a command afterwards (e.g. ?about help or ?about ?help) tells you information about that module.

The help command tells you how a command can be used. Using it without any arguments tells you a list of available commands. Supply a name of a command afterwards (e.g. ?help about or ?help ?about) and it'll tell you the help information about that command.

The admin command lets you as a guild administrator add other users to become BlendoBot admins, which also have access to this admin command, and any other command which requires an admin to operate. Currently, the admin command lets you control which commands are available on your guild.

The neat part of BlendoBot is that you do not need to modify the BlendoBot program itself to add a new command! Simply create your own module in the same way as the existing modules, and compile it to a DLL. Then, if the DLL is in the same folder as the BlendoBot executable, then when the bot launches, the modules will be loaded in!

First, make a new C# project targetting .NET Core 3.1 and output as a Class Library. These can be set in your project properties. You will also need to add a reference to BlendoBotLib to your project. This will now allow your program to compile properly and utilise the BlendoBot library to help it interact.

BlendoBot requires two aspects in your module in order to add it into the program.

• Your compiled module's library (i.e. the DLL file) should be located in the same folder as the BlendoBot executable. In this solution I have added every module as a dependency to BlendoBot so that they automatically copy the DLLs to the same folder. You can alternatively use a post-build script or command to automate this.
• Your compiled module must have at least one class that implements the CommandBase abstract class defined in BlendoBotLib. This abstract class defines things such as what the user types to trigger that command, and other properties. You can have multiple of these in your library, but you won't be able to access anything if you do not have any.

For the moment, just drop a pull request and I'll evaluate it.