I am new and need help.
 

Hey everyon one. I downloaded the source code for HPB and I still have no idea what is going on. I want to make bots for the mod Rival Species. www.rivalspecies.com Sadly I have no coding experiece what so ever. I would like to know if any one can help me.

I need to know which programs I need, and how to make the bot using the HPB template. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Re: I am new and need help.
 

Sure :)

You need a compiler first, and some program to edit the .cpp files. This can be notepad, but there are also really cool development environments programs available, with syntax highlighting, colors and a lot of things. The best of them for Windows is, IMO, Microsoft Visual Studio (MSVC). You only need the Visual C++ part of Visual Studio anyway.

Then you must have noticed a readme coming with the HPB_bot template. Read it (take the time to), even if you don't understand everything, it will be useful for you to understand a bit of what's going on.

Then you can try to compile the bot for one of the already supported mods, such as Half-Life deathmatch for example. Compile the bot, change a few things in the source code where you understand what it's about (for example, change the reaction delays of the bots, or try to make the bots say something on occasion) - browse the source code, notice how it works, copy and paste little blocks when you know what they do, do this for some time and you will improve the bot a bit, but foremost you'll be learning how C/C++ works.

Once you get a little more familiar with the code (not necessarily to know what everything does, but at least when you know roughly where such or such function is located in the .cpp files), you can try to port the bot to your Rival Species mod. To do so, read the readme again and try to follow what it says step by step.

The best place for discussing about bot coding is the bot coders forum (I'm moving the thread there, no objections ?) ; we welcome beginners so don't hesitate to come and ask whenever you've got a question !

Re: I am new and need help.
 

Where can i get Microsoft Vidusal Studio, and a program that can edit .ccp files.


I read throught the Readme, and that just got me more confused.

Re: I am new and need help.
 

If you're a student, or if you work in a school, or if you know a relative who does, you can buy cheap licenses of MSVC from Microsoft. Other than that I suppose you can find copies of MSVC for sale on eBay. I don't recommend the latest version, MSVC .NET, but for a beginner I'd go with the version 6 (Visual Studio 6).

It's normal to be confused if you don't know anything about bots and programming. Build a bot DLL from the source code, and put it to work, then start hacking around (DON'T FORGET TO MAKE BACKUPS IN CASE YOU MESS STUFF UP!). Things will clarify with time.

Re: I am new and need help.
 

I am a student. Where can I buy it for cheaper?

Re: I am new and need help.
 

You can try looking in http://www.microsoft.com/education/?ID=AERFind

Re: I am new and need help.
 

Hello, Pex657.

Someone contacted me earlier via drek about a bot for rival species.
I've since then researched the mod some what. and wanted to add rival species to ShrikeBot. If yr interested on coding along you can contact me. (via this boards PM message system.)

------
edit...

oh wait.. you don't have a compiler or anything.
not much ya can help then ...... :| ... sorry.
well let me know when ya get compiling 9_9

Re: I am new and need help.
 

Thanks, i already Pm you

Re: I am new and need help.
 

I really NEED bots for rival species, if anyone knows about it, post it here please.

THANK U

Re: I am new and need help.
 

well you don't have to buy MSVC, as there are free replacements which is perfect to compile the bot code:

I would recommend the MinGW (the Windows port of GNU Compiler Collection):
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/m...1.exe?download

In case of you need a nice IDE to edit the source code:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...p.exe?download

Having said that, you need a bit of work to get HPB bot to compile under current version of MinGW. If you have problems you can ask in the forum or ask me directly.

You can also use the Borland C++ command line compiler, which is freeware. (http://www.borland.com)

@PMB: now I would feel no surprise to see how you're promoting M$ proprietary software which costs quite a lot of $$$ just for using it hehehe... (j/k) :D

Re: I am new and need help.
 

nag me all you can, but you know pretty well like me that HL1 chronically hates anything that's not compiled with MS compilers... :)

I would have recommended Microsoft's free compiler and the Eclipse IDE. But MSVC is much easier for beginners, so I stick to my point :P

Re: I am new and need help.
 

I have made a dev-cpp and mingw version of HPB bot template...
http://filebase.bots-united.com/inde...on=file&id=225

it should compile & run perfectly with GCC/MinGW 3.2.3 and Dev-Cpp.
See readme for details. :)

The Dev-Cpp is basically as easy as MSVC, and I don't think we should recommend new users the MSVC as they will just get addicted into proprietary software.

[edit]
well I missed something...
at first time you run the Dev-Cpp, you need to select Tools->Compiler options->Programs, and fill in "mingw32-make.exe" after the "make:" (which is originally "make.exe".

Re: I am new and need help.
 

Hey Whistler, have you tried this out on Win98?

Last time I tried to use Bloodshed (Dev-cpp), it had problems with Win98's limited command line length.

I had to download and install MSYS (from the MinGW website) and use that command line shell to have a long enough command line such that I didn't get linker errors when trying to link all the .o files into the executable DLL.

botman

Re: I am new and need help.
 

I am currently coding a bot for Rival species :)

Currently working on the navigation but the following is functionalish

Bot can use menus for:

Team selection

Weapon selection

Class Selection

Bot can select weapons, aim and fire during combat. (also does melee nicely :) )

As to navigation I have gotten to the point where I just need decent waypoints for the maps so I'll post about that later.

Also can someone please give me a quick run down of how to use the Floyds route thing in HPB v4. (Would Djikstra be better?)

I need info on what is necessary for initialization and why does it only return unsigned short ints for next waypoint on route? (<=255? MAX_WAYPOINTS set to 1024 by default? )

I am probably just making some simple mistake tho but any help would be cool.

Then maybe bot will be ready for the next version of RS! I am on the development team now so can have the bot ready with the release. It should also be compatible with all 7 races, their classes and their guns, yay!