Whichbot Features
clamatius
Join Date: 2003-03-27 Member: 14948Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-03-27 Member: 14948Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">What bot features do server ops want?</div> One of the side-goals of our project is to enable public server operators to get bigger games going by using bots as fill-in players.
The current version is alpha v0.3 - we support skulks and fades, gorges will be in v0.4. We have a bunch of fairly advanced AI features.
If you run a NS server, what features on the bot would make you want to run it, if any?
For example:
<ul>
<li>Linux support
<li>autonomous team support (i.e. an entire team of bots will do ok). Hopefully we'll have at least something resembling this in v0.4
<li>more map support
</ul>
The current version is alpha v0.3 - we support skulks and fades, gorges will be in v0.4. We have a bunch of fairly advanced AI features.
If you run a NS server, what features on the bot would make you want to run it, if any?
For example:
<ul>
<li>Linux support
<li>autonomous team support (i.e. an entire team of bots will do ok). Hopefully we'll have at least something resembling this in v0.4
<li>more map support
</ul>
Comments
please.
Commander mode is unlikely for usability reasons - people hate having a boss dumber than them, which any AI likely will be.
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Oops, sry, didn't realise this was for server ops only... Umm I only play with bots when I create my own server just to play with bots though... does that count?
setting a max bot players would be cool.. i could set it to 10 and it would drop bots to keep it at 10 players.
*edit* BTW damn good attacking on them skulks.. scares the hell out of you at times, they are relentless! *end edit*
Maybe some of you guys remeber the good old "Eraser Bot" for Quake2.
That one relly kicked *** and was very customizable.
You could pre-create your bots giving them a name, aiming skills, evading skills and tell them how likely they are to camp.
I could imagine something similar for NS bots.
Name, Team, prefered class, aiming, evading, teamwork.
Another way could be some pre-defined personalities like:
"defensive", "agressive", "rambo", "grunt".
It would be very boring if you had a few bot that had all different skills, but the same "personality" I think... the game with bot would be much more fun if some of them would not listen to the commander (but humping the armory and requesting "teh fscking HMG ****" <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> ).
-my2cent-
Hyper
If you make is threaded (using pthread, FSU-pthreads, MIPs, or whatever) you'll have to develop them seperatly.
But Linux support > Win32 support because if the bots act more like a fake full that actualy playable, then thats something i'd really be interested in!
Personallities are great, because bots can go rambo sometimes and what not, would be very nice to have.
Sounds like Linux support is high on people's list. It a little fiddly, but should really be just a matter of managing inconsistencies between Microsoft's compiler and gcc. We don't use any Windows-specific libraries that I know of, and the library is single-threaded. I do about 50% of my professional work on Linux and 50% on windows, so I'm used to developing in Linux. I like Linux development generally - enlightenment kicks MS's **** as a window manager - except that I do prefer MS's debugger over gdb.
Up till now I'd put it off because I was doing support work for previous features and thinking about gorge support.
Remember, right now our bots play aliens only. Our philosophy is to add new features fairly slowly, but making a good job of each one.
At the moment they make great fill-in players, but a whole alien team of them with no human players is too easy to beat for moderately skilled players, mostly because there'd be no gorge.
Personality is actually doable with our strategy blending AI. Internally, the bots are actually configured like this:
<ul>
<li>5% scout (seeks out resource nozzles and hive areas)
<li>45% hive rescue (which is dormant most of the time, but responds to hive attack)
<li>10% attack (seeks out marine buildings)
<li>40% pack member (seeks out pack leader)
</ul>
just as an example (I forget what the latest tweaks were). Right now those settings aren't available via the config file, but I guess we could make it so you can configure the strategy blends from the config file.
OT: If you're not already aware of it, you should check out <a href='http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/' target='_blank'>DDD - DataDisplayDebugger</a>. It fills in some of the gdb "gaps" quite nicely.
It won't get as much testing as the win32 build in all likelihood, but it'll be there on the next release. We'll probably do an interim v0.31 release before v0.4 with a couple of extra maps (ns_napo for sure, maybe others) and the linux build.
If someone wants to volunteer to test the linux build, they're more than welcome.
I tried to talk to the developer about bring over a linux port to no avail. So I decided to start one myself for linux.
I you'll like I could join you and intead of having two different developments, just put all our resources into one good bot.
So if you would like me to help out and do the linux compilation and debugging, I'll be glad to. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> .
just email me at yaboo@dodgyware.com.
regards
Joseph