RCBot v1.443 Released! (Not for Sven) Options

[Ryusho]

Thats really sad they don't seem to have any interest in supporting you at all, at least as far as o ne can tell because it looks like they would -want- to help Rcbot since it has been a huge part and aid to the comunity for quite some time and even really helped Svencoop take off in some ways.

[GiGaBiTe]

As for v1.443-beta for Sven, Sniper and AdamR didn't appear to show any interest or enthusiasm with those upgraded bots. They didn't share their headers or any tips on how to make those bots be more adapted for Sven v5. I'm guessing they don't want the bots nor the Metamod Addons to be supported for Sven nowadays.

It's not just the bots and Metamod the SC devs don't care about, they haven't had any direction for the game itself in years. They add random half-assed features that nobody even asked for and don't bother fixing known and documented bugs that have existed for sometimes years.

One significant bug which I discovered recently is a nasty AI navigation and scripted sequence bug, which causes heavy CPU usage on the server and client lag when Metamod is used. I've mentioned it several times, and the devs have pretty much zero interest in resolving it.

Though I'm such a thorn in their side with publicly criticizing them for doing nothing, and sharing information to the public about the problem, that I've heard from back channels they're discussing something about it. I'm not going to hold my breath though, they have a history of disappointments.

Currently their stance is metamod is not supported, so they're not required to do anything about it. They desperately want everyone to convert over to their garbage Angelscript system which is vastly inferior to Metamod+AMXX, and far more complex to program for. Angelscript pales in comparison to Metamod+AMXX in terms of features and support.

[RoboCop]

Well this sucks I did ask and PM one of the Sven Dev team about acquiring the essential header files for RCBot. But it is like they are too busy nor supporting Metamod based addons as well as RCBot (w/o Metamod versions). Apart from RCBot I did some enhancements to some broken Metamod addons like AdminMod, LogD, plus drunken f00l had recompiled HookMod to allow support for Sven Coop v5. I wasn't sure if the bots would trigger some crashes like using admin_slay where it contains admin_bot_protection cvar that blocks any admin cmds used on bots that could trigger those crashes.

But overall the current version of those RCBots appear to be running fine, and works better on LossyDragon's Metamod-P. I'll let you know in case there is any FATAL ERRORs or crashes caused by RCBot from GDB.

[w00tguy123]

Sniper: I don't think we can continue to support them, because they constantly need updated headers from us
Sniper: If anything we need to expose an API for exactly what they need
Sniper: We're constantly changing/improving things, so it's not really a realistic scenario for us to keep sending updates back

RIP my bot babies. Their dirty chat knowledge will live on forever in my hard drive.

[Solokiller]

RIP my bot babies. Their dirty chat knowledge will live on forever in my hard drive.

If they're releasing updates every 6 months they can take the 10 minutes needed to pack this stuff up out of their time. Or write a script to automate it and push it to a Git repo.

[RoboCop]

Well I guess they don't want their 19 years of hard worked worth of efforts on creating the Sven Coop and Svengine src code being exposed to their rivals, in case they make a clone of Sven running on Unity or even Unreal Engine 4.

It seems clear they cannot share us nor allow access to a SVN to obtain the important header files, but it appears they don't want to risk granting access to a noone who is a Sven Dev member.

[Solokiller]

They can easily make a separate repository that only contains the files you need. Then all they need to do is execute a script to copy the files to the repo directory, execute a git commit + push and let you grab the files from the remote repository.

It's piss easy to set up for anyone who has basic knowledge of Git and command scripting.

[w00tguy123]

Just curious, why does rcbot need updated headers from sven anyway (specifically cbasemonster.h and cbase.h)? If it's for combat code can't you check classifications instead? Does the game just crash if you use an old header?

I know nothing about coding for metamod but I feel like those headers shouldn't really be necessary, or else all metamod plugins would be having this problem.

[w00tguy123]

I haven't checked the bot code to see what it needs from the svengine headers, but most of the class variables can be reverse engineered using angelscript. You can't get class methods this way but I assume a lot of code is shared with the HLSDK.
https://github.com/wootguy/ApiGenerator

Posting this now because it's getting rare to see 30+ players in a server nowadays. I miss the chaos of that and have been thinking about how to fix these bots or make my own. I tried the angelscript version of rcbot but it was unbearably laggy and missing the chat feature which was like half of why I used bots.

[Gordon9999]

I haven't checked the bot code to see what it needs from the svengine headers, but most of the class variables can be reverse engineered using angelscript. You can't get class methods this way but I assume a lot of code is shared with the HLSDK.
https://github.com/wootguy/ApiGenerator

Posting this now because it's getting rare to see 30+ players in a server nowadays. I miss the chaos of that and have been thinking about how to fix these bots or make my own. I tried the angelscript version of rcbot but it was unbearably laggy and missing the chat feature which was like half of why I used bots.

I hope you'll fix or make your own bots!
There are always issues with the AS version of the bots - they are laggy, as you mentioned. Additionally, for each map you want to play with them, you have to create your own waypoints (otherwise, they just stand still, thank Cheeseh for autowaypoint function), and the old ones need constant fixing (especially when it comes to ladders - it can be quite an annoy).
I really hope and wait to someone who will finally make more bots for Sven Co-op or fix these existing ones (or just when Cheeseh continues work on them, he hasn't updating them for a while).

[w00tguy123]

They're fixed now! It turns out rcbot only uses a couple of private functions in CBaseEntity. What I get from the ApiGenerator is more than enough.
http://rcbot.bots-united.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2296

I'll probably try making my own bots soon too. I vividly remember the problems with waypointing (ladders!!!). Sven maps are often too complicated for the bots to "understand" as well.