Hello

I guess I made this thread some day in the old forum so sorry I bring this up again.

But after some months pausing (you see that because I am not very active here in the forum) I still haven't changed my thoughts about this:

I am not a good player but I try not to complain. Sometimes it's very hard AND also frustrating to play online (especially after such a long pause).

Because of this I REALLY like AND enjoy fighting with Bots.
In fact... I would never have started playing this game if this game would not have any bots.

I already like the bots as they are but on some custom maps they still act a bit stupid. On big maps they sometimes don't even move or don't use all parts of the level (Map Pushme for example).

I am not that familiar with all this waypoint stuff or something like that... But can I expect some improvement some day on these bots? Also in other terms (performance, more human acting).

I KNOW this game is meant to play online and I am probably the only one asking for this, so I cannot expect this request is really taken serious... but... well.... Probably you coders once get bored or something like that ... then I would really would be happy to see some improvements there.

Thanks

A lot of how they act is based on how well the mapper lays out the bot waypoints. They tend to stick very closely to those.

Also, not all maps have waypoints. What bots really lack is the ability to jump... which means they can't navigate on some maps no matter how good the waypoints are. On such maps, one usually makes no waypoints at all - they'd be pointless anyway.

Oh yes. Jumping would be a nice feature for some day

If this would also mean to use Waypoints better on some maps... I would love it ^^

The problem is that supporting jumping is REALLY hard to do. Where you end up after a jump depends on the speed you had when you started the jump, AND on what you do WHILE in air. One can't model that by just linking waypoints, so basically the whole bot code would need to get rewritten to support jumping.

I can see this is not easy...

But as said.. I don't really expect this will really happen. I just wanted to bring this back in the hope some day... probably.. I don't give it up

I mainly don't like how bots can "see" you while their back is turned toward you. They should have to turn toward you in order to see you, just like everybody else.

They also have a tendency to want to stick to you like a magnet if you get too close to them. That isn't the worst thing in the world, but it is kind of annoying and predictable.

Dokujisan wrote:I mainly don't like how bots can "see" you while their back is turned toward you. They should have to turn toward you in order to see you, just like everybody else.

They also have a tendency to want to stick to you like a magnet if you get too close to them. That isn't the worst thing in the world, but it is kind of annoying and predictable.

That must be a consequence of the so-called Axe/Lynx Effect.

i agree the bots can be fun but at times it gets really boring beacause like people before the stick to the way points and the follow eachother

Bots do jump every now and then iirc, just not in any usefull way Making bots act smart is mutch of a mappers job, the waypoint layout does make or brake their behavior. However maplayout is equally important, maps like controlfactor or mentalspace has layouts that are evil to the botsystem.

Another thing i really dont like with the bots is how their damage per shot goes up with their skill. Once they are set to a skill level where they are hard to hit and aim fairly well they have enough dmg boost to kill you with the sg half a map away.

And while crying abt the bots, i may awell cry abt the extensive loading times for bigger maps too

No, bots do not have a damage boost. "Just" an accuracy boost...

Code: Select all

g_damage.qc : void Damage (...)
...
   if (attacker.isbot)
      damage = damage * bound(0.1, (skill + 5) * 0.1, 1);


Hmm ok it lowers teh damage for lower silled bots, but thats a bad idea too imo.

Oh the reduction for skill levels 0..4... what is bad about that?

divVerent wrote:Oh the reduction for skill levels 0..4... what is bad about that?

It just seem wrong to silently change damage based on bot skill; id say it seems bad to change damage at all; if its to change there should be a control cvar imo.

actually skill IS that control cvar and affects many aspects of how bots play.

But at least it does not affect their walking speed, like in UT...

Guess my reasoning around this is that damage is one thing that a human player can never change, so altering it in the bots do seem the wrong way. (Acctualy speed would make more sense upp with higher skill to me, since more skilled players do tend to move faster then nubbies)

Surely, the point about bots is that they're most of use when human players aren't available or appear to be significantly more skilled, as is the case with zico.

IMO they only need to be improved up to a point because playing against someone else is always going to be more satisfying because of the interaction.

Some of the 'dumb' aspects could be improved upon though... that's true.

Thanks for this feedback.

I think it's sad, that the classic concept of "singleplayer" isn't that popular anymore. Mostly in shooters and especially in Deathmatch games.

For me it's just more fun sometimes... Not to get me wrong - I do soemtimes play onlein.... about 2% of the time I played Nexuiz so I was very impressed, it had already very good bots when I started to play (version 1.2 I guess). I still hope they will get better...

Zico wrote:I think it's sad, that the classic concept of "singleplayer" isn't that popular anymore. Mostly in shooters and especially in Deathmatch games.

I love single player games. In some cases I like it better then multiplayer. Like half life 2 and hl2ep1 were awesome. can't wait till ep2