Some suggestions to improve bots ... in the future...

[Zico]

Hey

Just back from a massive LMS match with some bots. Was pretty funny.

But now I have two suggestions about them. I don't know if this only affects the bots without waypoints but I think there will always be maps for such.... however.

1) Some time ago I played DM on fragcity and I saw the bots in a huge distance - not moving but shooting at me. I thought - "HEY they camp". And I personally like this. It makes the game with AI a bit more human. Ok they all stand around at different positions. If you could do this for just some bots in a match... one or two camping, rest running around ... but I think this would be too complicated

2) The bad thing about this is: They do it in LMS - for example - as well. So they camp in a gamemode not allowing it and they got killed for it... Happened in various maps I played... So probably they should do some random movements in such gamemodes...

3) They can't handle rockets. I won about 11 (of 20) matches because the last bot was blasted to pieces by it's own rockets... It seems they do not see walls corrrectly. So I run around a corner, the bot shoots at this corner and BOOM - Zico won.

Probably this is all hard to do but first I want to know what do YOU think about it, second I just want to do this suggestion to let you know what I wish to have improved IF it IS possible AND IF the bots would even GET such a priority to improve them in such a level even if they are just a byproduct of the game.

Thanks for reading
zico

[esteel]

Have you tried this with 2.0 or the 2.0.1 forum release? There have been some fixes to the bots to make them run around more though i'm not sure right now if it was some specific thing and will help with that you wrote there.

Well the bots try to lead their shot so they might hit you. Its not perfect in such a situation but there is someone working on the bots. Though those changes will NOT be in the next patch but one of the following (greater) releases.

[Zico]

Hm ... that camping thing with fragcity was - i guess in 2.0.0... but the rest is definately 2.0.1.

Yeah surely I know this might be bigger changes so I don't expect them too soon (says the topic). Was just a suggestion to think about it since I don't know too much about it but I can imagine it would require lots of changes.

[Cinquero]

Warning: the following is just a first and rough idea.

I have always been a bit curious about intelligence and how to artificially create it. For example, you can use genetic programming quite nicely to approximately solve the traveling salesman problem -- if you use an adequate mutation procedure. The pronounciation is on the last part -- I tried others and it just didn't converge...

Taking that a little further, what must a bot look like that can actually learn? I think I have stumbled over an idea here: instead of constructing waypoints and bot scripts that will never be as good as real players (except if you take that part into account where there is a difference between a machine and a real player -- zero reaction time etc.), why not recording player movements?

At first, let us keep that simple. Let us assume that the bot has only two tasks: decide "locally" what to do next and some general plan (take the flag or defend etc.). Next, let us concentrate on the local part. For example, a not so easy thing for bots to do is probably to use the grappling hook. If a bot is close to a position where a player has somewhen used a grappling hook, the bot could just try to do the same... of course, the result will vary somewhat as the starting conditions are almost never exactly the same. But one could introduce correction mechanisms for failed move reproductions and such stuff. Additionally, a combination of moves could be looked at as some sort of genomes. So that gives a quite interpretative picture of a move mutation and recombination . Some weighting could be done depending on the real player's success.

I think this learning from the real players could produce quite "intelligent" bots capable of the most intricate maneuvers.

[Tei]

Imagine you want your bost to rest and camp. But avoid dangeours areas. A way to make this as AI is to spawn invisible entitys where a bot or human has been killed, and avoid resting near some of this entityes. This idea work on some RTS games.

The game will be start and the bots will rest on areas where will be easy to kill. Then the map will be populated by "banned areas", so bots will only rest on areas where is hard to kill him. TADA!!!.. AI that make bots learn.

You can even pre-populate the map with that entities as "waypoints" and script something based on that waypoints. But use waypoints as a "storage" for info like "danger if you rest here" and other stuff. Waypoint is a well know way to code bots. Maybe the actual bots already use waypoints. Anyway weapons and enemys work as "waypoints" too so a bot can path the level following "weapons" and "enemys".

[esteel]

If i understand you and the code things already work like this.. bots navigate by items they think are important.. other players, flags, items. There was a bug in the bots that could make them stand around and it got fixed so i think its mostly what you want?

[Dokujisan]

The most annoying thing I've noticed about bots ...

Iif you move toward them and get within a certain radius of them, they will move toward you while turning sideways or even with their backs toward you. This makes it difficult to hit them...because they are not facing in the direction that they are moving.. it's kind've an illusion. However, it is also not realistic, because you (or human players) can't track an enemy unless you are looking at them. It seems as though bots can track enemies without even looking at them.

This is just my observation. I could be wrong about that.

[esteel]

Qantourisc contributed quite some work, hours and code to make the bots more realistic. Those changes are currently in the development branch of Nexuiz and not in the Bugfixing branch that the 2.1 release was done with IF i remember correctly. At least with Qantouriscs changes the bots should be way more realistic so i hope i'm right. Does changes should be in the next BIG release.
Hmm i took a look at the log files and it seems like the changes are indeed only on the development branch as those changes were too big for the bugfix branch.