Development underway Options

[Cheeseh]

Thanks to botman making a really basic bot template, I'm making my own template which will become rcbot 2.

I haven't got many solid details to write down yet, rest assured I've already wrote thousands of lines of code, but nothing to do with bots actually doing anything yet.

The bot will probably support CS source, HLDM (when valve fixes the bot crash bug - soon) and SvenCoop 2 when that's out.

[Lyran]

Hey guys have you finally tried the "official" C-S: S Bots ?

I said I had a bad feeling about that. Well I did feel something bad about them yesterday.

But today I've tried them, and they actually surprised me !

They are smart. Not extremely smart, far from that actually. But they're "smart enough" when you consider them as mere Bots.

They act a bit like humans, and their chatting was well done in my opinion. Not too much, and not just a pure lacking of everything. Just the necessary. It's well balanced.

I did noticed a few Pathfinding / Waypoints / Nodes problems though. Where they would constantly try to jump on a platform but never be able to reach it, then getting killed eventually by an enemy player passing by. Or when one would try to turn a corner and would get stuck on the corner itself for at least 10 seconds before realizing his face his scratching the wall. And a few others. There's not many of such problems though, but they are not subtle when they happen.

But their "area scanning" is very well done, in my opinion. I like when they walk, and then will randomly turn back to look for a second while still moving to a specific point, to simulate as if he heard something or just to be sure no one is following him. Little details like that makes them more than just decent Bots.

Overall I safely rate those Bots 6 / 10. There's plenty of room for improvements of course. And I do think either their creators, or Valve, or any supporting fan(s) with A.I programing skills will improve the Bots over time. And will eventually make them the best Bots ever made for a Frag-Fest based multiplayer game. And will eventually send UT 2004 Bots A.I quality to the After-Life !