so reinstalling .03 and NS isn't going to make the problem go away? <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Looks like an outstanding bot, better than most full-version games can boast about (*cough* bf1942 */cough* ;p) just from these reports. Ill be sure to throw them up when I wanna test some things, even be some fun at small lans with friends, or to just max out the players on a server <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'll send you a PM in a minute with a question, hope to see a reply <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
It's upgraded to beta, since the core features that make the bot able to play as a team on its own are now in place.
Latest features and updates:
<ul><li> Gorge support. Gorges build RTs, hives and rudimentary hive defense. They're not that smart right now - we'll work more on tuning strategy when NS 1.1 comes out. N.B. If you see one sitting still, it may be just be waiting for resources. <li> Added Linux support to cater to requests from server admins. <li> Updated reactive movement, courtesy of happybadger. This should hopefully provide better low-level movement. <li> Newly waypointed map - ns_napo. Napo is pretty well suited to bot navigation, so they seem to play fairly well on this map. <li> Fixed an AI exploit where people were hiding in the hive then knifing bots that evolved. Now bots don't evolve for a while if they didn't live for very long last time they spawned. <li> Fixed a set of crashing bugs that arose from keeping track to entities that were deleted between frames. <li> Retired ns_eclipse for now, because the buggy ladders in the maintenance hive were just too big an issue with gorges playing. If you really want to play on the map anyway, download v0.3 and use the waypoints from that release. <li> Added a bunch of tweakable parameters, including limits on the max possible number of bots and a limit to save slots for human players, as well as internal tuning parameters for build strategy, etc. More to come here. Look at whichbot.pot in the conf directory for details. <li> Added a cap to the max time the pack leader waits for stragglers. Previously, the pack would get too slow when moving round the map because they were waiting for a skulk who'd died to catch up.</ul>
Special thanks to happybadger for some knock-down fighting with Half-Life collision detection and Waterhouse for the nifty new site logo.
These bots with rcbots(2 rcbot on alien team,rest WhichBot),i got owned with my Rcbots so horribly that i couldnt believe my eyes.They had hive up about in 20 minutes to game(with all rcbots it takes hour gorge find to the hive..),seemed to be that whichbot was the one who built the hive not the rcbot one(rcbot fattie just sat somewhere jumping but no moving enywhere..).
I haven't noticed any problems with CPU usage on any of the versions, but I did just get done toying with the whichbots on version .04. I no longer have the problem where the server crashes when they see a mine. To test this I placed as many mines as I could until they started blowing up (the skulks). I did notice server lag when I did this, but I don't think it had anything to do with the skulks seeing mines, I'm sure it had more to do with the +100 mines that were strewn across the map.
As far as difficulty, they may be more lethal in large numbers, I've yet to test it. But playing by myself on marines, I can beat 3 aliens on the opposite team. I use a lot of turrets. I'm going to turn off the auto-concede and teambalance to get as many aliens in as I can. In future versions I'd like a system that allows one player to join alien (or not if the gorges work like they should) and then fills the alien team up with aliens and won't let any players join. Any way to go about doing that?
Problems: (minor) <ul> <li>Bots don't always fully enter a hive area when patrolling so they miss marine buildings inside (waypoint issue) <li>If you sit on a rafter (IE: Waste handling in Tanith) the skulks do ballets on the ground trying to get to you <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> <li>Skulks never destroy turrets. I'm guessing this was to avoid them attacking turrets first instead of turret factories. While they do take out the factories now, they leave the turrets behind, so it's easy to retake an area. <li>Get stuck on Western elevator on Tanith (waypoint issue, they don't hit the button). I lowered the elevator for them since I'm such a nice guy <li>Fatties build hives they get to, despite marine buildings being there or not. One built a hive over 4 of my turrets before getting shot to peices. <li>The new movement pattern (so they don't come straight at you) has them running into objects (lips of doors, sides of boxes, ect). Works ok for the most part but I'd have it happen less frequently. They seemed more lethal in .3 when they just came at you as fast as they could. <li>Should make fatties to build OCs and DCs (or one each) near RCs whenever possible (not saving for hive). <li>Skulks don't attempt to avoid mines so all you have to do is mine at the bottom of the doorways <li>Skulks rush to a building when it's being attacked...even if it's being shot by a siege cannon <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> </ul>
Cool/weird stuff <ul> <li>Skulk-packs can fly. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but it seems like it <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> Their little jumpy tactics seems to make it very easy for them to stack off each other and chase jetpackers right into the air. If they can do it, players should be able to as well, it's just creepy. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> <li>Gorges and skulks have sniper accuracy with their projectiles </ul>
I'm putting my server up again shortly, and installing Adminmod. I'll play with it more then. Good job so far, it's like playing Battlezone II again, only with better guns...and no vehicles.
Aaronvroom vroom der party startahJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7020Members
Wow, great job! I am really looking forward to looking over some clean open source HL mod code to better understand things. clamatius, I have a question not answered in the FAQ: You say WhichBot "uses" Metamod. Is it really a metamod "plugin", basically using metamod as a skeleton rig to insert the bot? or does it "use" metamod in some other fashion, e.g. just some code? Is metamod really powerful enough to write an entire mod in? The bits having to do with hooking up Half Life API to the mod are a PITA.
Firstly, thanks for all the feedback (good and bad)! Much appreciated, and it really helps our team come up with a better bot for the players.
On CPU usage: yeah, I admit we're pretty damn heavy on CPU at the moment. We've been concentrating on features over efficiency. Now the core features are in, we're going to go back and do some profiling work. Compared with v0.3, some stuff is faster and some stuff is slower, so I'm not sure how it'd compare directly and I haven't checked.
On turret attacks: that's probably a configuration file error, but I'll investigate. Definitely a pretty big bug, though.
On getting to people on rafters: that is a very hard problem indeed to solve. We've been thinking about it for a little while and we have a potential partial solution, but it's going to be a ton of work.
Gorges building near turrets: hmm, that sounds bad. It wasn't supposed to build if it sees something it classes as a threat, but maybe I accidentally broke that feature. I ended up turning off gorges attacking buildings, since it takes forever to spit a RT to death. and it was a waste of the gorge's time - it may as well just tell the HiveMind and let the skulks do it. However, in NS 1.1, obviously that will change again.
On building OCs near RTs: I never do this when gorging for the bots until the hive defense is really strong - I'd rather the skulks kill the people attacking the RTs and just try to get a bunch of RTs down. Different people have different tactics, I guess. It would definitely be nice to have a more configurable build system, but in NS 1.1 things will most likely be so different we'll get a better idea of the best way to approach it.
Mine avoidance: yep, mines are an efficient weapon against the bots at the moment. Once tripmines go away in 1.1, we're probably going to get more aggressive on ways round them.
On RCBot: yeah, you shouldn't really need to use RCBots on the alien team any more, if you're playing with both bots at once.
On speed of building hives: the WhichBot gorge isn't as fast at building hives as a human gorge, but if you don't pressure them some by killing RTs or locking hives down, you'll have some fades knocking on your door pretty soon.
First: Is there a reason all the bots look straight up in the ready room? At game starts all the marines look like their swimming or something, and all the skulks are standing on their hind quarters doing a dance. Obviously this isnt' a problem, and it's sort of a laugh, I was just curious.
Second: The new movement (strafing) while attacking makes skulks much easier to kill, for me anyway. Since I strafe to the right by default, and apparently they do as well, we circle each other during fights, which wind up dances of death, me shooting at the skulk as he swings around me. They seemed to have better chances at killing me when they rushed me straight on since I can't really outrun them.
Again, for those of you who haven't played with the bot, it's probably the best I've seen for NS, as I've used RC Bot too. It just happens to meet my wants specifically (I want a server that's all marine so we can concentrate on teamwork. More coop than TDM) so I plan on commenting and testing this one a lot. Any problems I find are notes for the coders so they can resolve them. They don't really hamper gameplay at all and if you're looking for an alien bot, you should definately try out whichbot.
On the ready room: the movement angles are pretty much just random, it's waiting to try to join the alien team. I hardly ever see this, because I usually am playing with team auto-balance on.
The circle of death behaviour you're describing isn't new in v0.4, it did that in v0.3 as well. It happens because the combat behaviour is a slight variant on seeking - it's always trying to move its sightline to point to you while moving forwards, but it has a max turn rate. We could up the turn rate a bit and let it just eat you, bvt it looks kinda weird if it turns too fast so we took that out.
Yeah, you're right - we definitely have a fair number of issues to resolve (hence beta), some of which may be unfixable without introducing a worse problem somewhere else. But generally, the bot should be pretty damn playable at this point.
It can be kinda fun to play on the alien team with 'em as well - it's kinda amusing to see 2 marine deaths and then the hivemind message telling me that a tf just went down... Plus, with one person on the alien team to act as a better minesweeper and so on, it's usually much harder to beat them.
Aaron - yeah, the bot acts just like any other metamod plugin. It's just a particularly complex one. Metamod takes away a fair amount of the painful linkage code to intercept engine API calls, etc., but we implement an OO layer on top of most of that. If you compare the network intercept code in, say, HPB-Bot (which RCBot is based on) with the code in NSNetMessageHandlers.cpp, I think the abstraction we did works out pretty well.
I will warn you that some of the code is pretty clean and some other bits need some tidying up. The waypoint/movement code in particular is pretty gnarly right now due to the amount of tweaking it's had.
On difficulty of beating the bots: if you want more of a challenge, a "timed challenge mode" may be the way to go. Beating the bots slowly by turtling your way round the map with lots of mines and turrets is very easy at the moment, but if you have to rapidly expand to get resources etc then it's a lot harder.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The new movement pattern (so they don't come straight at you) has them running into objects (lips of doors, sides of boxes, ect). Works ok for the most part but I'd have it happen less frequently. They seemed more lethal in .3 when they just came at you as fast as they could. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
By and large the new low-level movement code in 0.4 will direct the bot to head straight towards you (which is a weakness we hope to address in a future version), but one of the new behaviors is that the bot will attempt to navigate around and over any obstacles (like a wall of lame) that lies between you and it if it can't see you (it's a ruthless, single-minded bot <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> ) A side effect of this obstacle avoidance logic is that the bot will look like it's trying to hide behind a box or so while trying to "feel" its way around the obstacle towards you.
<!--QuoteBegin--clamatius+Jun 13 2003, 05:06 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (clamatius @ Jun 13 2003, 05:06 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I will warn you that some of the code is pretty clean and some other bits need some tidying up. The waypoint/movement code in particular is pretty gnarly right now due to the amount of tweaking it's had. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yup, do not look directly at any of the movement code if you don't want your eyes explode from the pain <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
After playing with a friend (and a couple pubbers who joined in on the action and immediately started emitting cries of "OMG!" and "WTH? Hax" upon encountering a skulk rush) I began to question the gorges participation in the alien team. Granted, I almost always see one early on in the game (who wanders precariously close to the marine base, and other areas he shouldn't concentrate on) I began to notice that after we killed a few gorges early in the game, they don't seem to show up anymore. Perhaps they were dying too quickly to get enough resources to gorge. This I'm uncertain. I fully understand the gorge aspect is new with this version, so this is to be expected. I was curious if the gorge will be 'taught' to stay near hive locations in future versions and to run away more frequently than it does at current. Also if there is a reason I see so few gorges near early-mid game. Does the code pick a particular alien (ie. thefatone) and tell him, "you need to be a gorge"? I noticed "thefatone" appeared with this release, and is what I assumed. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Oh, and mutt: The skulks I was talking about weren't navigating 'around' doorway-lips and boxes, they were accidentally running into them it looked like. In one instance one hit the lip of a door and climbed up it. Not being able to shoot him then, I stupidly walked through the door to finish him off where he dropped down and killed me instantly <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Having fun testin, hope ya don't find the reports annoying <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I've nothing but praise for the bots despite the posts, --Fox
1) it wasn't getting enough resources to gorge, as you suggested 2) the anti-spawncamping filter was kicking in if the gorge wasn't alive long enough
Right now it seems like the gorge isn't quite frightened enough of marine buildings - he's supposed to be a bit frightened of them so that he doesn't wander into the marine base or turret farms. Trouble is, if you turn that setting up too high he gets just really scared and hides in a corner. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yes, TheFatOne is the default name of the gorge.
mutt == happybadger, btw (he revealed his secret identity!)
<edit - forgot to say this>No, all feedback, good or bad, is good. Better is to have reasons for feedback - "This bot sucks" wouldn't be useful. "This bot sucks - the bots never attack turrets" is very helpful and lets us fix the problem. So, to agree with mutt, thanks for all your comments.</edit>
*nods* I sorta figured Mutt was happybadger, since he seemed to speak with an air of authority about the subject, and you two are the only posters of bugs in the sourceforge bug forum. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I was wondering if you host an official (or unofficial server for that matter) where you regularly play against bots. I'd love to play coop with you, and find any anomalies in the gameplay.
<!--QuoteBegin--FoxFlame+Jun 13 2003, 05:39 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (FoxFlame @ Jun 13 2003, 05:39 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Oh, and mutt: The skulks I was talking about weren't navigating 'around' doorway-lips and boxes, they were accidentally running into them it looked like. In one instance one hit the lip of a door and climbed up it. Not being able to shoot him then, I stupidly walked through the door to finish him off where he dropped down and killed me instantly <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Uh, yea, that's the new skulk "hide-and-seek" movement code kicking in <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Actually though, door frames can be kind of a pain for the bot at times (depending on the collision angle and the target's location that it's heading to) as the frame sticks out just barely enough from the wall for the bot to detect a change in elevation and thus climb on top of it. Unfortunately, this behavior is largely needed for the bot to clear the evil (did I say evil?) handrails that are present throughout some areas of NS maps. To properly address this the bot will need to run a more sophisticated runtime analysis to route around the frame more effectively when moving towards the target. Hope to do this for the next release.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I was wondering if you host an official (or unofficial server for that matter) where you regularly play against bots. I'd love to play coop with you, and find any anomalies in the gameplay.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you use All-Seeing-Eye or some other game browser that supports filters, you can browse for servers with the whichbot_version cvar set. I just (like 1 minute ago) found that the version cvar for 0.4 is not correct - it is still set to 0.31dev, whereas it should be 0.4. Alas. So, if you're browsing for servers, bear that in mind.
We play the latest dev version sporadically on the WhichBot Test Server, but WildTangent's server should have WhichBot running. I don't think it got updated to v0.4 yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. I'll be away on the East Coast for the next week and unable to play, however.
We may do a release including this fix, but here's a change that you can make yourselves that should fix the turret problem (including gorges building next to turrets). The problem is in the config file, called whichbot.pot in addons/whichbot/conf.
and the bots will attack turrets again. Of course, you don't have to make this change, you can just wait for the fix release - but I figured people might be too impatient. It should improve the performance of the bots against turrets (they'll dodge more, etc). Additionally, they will attack turrets before (for example) resource towers and the gorges won't build next to them.
That's me, Mr. impatient. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> Another product of the Internet generation: Instant satisfaction. Glad you said that though, I'd have changed everything *but* that to try to resolve this problem. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
If I set the gorge's desire to build hives to 1000 instead of 100, will he build hives faster than he does now? Or does the distance between the numbers mean nothing, just which is higher?
ByekaName changed from Freak83TorontoJoin Date: 2003-03-13Member: 14484Members, Constellation
I just had my first game with v4.0 of these bots so I'll give an entire recall of my match in case anyone wants to hear the bots intelligence on a 1 vs 1 battle.
I started it on ns_tantih. I wanted to have RC Bots and Whichbots but I still have no clue how to put them in together... seriously I'd need like detailed step by step instructions that a 10 year old could understand.... anway. Game start, I built an infantry, and armoury. Then I put mines down in my base, I knew that with gorge support and myself having to comm and fight alone, I'd best use an hmg rush tactic. So first I went to that double res node place, (forget the name, don't like this map) I put a res node down, went built it, returned. I then put a phase and arms lab in my base. I was going to place a phase in the double res node place when I looked over there and saw my res node being eaten. I kinda was thinking
"Hmm not that smart a bot after all I guess, hasn't even gone gorge..."
That changed quickly.
I built a phase and res node back at that place again and went to build them, I then phased back to base and put down a tf and turrets there because I felt like it instead of mines. (I had hmgs researched at this point). As I was building the turrets there I saw a gorge run by to waste hive. I was kinda curious to see what he would do so I let him go. As soon as I finished building the turrets there though, I followed him. He had an off tower and hive set up in waste already. I died. I was starting to feel worried, especially if he got fades. I had about 100 res so I got a proto lab and observatory. I researched jps and scanned the hives. All 3 were going up. Panicing I got myself an hmg + jp combo and raced to the sat comm hive, his main one. It took every single bullet with lvl 1 upgrades but I took it down. Once it was down my lvl 2 weapons upgraded. I immidetly repeated the process for waste hive. Now that that was cleared, I was too scared he would build them up again so I decided to use a two hive lock down. First I got sat comm, then waste. While doing waste I added another bot into the game since I didn't see how I could lose now. Shortly I had full upgrades, mt, and ha. Being so greedy I decided I would try sieging their last hive down from cargo. I put a phase in there, phased to the nearest pg and jp'd there at top speed. Phase was gone. I repeated process and managed to get it built with quite some difficulty as they kept attacking me. I then put a tf down and got that eaten, so I put another one down and went to build it. When I came back to place turrets I decided to use the bots stupidity to my advantage. I spammed comm chairs in their way so they couldn't get to me.... Guess what.
<b>It didn't work</b>
Yep even the gorge was smart enough to get past this, so I continued to build turrets there anyhow, I put sieges up, killed myself, and grabbed myself some fresh ha and hmg then went to kill their last hive. On my way into their hive though, a skulk managed to bring my ha down to about 125 armour, and it was at lvl 3 too! I had over 1000 resources at this point and went in to kill their hive with the sieges help. Well unfortunatly at this point too much was happening and ns froze. I took a screen shot of this final sequance but unfortunatly, ctrl+alt+del, windows key, AND Alt+F4 were not working, I had to restart my computer...... <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Anyway, great job guys! These whichbots are uber intelligent and did not fall for many glitch tricks! If I did not have jp's and hmg's so soon, or if I had started with 2 whichbots against me there is no way I would have one. Keep up the great work!
PS. I didn't make a demo of this instead because every time I try to do that my computer messes up. I got a pop-up in the match too so it would have probably messed up then anyway.
Comments
If the playtest game tonight goes well, we may release v0.4.
I'll send you a PM in a minute with a question, hope to see a reply <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
It's upgraded to beta, since the core features that make the bot able to play as a team on its own are now in place.
Latest features and updates:
<ul><li> Gorge support. Gorges build RTs, hives and rudimentary hive defense. They're not that smart right now - we'll work more on tuning strategy when NS 1.1 comes out. N.B. If you see one sitting still, it may be just be waiting for resources.
<li> Added Linux support to cater to requests from server admins.
<li> Updated reactive movement, courtesy of happybadger. This should hopefully provide better low-level movement.
<li> Newly waypointed map - ns_napo. Napo is pretty well suited to bot navigation, so they seem to play fairly well on this map.
<li> Fixed an AI exploit where people were hiding in the hive then knifing bots that evolved. Now bots don't evolve for a while if they didn't live for very long last time they spawned.
<li> Fixed a set of crashing bugs that arose from keeping track to entities that were deleted between frames.
<li> Retired ns_eclipse for now, because the buggy ladders in the maintenance hive were just too big an issue with gorges playing. If you really want to play on the map anyway, download v0.3 and use the waypoints from that release.
<li> Added a bunch of tweakable parameters, including limits on the max possible number of bots and a limit to save slots for human players, as well as internal tuning parameters for build strategy, etc. More to come here. Look at whichbot.pot in the conf directory for details.
<li> Added a cap to the max time the pack leader waits for stragglers. Previously, the pack would get too slow when moving round the map because they were waiting for a skulk who'd died to catch up.</ul>
Special thanks to happybadger for some knock-down fighting with Half-Life collision detection and Waterhouse for the nifty new site logo.
My PC : 1.1GH Celeron, GeForce2MX 32MB, 256MB SDRAM
Rcbot is more and more light in CPU usage.
Very good. It seemes this version fairly decreased CPU usage.
As far as difficulty, they may be more lethal in large numbers, I've yet to test it. But playing by myself on marines, I can beat 3 aliens on the opposite team. I use a lot of turrets. I'm going to turn off the auto-concede and teambalance to get as many aliens in as I can. In future versions I'd like a system that allows one player to join alien (or not if the gorges work like they should) and then fills the alien team up with aliens and won't let any players join. Any way to go about doing that?
Problems: (minor)
<ul>
<li>Bots don't always fully enter a hive area when patrolling so they miss marine buildings inside (waypoint issue)
<li>If you sit on a rafter (IE: Waste handling in Tanith) the skulks do ballets on the ground trying to get to you <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<li>Skulks never destroy turrets. I'm guessing this was to avoid them attacking turrets first instead of turret factories. While they do take out the factories now, they leave the turrets behind, so it's easy to retake an area.
<li>Get stuck on Western elevator on Tanith (waypoint issue, they don't hit the button). I lowered the elevator for them since I'm such a nice guy
<li>Fatties build hives they get to, despite marine buildings being there or not. One built a hive over 4 of my turrets before getting shot to peices.
<li>The new movement pattern (so they don't come straight at you) has them running into objects (lips of doors, sides of boxes, ect). Works ok for the most part but I'd have it happen less frequently. They seemed more lethal in .3 when they just came at you as fast as they could.
<li>Should make fatties to build OCs and DCs (or one each) near RCs whenever possible (not saving for hive).
<li>Skulks don't attempt to avoid mines so all you have to do is mine at the bottom of the doorways
<li>Skulks rush to a building when it's being attacked...even if it's being shot by a siege cannon <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
</ul>
Cool/weird stuff
<ul>
<li>Skulk-packs can fly. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but it seems like it <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> Their little jumpy tactics seems to make it very easy for them to stack off each other and chase jetpackers right into the air. If they can do it, players should be able to as well, it's just creepy. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<li>Gorges and skulks have sniper accuracy with their projectiles
</ul>
I'm putting my server up again shortly, and installing Adminmod. I'll play with it more then. Good job so far, it's like playing Battlezone II again, only with better guns...and no vehicles.
--Fox
On CPU usage: yeah, I admit we're pretty damn heavy on CPU at the moment. We've been concentrating on features over efficiency. Now the core features are in, we're going to go back and do some profiling work. Compared with v0.3, some stuff is faster and some stuff is slower, so I'm not sure how it'd compare directly and I haven't checked.
On turret attacks: that's probably a configuration file error, but I'll investigate. Definitely a pretty big bug, though.
On getting to people on rafters: that is a very hard problem indeed to solve. We've been thinking about it for a little while and we have a potential partial solution, but it's going to be a ton of work.
Gorges building near turrets: hmm, that sounds bad. It wasn't supposed to build if it sees something it classes as a threat, but maybe I accidentally broke that feature. I ended up turning off gorges attacking buildings, since it takes forever to spit a RT to death. and it was a waste of the gorge's time - it may as well just tell the HiveMind and let the skulks do it. However, in NS 1.1, obviously that will change again.
On building OCs near RTs: I never do this when gorging for the bots until the hive defense is really strong - I'd rather the skulks kill the people attacking the RTs and just try to get a bunch of RTs down. Different people have different tactics, I guess. It would definitely be nice to have a more configurable build system, but in NS 1.1 things will most likely be so different we'll get a better idea of the best way to approach it.
Mine avoidance: yep, mines are an efficient weapon against the bots at the moment. Once tripmines go away in 1.1, we're probably going to get more aggressive on ways round them.
On RCBot: yeah, you shouldn't really need to use RCBots on the alien team any more, if you're playing with both bots at once.
On speed of building hives: the WhichBot gorge isn't as fast at building hives as a human gorge, but if you don't pressure them some by killing RTs or locking hives down, you'll have some fades knocking on your door pretty soon.
First: Is there a reason all the bots look straight up in the ready room? At game starts all the marines look like their swimming or something, and all the skulks are standing on their hind quarters doing a dance. Obviously this isnt' a problem, and it's sort of a laugh, I was just curious.
Second: The new movement (strafing) while attacking makes skulks much easier to kill, for me anyway. Since I strafe to the right by default, and apparently they do as well, we circle each other during fights, which wind up dances of death, me shooting at the skulk as he swings around me. They seemed to have better chances at killing me when they rushed me straight on since I can't really outrun them.
Again, for those of you who haven't played with the bot, it's probably the best I've seen for NS, as I've used RC Bot too. It just happens to meet my wants specifically (I want a server that's all marine so we can concentrate on teamwork. More coop than TDM) so I plan on commenting and testing this one a lot. Any problems I find are notes for the coders so they can resolve them. They don't really hamper gameplay at all and if you're looking for an alien bot, you should definately try out whichbot.
--Fox
The circle of death behaviour you're describing isn't new in v0.4, it did that in v0.3 as well. It happens because the combat behaviour is a slight variant on seeking - it's always trying to move its sightline to point to you while moving forwards, but it has a max turn rate. We could up the turn rate a bit and let it just eat you, bvt it looks kinda weird if it turns too fast so we took that out.
Yeah, you're right - we definitely have a fair number of issues to resolve (hence beta), some of which may be unfixable without introducing a worse problem somewhere else. But generally, the bot should be pretty damn playable at this point.
It can be kinda fun to play on the alien team with 'em as well - it's kinda amusing to see 2 marine deaths and then the hivemind message telling me that a tf just went down... Plus, with one person on the alien team to act as a better minesweeper and so on, it's usually much harder to beat them.
Aaron - yeah, the bot acts just like any other metamod plugin. It's just a particularly complex one. Metamod takes away a fair amount of the painful linkage code to intercept engine API calls, etc., but we implement an OO layer on top of most of that. If you compare the network intercept code in, say, HPB-Bot (which RCBot is based on) with the code in NSNetMessageHandlers.cpp, I think the abstraction we did works out pretty well.
I will warn you that some of the code is pretty clean and some other bits need some tidying up. The waypoint/movement code in particular is pretty gnarly right now due to the amount of tweaking it's had.
On difficulty of beating the bots: if you want more of a challenge, a "timed challenge mode" may be the way to go. Beating the bots slowly by turtling your way round the map with lots of mines and turrets is very easy at the moment, but if you have to rapidly expand to get resources etc then it's a lot harder.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
The new movement pattern (so they don't come straight at you) has them running into objects (lips of doors, sides of boxes, ect). Works ok for the most part but I'd have it happen less frequently. They seemed more lethal in .3 when they just came at you as fast as they could.
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By and large the new low-level movement code in 0.4 will direct the bot to head straight towards you (which is a weakness we hope to address in a future version), but one of the new behaviors is that the bot will attempt to navigate around and over any obstacles (like a wall of lame) that lies between you and it if it can't see you (it's a ruthless, single-minded bot <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> ) A side effect of this obstacle avoidance logic is that the bot will look like it's trying to hide behind a box or so while trying to "feel" its way around the obstacle towards you.
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Yup, do not look directly at any of the movement code if you don't want your eyes explode from the pain <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Oh, and mutt: The skulks I was talking about weren't navigating 'around' doorway-lips and boxes, they were accidentally running into them it looked like. In one instance one hit the lip of a door and climbed up it. Not being able to shoot him then, I stupidly walked through the door to finish him off where he dropped down and killed me instantly <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Having fun testin, hope ya don't find the reports annoying <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I've nothing but praise for the bots despite the posts,
--Fox
1) it wasn't getting enough resources to gorge, as you suggested
2) the anti-spawncamping filter was kicking in if the gorge wasn't alive long enough
Right now it seems like the gorge isn't quite frightened enough of marine buildings - he's supposed to be a bit frightened of them so that he doesn't wander into the marine base or turret farms. Trouble is, if you turn that setting up too high he gets just really scared and hides in a corner. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yes, TheFatOne is the default name of the gorge.
mutt == happybadger, btw (he revealed his secret identity!)
<edit - forgot to say this>No, all feedback, good or bad, is good. Better is to have reasons for feedback - "This bot sucks" wouldn't be useful. "This bot sucks - the bots never attack turrets" is very helpful and lets us fix the problem. So, to agree with mutt, thanks for all your comments.</edit>
Any way to fix this?
Secondly, are you 100% sure you followed the installation instructions? I'll take this problem to PM or IRC and we'll see if we can resolve this.
I was wondering if you host an official (or unofficial server for that matter) where you regularly play against bots. I'd love to play coop with you, and find any anomalies in the gameplay.
--Fox
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Uh, yea, that's the new skulk "hide-and-seek" movement code kicking in <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Actually though, door frames can be kind of a pain for the bot at times (depending on the collision angle and the target's location that it's heading to) as the frame sticks out just barely enough from the wall for the bot to detect a change in elevation and thus climb on top of it. Unfortunately, this behavior is largely needed for the bot to clear the evil (did I say evil?) handrails that are present throughout some areas of NS maps. To properly address this the bot will need to run a more sophisticated runtime analysis to route around the frame more effectively when moving towards the target. Hope to do this for the next release.
Good catch though.
see PM <!--emo&::nerdy::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/nerd.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='nerd.gif'><!--endemo-->
If you use All-Seeing-Eye or some other game browser that supports filters, you can browse for servers with the whichbot_version cvar set. I just (like 1 minute ago) found that the version cvar for 0.4 is not correct - it is still set to 0.31dev, whereas it should be 0.4. Alas. So, if you're browsing for servers, bear that in mind.
We play the latest dev version sporadically on the WhichBot Test Server, but WildTangent's server should have WhichBot running. I don't think it got updated to v0.4 yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. I'll be away on the East Coast for the next week and unable to play, however.
--Fox
The turret configuration section looks like this:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
[../team_turret]
type=4
team=1
class_name='team_turret'
default_influence=0
is_building=1
attack_value=50
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Replace the "team_turret" names with "turret" so it looks like this:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
[../turret]
type=4
team=1
class_name='turret'
default_influence=0
is_building=1
attack_value=50
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
and the bots will attack turrets again. Of course, you don't have to make this change, you can just wait for the fix release - but I figured people might be too impatient. It should improve the performance of the bots against turrets (they'll dodge more, etc). Additionally, they will attack turrets before (for example) resource towers and the gorges won't build next to them.
I started it on ns_tantih. I wanted to have RC Bots and Whichbots but I still have no clue how to put them in together... seriously I'd need like detailed step by step instructions that a 10 year old could understand.... anway. Game start, I built an infantry, and armoury. Then I put mines down in my base, I knew that with gorge support and myself having to comm and fight alone, I'd best use an hmg rush tactic. So first I went to that double res node place, (forget the name, don't like this map) I put a res node down, went built it, returned. I then put a phase and arms lab in my base. I was going to place a phase in the double res node place when I looked over there and saw my res node being eaten. I kinda was thinking
"Hmm not that smart a bot after all I guess, hasn't even gone gorge..."
That changed quickly.
I built a phase and res node back at that place again and went to build them, I then phased back to base and put down a tf and turrets there because I felt like it instead of mines. (I had hmgs researched at this point). As I was building the turrets there I saw a gorge run by to waste hive. I was kinda curious to see what he would do so I let him go. As soon as I finished building the turrets there though, I followed him. He had an off tower and hive set up in waste already. I died. I was starting to feel worried, especially if he got fades. I had about 100 res so I got a proto lab and observatory. I researched jps and scanned the hives. All 3 were going up. Panicing I got myself an hmg + jp combo and raced to the sat comm hive, his main one. It took every single bullet with lvl 1 upgrades but I took it down. Once it was down my lvl 2 weapons upgraded. I immidetly repeated the process for waste hive. Now that that was cleared, I was too scared he would build them up again so I decided to use a two hive lock down. First I got sat comm, then waste. While doing waste I added another bot into the game since I didn't see how I could lose now. Shortly I had full upgrades, mt, and ha. Being so greedy I decided I would try sieging their last hive down from cargo. I put a phase in there, phased to the nearest pg and jp'd there at top speed. Phase was gone. I repeated process and managed to get it built with quite some difficulty as they kept attacking me. I then put a tf down and got that eaten, so I put another one down and went to build it. When I came back to place turrets I decided to use the bots stupidity to my advantage. I spammed comm chairs in their way so they couldn't get to me.... Guess what.
<b>It didn't work</b>
Yep even the gorge was smart enough to get past this, so I continued to build turrets there anyhow, I put sieges up, killed myself, and grabbed myself some fresh ha and hmg then went to kill their last hive. On my way into their hive though, a skulk managed to bring my ha down to about 125 armour, and it was at lvl 3 too! I had over 1000 resources at this point and went in to kill their hive with the sieges help. Well unfortunatly at this point too much was happening and ns froze. I took a screen shot of this final sequance but unfortunatly, ctrl+alt+del, windows key, AND Alt+F4 were not working, I had to restart my computer...... <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Anyway, great job guys! These whichbots are uber intelligent and did not fall for many glitch tricks! If I did not have jp's and hmg's so soon, or if I had started with 2 whichbots against me there is no way I would have one. Keep up the great work!
PS. I didn't make a demo of this instead because every time I try to do that my computer messes up. I got a pop-up in the match too so it would have probably messed up then anyway.