RCBot2: suggestions, As the topic sez... some suggestions for future RC Bot releases Options

[genmac]

Hey genmac,

How u been man... I guess we need to test the capture/flag out again... Did you try as cheeseh suggests? I think set capture wpt to same area as flag, no connected path between them, restart map, etc...

[edit] Guess I just missed you... Well I'll try it out soon anyways....


max

hehe miss you to bro...Ok I've tried that out at rouen seems working but their less aggressive on capturing the dry fountain with the flag on top compared to the connected auto gen cap flag.

Will try it on dod_wn71 but the first cap is area 0 so hope it works much better.
edit...
nope didn't work for me...bot's didn't even use the cap wpts after 2 rounds...so the auto gen cap wpts still are more effective.

[Cheeseh]

hehe miss you to bro...Ok I've tried that out at rouen seems working but their less aggressive on capturing the dry fountain with the flag on top compared to the connected auto gen cap flag.

Will try it on dod_wn71 but the first cap is area 0 so hope it works much better.
edit...
nope didn't work for me...bot's didn't even use the cap wpts after 2 rounds...so the auto gen cap wpts still are more effective.

there should only be 1 waypoint for each cap. If there are more, it will only use one

[madmax2]

I guess you guys may of seen this, but just in case you didn't, here are my 2 posts on capture wpts...

http://rcbot.bots-united.com/forums/index....ost&p=12182

maybe I shouldn't of moved them? heh heh, I donno?

I had an idea about the fortress cap area on hill_classic I will check on today, but it may or may not make a difference? If it does, i'll let you know....

max

[genmac]

YEah read those hehe...but when the flag is way too distant, tagged cap wpt seems ignored most of the time but I'll re-check again seem I forgot to do some other things.

[Septien]

Hi Max and Genmac,

Sorry I couldn't post before, I had some domestic issues, anyway, I looked at your modified wpts for dod_classic_hill and I was very happy to see that bots capture flags perfectly inside the bunkers without needing a connection to the flag. Inside the fortress however, bots will try to capture the capture point without it being connected to the flag BUT they will NOT wait to cap it. I tried everything even erasing all waypoints inside the capture zone and leaving just 1 (the closest) to the flag with and without connecting it to the flag and removing any tags other than a capture one but still had the same result: bots don't wait for a second man to capture the flag. It's way better than previous rcbot versions since bots DO recognize the capture point, they even wave their hands like telling the rest to help capture it but again, they won't wait!

Now, I improved severely the waypoints in that capture zone and still left mgs and sniper wpts because that way mgs and snipers will try more often getting to that particular caputre zone rather than just staying forever sniping and camping. I also added multiple caputre waypoints, and some times, specially if they manage to break the breakable wall, they will go to a different capture wpt. It would seem like if they were working in teams etc.

Perhaps Cheeseh could still perfect/improve the flag/capture issue specially when there is a greater gap between both.

Anyway, I have just updated the waypoints in the Dod_hill_classic thread and in the Rcbot downloads page, let me know what you think, I'm still waiting for CharlestonN to tweak it for us. Genmac, see if you can have CharlestonN pull in that flag for us in WN71


Septien

[madmax2]

Hey Guys,

I got side-tracked yesterday on some other things (one being svencoop), and I didn't get a chance to do anything with dods... sorry...

Yeah, that fortress capture seems to be a special problem? I saw one bot occasionally hold there, maybe as long as 20 seconds, not sure, but it never was long enough, or frequent enough. Most of the time they hold only a few seconds there.

In this case, for this map, I'm not sure if there is anything cheeseh can do from the coding side to make the bots be able to cap this under normal game play conditions, short of making bots stay permanent inside a capture zone? And I'm not sure if that would be good for other maps?

Septien's/genmac's previous "fixes" here worked quite well, the proneing, circle pattern, sniper/mg, etc. And the proneing is just what most human players would do anyways... Maybe cheeseh can tweak the hold time for another 30 seconds, that may help some, but they only hold intermitantly at this one location, so that won't totally fix it.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the end, it may have to be a waypoint solution for these special cases? Thanks Septien for the updated rcw, I will check it out sometime soon... I want to have a look at roeun too, think i'll check that out before WN-71 final, roeun was such a good game-play map for the first dod, i really liked it.

max

[Septien]

Hi Max,

Probably like you mentioned, it's not worth fixing since it's only for just a couple of maps out there! One of the 2 tweaks I did request to CharlestonN was to move the fortress flag right in the middle next to the pole. And yes, I agree that it does look realistic for bots to crouch/prone in special danger zones like this one.

Septien

[genmac]

For dod_hill if you like I can just simply edit the capture point entity to 1 man cap and bring it down to 5 or 7 secs cap time...or keep the 2 man cap but bring it down to 1 or 2 secs cap time since sometimes it takes time for another allies to help out...what do you think?

Or ask Charles to simply put a flag at ground level as well for wn71 first bunker.

[madmax2]

Hey Guys,

Maybe before modifying entities, or the map, you might want to try this first???

Septien, I haven't had a chance to look at your new rcw yet, so I don't know what changes you made, and it was working quite well before, so this is just a demonstration of an idea I had the other day. It's still a waypoint "fix", you can add it to your waypoint if you want to, or not. It's basicly a forced "fix" that may enhance what you have already done?

The idea that I wanted to check out was, that the problem might have something to do with other goals interfering with the fortress goal. I thought it might be the wall bomb plant, but it wasn't. So I started reducing the bots options. The more I reduced them, the better they got at capping the fortress. Bots, when they can't cap the first time, tend to look for other goals it seems, so they run out to "dead ends" lets say, then return to the fortress later...

Well I hacked up the test rcw from the other day some more, and you can see the result either by adding just 2 allied rifflemen, or you can try 3 allies & 2 axis, or a full game... If the bots options are limited, then they hold much better in the cap zone. Although you can sometimes still see them leave the cap area, but they can't go far, so they return quickly. But they do cap the fort much faster now, with just one capture waypoint there.

Basicly, I ended up just forcing allied bots to stay inside the fortress once there, they won't retreat. Its now a oneway path for the allies into the fort, and 2 way for the axis, its in the tunnel under the tower... Now the allies can't see any other goals once they get in there, just the fort capture area. This obviously won't be an option in all situations, but does help here...

If you make it a 2 way path again, you can see what they do when allies are limited to the area just outside the wall, and the bunkers. They were still going out to the bomb plant area, even though I had allready removed it, so I removed the opens later path there too, and paths over the wall for allies. also removed the opens later path thru the destroyable wall. I think it's better than the last test rcw, but not as good as the forced tower/tunnel. They still get into some of that tag team running around the fort thing...

So it's a hacked up waypoint for test/demonstration only. I removed things on the outside of the fortress that probably didn't need removal. If you try anything out of this mess of a post , try adding the forced oneway allied path into the tower/tunnel, I think it will help a lot (btw, you will have to make it oneway for allies at the destroyable wall too). You don't need to remove the other things you have already done, that helps them cap the fort.

max

[Septien]

Hi Max and Genmac and everyone hehe,

@Max
I thought of that before too but I didn't go for it since the main problem or challenge for Allies is mainly to get to the capture zone without getting killed immediately since they can "hold" or should I say... be forced to hold a bit longer by going prone, crouching around a path, camping etc. which again is part of the challenge the map offers which I think all of us enjoy. Of course it sounds like a good option since its more likely that they will probably capture the flag more frequently but I felt a bit like cheating on the Axies hehe.

@Genmac
Having a one man capturing the fortress flag sounds interesting just to see how it would affect the gameplay perhaps it would make it more even for both sides. If you could tweak it just as an experiment...maybe we could ask CharlestonN if he wouldnt mind. etc.

I will still try your wpts Max... see how they work... btw try to grab my latest update and we can all work with it... it has other changes ... hope you like them...

I have just downloaded dod_rouen... that map brings quite some memories too! I was also happy to see that mappers are showing in.... I just hope that they can appreciate the importance of having their maps brought to life by waypointing them and thus can strive to make them full compatible with rcbot!

Anyway, my fellow waypointers.... its great to be part of such a great community here.

Yours truly,
Septien

[genmac]

@Septien....yeah better ask Charles first since he's very active on mapping lately.


@Max...yeah the one way path will do the trick inside the fortress cap.

[madmax2]

hehe miss you to bro...Ok I've tried that out at rouen seems working but their less aggressive on capturing the dry fountain with the flag on top compared to the connected auto gen cap flag.

Will try it on dod_wn71 but the first cap is area 0 so hope it works much better.
edit...
nope didn't work for me...bot's didn't even use the cap wpts after 2 rounds...so the auto gen cap wpts still are more effective.

Hey guys,

I think genmac's observation was correct when he said the bots are more aggresive at detected capture wpts. I've spent a lot of time today playing around with different capture wpts on dod_azure. I wanted to get it right before I add in the class wpt types (snipper, defend, etc). I noticed the difference more on re-capping areas. It was really noticable at single player cap areas. I noticed axis running past a cap point on thier side of the map, that allies seem to have no trouble capping. So I moved it to the other side of the armored car, and they did better for a while, recapping it a few times, but seemed to lose interest as the game went on. All testing I did today was with 3vs3 bots, same class.

So i put the capture wpt inside the armored car, as a detected cap wpt, with paths to it from normal wpts on each side. Now the axis will come back to it & re-cap it, faster and more frequent than before.

Now with the 2 man cap at the tank in this map, I wanted bots to cap from more than one side, so the only way to do that is like the armored car, put the cap inside or on top, and connect paths. Well, I can't really see a significant difference on this cap point, between detected and tagged capture wpt. It might be because both were inside and it's hard for them to touch the cap wpt, so they are more persistant, either way? It did seem, before they were all changed to detected caps, that bots kinda prefered going to the detected caps vs the tagged. But i'm not sure about that, I was getting a bit cross-eye-ed by then... Maybe it needs to be one way or the other but not both, all cap points tagged caps or all detected caps, to keep them balanced?

Now another thing I noticed today (which I saw before on sora), was even after making this cap point and a couple others detected caps, bots would still sometimes run past one of thier flags they need to recap, sometimes going to the far end of the map instead of recapping a flag near thier spawn. Now the low bot count I was using today might be exagerating the symptom, because I think they select thier goal at spawn time. And since I only had 3 bots per team, there aren't enough bots for the 5 or 6 goals/flags in the map. So with more bots maybe this would not be much of a problem? But I do remember seeing it on sora, with 7vs7. So I think I'll do what I did on sora, and force bots through the capture zones, for the flags nearest their spawns. Mainly, to increase thier re-cap speed.

Septien:

I have just downloaded dod_rouen... that map brings quite some memories too!

Yeah, i really want to try that map out too, i'd better take a break from wptn and check it out...

max

[genmac]

@max...hehe me too get cross eyed every now and then to lol!
so yeah detected cap wpt seems more reliable compared to just tagged one's.

[Tzepesch]

For other mods made on Source SDK Base 2xxx you could include some simple installs for the bots.
So they just know how to follow waypoints and use +attack towards enemies. This could be the first step for bots in a lot of other games than CS:S.

Came here because of FA:S and their bots: http://forums.firearms-source.com/threads/...rce-Google-Code

[Cheeseh]

For other mods made on Source SDK Base 2xxx you could include some simple installs for the bots.
So they just know how to follow waypoints and use +attack towards enemies. This could be the first step for bots in a lot of other games than CS:S.

Came here because of FA:S and their bots: http://forums.firearms-source.com/threads/...rce-Google-Code

well it would be good to see some other source bots plugin source to see how they work, but this one is just blank, there is no code.

Anyway, with rcbot2 you can edit the rcbot2_mods.ini

mod = CUSTOM
steamdir = <parent game folder>
gamedir = <game folder>
bot = ZOMBIE

[genmac]

For other mods made on Source SDK Base 2xxx you could include some simple installs for the bots.
So they just know how to follow waypoints and use +attack towards enemies. This could be the first step for bots in a lot of other games than CS:S.

Came here because of FA:S and their bots: http://forums.firearms-source.com/threads/...rce-Google-Code

I love FA and it's awesome bot called...Marine bots...it's wpting app is kinda tricky though but manage to make a workable one on tp_dust....lol yeah de_dust for fa haha!

Hope they do make one for FA:S or have rcbot2 support as well in the future.


Btw mp AI is big business again as big companies like activision are incoparating them fully now on black ops 1 (bots can do tdm and ffa only), Black ops 2 - bots plays all game modes and for this year...COD:Ghost has full blown mp bots with some new good stuff to it. So yeah bots are here to stay and will soon rule the world hehe!

[Emotional]

I have a little suggestion: may be worth to share rcbot_skill on rcbot_allies_skill and rcbot_axis skill? Explain why : on some maps very hard to win, because bots precipitated final point and can't capture it, because respawning bots do not let them do it. But if increase the level of one team and the lower the level of the other, they will be possible to capture. The reverse effect: if you team have 0.1 skill and enemies - 1.0, you can hold down the last point, being surrounded on all sides by enemies (some like a Left4Dead, lol). I think it should not be too difficult in coding. Thanks in advance

[MarD]

Heyyo,

well it would be good to see some other source bots plugin source to see how they work, but this one is just blank, there is no code.

Anyway, with rcbot2 you can edit the rcbot2_mods.ini

mod = CUSTOM
steamdir = <parent game folder>
gamedir = <game folder>
bot = ZOMBIE

ah that sucks that Firearms Source has no bot support... also... Heyyo people.

I don't play CSS, TF2 or DODS anymore so that's why I've been pretty inactive here. I was thinking it would be neat with my spare PC to host a rcbot2 server on games that could use servers with a bot population like FA:S, Synergy 2 or Nuclear Dawn (Source Engine based stand-alone game) or the recently released stand-alone Source Engine mod... Fistful of Frags (which would be a perfect tdm game for RCBot2).

I know there's Marinebot for FA:S but its last update I think was 2012... which is quite a long time ago, it probably doesn't even work with the latest FA:S updates.

[madmax2]

Hey MarD,

Nice to have you drop by... Correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought FoF had bots? Yeah, it would be cool to see support for those games. I think synergy2 & nuclear dawn have been requested before, and Cheeseh suggests setting the bot_mods.ini for zombie bots, but he never gets any feedback on that? Maybe try that & see what happens? But, I guess you will need to make some waypoints too, which should be done on listen server. Maybe I'll get those games sometime, and see if I can make a waypoint, but don't wait for me, I'm slow & to busy right now...

Anyways, welcome back...

max

[MarD]

Heyyo,

So... Black Mesa Source could use some bots and waypointing eh?

Otherwise? I'd love to see support for Synergy Coop so I could waypoint the crap outta the campaign.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/17520/

Currently RcBot2 only supports HL2DM, DODS and TF2.