Whichbot And Ns 2.0
clamatius
Join Date: 2003-03-27 Member: 14948Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-03-27 Member: 14948Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">ReadMe if you're running WhichBot</div> Version 0.53 and below of WhichBot (i.e. all the current releases as of time of writing this) are NOT COMPATIBLE with NS 2.0.
Running the WB metamod may potentially cause the server to crash and the bot will definitely not work properly.
We'll have a compatible version out as soon as we can.
Running the WB metamod may potentially cause the server to crash and the bot will definitely not work properly.
We'll have a compatible version out as soon as we can.
Comments
The maps currently supported are:
ns_lost
ns_tanith
ns_veil
ns_eclipse
ns_bast
ns_napo (1.04)
ns_nancy (1.04)
There's also a <a href='http://whichbot.com/waypoints/WhichBotWaypointingGuide.pdf' target='_blank'>waypointing guide</a>, although for all the latest info your best bet is to check the WhichBot forums at <a href='http://whichbot.com' target='_blank'>whichbot.com</a>.
So, I blame Flayra for making that too good. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
66.177.40.168:27017 Depot's Nutz NS v2.0
The BIGGEST little server in NS!
Failing that, if the gorges are building mc/oc/dc chambers, you definitely have v0.61 (that was broken in v0.6).
I can't confirm that bug right now but I'll take a look when I get a chance.
Thanks (rules still show it as .60 though)
I have yet to see a whichbot evolve into a fade or onos. What criteria must be met for them to do this (other than res)?
I am reverting back to .60 until further testing is done.
WindowsXP, hl4110, AdminMod 2.50.56, MetaMod 1.16.2 box
They play aliens, and they do kick arse. They play nasty, and are mean enough to give experienced marines a run for their money. They kill players first and formost, then munch your buildings too!
And they laugh when they kill you!!!!!!
Good job.
It's been running for a day on the test server and seems ok so far, we'll see.
Just a friendly warning if you're thinking of running the bot on public servers.
Some issues we noticed in the 0.61 release:
They play great, then at some point they get the res for fades, they attack as a pack of fades, all is well and good, and then they get dumb. Very very dumb. They decide to do the hopping suicide gorge thing far too often, never another fade again after the first wave, it seems. Raising and lowering the respective percentages in configurations didn't seem to change that. The only time we saw them build anything other than resource nodes or hives was once, when we had just killed the last hive, so the last gorge decided to build a wall of movement chambers...
The not building thing has been discussed before, but is the not fading after the first wave thing a new issue? I haven't heard anyone talking about it before.
Very nice skulking so far, you should be very pleased. Hopefully I can get the other modes working so they will be used to their full extent on my server, they were great fun to play around with even with no human aliens (ahem) when you give them a big player advantage.
As to more than 1 wave of fades attacking, that's probably just a reflection of the fact that fades are pretty expensive at 50 res and in the later game the skulks will be too busy dying to turrets and electrification to get many res from RFK.
In v0.62, the building behaviour of the gorge is somewhat improved since I fixed another bug which was causing the gorge not to build upgrade chambers as much as it should do: you should give that another shot.
Since the release of 2.0, I've been very busy both at work and at home and haven't been able to go back and do more work on the advanced life form AI, so the more advanced life forms are very dumb. Sadly, the gameplay changes in 2.0 make the bot significantly weaker to play against (notably better turrets and electrification). Some of the work required to make fades, gorges and onos better in combat is actually pretty complex due to the way the movement system works.
I do hope to be able to go back and improve the AI as time permits, but in the meantime I'm mainly focusing on bug fixes, the most important of which being stability issues. I think I have the stability problems the bot has had in the past down to one exceptionally elusive and intermittent bug which I've been trying to find for months with no success.
I rember playing on this one coop VS server, it was quite fun to blast away the vampires with my shoty <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
This build includes some significant AI and performance upgrades as well as a few bugfixes. However, there's still at least one more bug that causes the server to crash in there somewhere - we're making every effort to track it down.
Changelog:
<ul><li>Added FleeStrategy - bots now get "scared" when damaged enough and will try to run away to heal at a hive or defense chambers.
<li>Major upgrade to the combat navigation algorithm for Fades and Onos which should improve their ability to get to marines who insist on standing in places where just running towards them won't work.
<li>Significantly improved performance to cut down on CPU lag spikes.
<li>Parasited marines are now hunted down. And eaten.
<li>Bot names are now configurable from the config file.
<li>Tweaked waypoints for ns_tanith, ns_lost and ns_eclipse to fix some broken paths and cut down on gorges getting stuck on resource nozzles.
<li>Fixed yet another bug that was causing bots not to attack when they spawned near a marine sometimes.
<li>Fixed a bug in the auto-balancer which caused it to get confused sometimes and not add enough bots.
<li>Removed the dummy marine players, since they're not needed any more for NS2.0.
<li>Fixed a bug which caused oodles of movement chambers to get built.
<li>Fixed a bug which caused the configuration file not to get parsed on Linux. The symptom was that bots wouldn't attack.
<li>Enabled stomp attack for Onos.
<li>Disabled leap and blink for now till the handling of them is better.
<li>Pick celerity over adrenaline for Onos.</ul>
Enjoy!
I updated the file release so that the file name includes the version # to avoid this problem in future.
If you're not sure what version of WhichBot you're running, type "whichbot_version" in the server console.
1) Skulk AI is pretty good against players, but they blindly charge buildings (turrets for example) and attack over and over in certain death, and do not learn from mistakes.
2) Gorges are stupid as hell. They almost never build anything beyond the initial "gorge to build res tower" thing. We played a 3 hour game and the alien gorges never built ONE building or hive except the initial res towers (they built 2 total). Some were gorges the entire game and didn't DO anything except circle around in a small area, stuck.
3) All bots also get stuck constantly, and often run in a circle at the hive or a res tower in an endless loop (This affects ALL AI not just skulk, and is by far the biggest problem) I personally observed an onos run in a endless loop circle at a hive for over 40 minutes, leaving only once to attack the marine base in a blind charge and then get redeemed to endless loop again. I also watched a gorge endlessly circle an already built res node the ENTIRE game (2+ hours until he was finally killed)
4) I watched a skulk follow me around in pack behavior ONCE in a 3 hour game, and gorges were also affect by pack behavior, I saw 2 gorges assault a completely defended marine area without any backup at all, and die, OVER AND OVER.
I hope future releases fix the AI, because right now its just frustrating to use for anything other than testing purposes.
if thats not what you mean could u explain in detail plz?
Unfortunately the bots kept crashing the server. This caused many visitors to request the removal of the bots (which I have since done).
Hopefully you can iron out the rest of the bugs, clam. You are doing a great job.
It incorporates a raft of bugfixes as well as some new features. Without further ado, here's the changelog:
<ul><li> Renamed config file to whichbot.txt (instead of whichbot.pot) to cut down on user confusion.
<li> Added new console command: wb remove. Removes one whichbot.
<li> Added new global say commands. You can now say "/wb add", "/wb remove" and "/wb balance <N>" in global chat to control the # of bots on the server. Admins, if llamas are abusing this feature, you can turn it off in whichbot.txt.
<li> If server cheats are enabled, bots now cheat like total weasels to get more res.
<li> Re-enabled blink and leap, although they still don't work as well as I'd like yet. In particular, Fades only use blink to close very short distances in combat and don't use it at any other time.
<li> Moved standard build order back to DMS.
<li> Onos and Fade now pick Regen as their defence upgrade (instead of Redemption).
<li> Gorges now target and try to heal wounded aliens.
<li> Added a bunch of internal stuff on weapon selection which should fix some minor weapon usage bugs. It should also mean that bots choose cheaper attacks over more expensive ones if they're out of adrenaline.
<li> Added a new melee intercept calculation which should improve close-up combat for skulks. Circle-strafing shouldn't be quite so effective against them as it used to be.
<li> Finally fixed the bug which caused the HL engine to go into an infinite loop on Windows. This should significantly improve stability for Windows users.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused fleeing bots to try to heal up at empty hives.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused sensory chambers to get built too close together.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused gorges to never build RTs, just place them.
<li> Fixed a bug where the bot names item name was incorrect in the config file.
<li> Fixed a couple of dodgy waypoints on Tanith.
<li> Fixed a couple of dodgy waypoints on Eclipse.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused pack bots to pause to wait for the leader or followers even when they're running away.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused gorges to give up hope and sulk in the hive if they wanted to build a res node but all the nodes on the map were capped.
<li> Added a consgreet which gives the bot version number.
<li> Fixed the hive cost for NS2.01.
<li> If a newly spawned bot has enough res to build a hive and we only have 1, let's have it go gorge to build it.
<li> Onos and Fade now aren't as excited about scouting around as skulks.
<li> If we're a skulk, ignore electrified buildings as much as possible, they're just going to fry us.
<li> Parasited marines are now more exciting in terms of working out where we want to go.
<li> Choose a new target if an equally exciting target comes within range. This should remove an exploit where you could easily kite Onos through groups of marines.
<li> Fixed a bug which caused res nodes to sometimes show up as unoccupied in the HiveMind when they're actually occupied. This should fix the bug where gorges sometimes tried to re-build occupied res nodes.
<li> Fixed a bug which would occasionally cause a crash when entities were destroyed.
<li> Fixed a bug where Fades were attacking mines even if they didn't have acid rocket.
<li> Finally got round to fixing all the warnings in the Linux build.
<li> Fixed a bug where the item key for unbuilt_hive_reward was incorrect.
<li> Fixed a bug where some resource values weren't being read from the config file properly.
<li> Enormous internal code tidy-up (affected maybe 90% of the code).</ul>
Many thanks to the guys in my clan, No Chumps (see <a href='http://nochumps.com' target='_blank'>nochumps.com</a> for clan details) for their patience in testing the bot.
There dosent seem to be this feature.
Basically i want to add 1 or 2 bots so that the first person to join the server has someone to play with untill more people join.
As real people join, bots get kicked.
So when there are 3 real people on the server, there should be 0 bots. When 2 real persons 1 bot, when 1 real person, 2 bots....
When 0 real people 3 bots...
This feature does not seem to be in the current releases, either that or its not well documented...
Please either revise documentation, or implement this feature, thank you!