Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

Austin, I was wondering if your forum was open to all bot servers, or limited to your bot servers only? I was thinking this because it would be nice for us bot server operators to have a place to chat, and your forum seems like the perfect place for this :)

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

Sure, I agree. We need a "Dedicated Server" forum.

I get lots of traffic on my server but nothing on my forum here so why don't we change it over to a general DS Server forum?

PM, Nova?
Can someone change the title over to HL Dedicated bot server or what ever sounds good.

I have just received another 1U server I am going to install. It is a dual zeon 2.8 with dual LAN and has a dual LAN inet connection. It should be able to easily run 4 DS with 28 bots on each server instance with no lag problems. Once I install it I can setup one of more of the servers for some of the different bots here. Perhaps later on after I get this setup, if we decide, then we can dedicate a forum just for our own BU "bot servers!"

It would be cool to be running DS servers with POD, RB, RACC, Joe, etc..

I am going to setup this new server tonight and do some testing. I think it may be able to handle 6 instances of a DS lagg free. I have plenty of bandwidth to handle all of them running 24/7 ...

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

Yes, now that would be cool!

You don't really have to change the forum name - just the description, but whatever works for you is fine with me.

I really like this, having the guys who use the bots working with the guys who make the bots - there's lot's to be learned from it.

Austin, you must of created code to manage your bot server. Is this something other servers can use? I'd like to learn more about it.

What I'd like to see is a common API between bot and server manager, that way we can have much better control over the bots on a server. There are some functions I got working but don't work as good as they should, such as weapon restrictions, and weapon selection, etc.

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

I changed the forum's subtitle, Austin. If you want to put your own custom title, it's in the admin control panel, "Forum Manager", click on "expand" next to your forum's category and select "edit forum" in your forum's dropbox.

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

Uh, how do I get into the admin control panel??
I would prefer the forum title to be:
Bot Servers

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

oh sorry, I thought the moderators could also have access to this but visibly not, it's only for the admins... you will need to ask a council member if you want to change a forum.

I'm going to change your forum name to "Bot servers"

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

while we are changing names, can we do something about the name, or caption of mine?
'The best php server status display utility' seems a bit egotistical, especially since i think bastumm's hltv is hot.

maybe something more generic?

"server status thingy's" =)

thanks

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

ok
although "server status thingy" would be identical to the forum name... I propose "PHP server status display utility", like before but without "the best" ;)
What do you think ?

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

sounds good to me, thanks =)

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

... and I was about to propose this one too. Good idea!

Now I need to do something about my empty "server loader" forum ....

Re: Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum
 

Yes!
Software development is not just coding and design. User testing, usability testing, feedback and bug reporting is a major part, as well as installation, user support! and documentation. Perhaps we can help some of these fellows out with these parts they don't have the time or expertise for including professional install applications and the documentation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by botmeister Austin, you must of created code to manage your bot server. Is this something other servers can use? I'd like to learn more about it.

Well I only run POD 2.5 on my servers, so I do have some necessary hacks to keep the server from crashing on cs maps and a number of other things.

RESERVED SLOTS – BOT HUMAN BALANCE:
The latest thing I have been working on is a way to keep reserved slots for everyone who is part of ABS and maintain a max / min bot level automatically. This was the biggest pain for me over the years since the bots are kicked on map changes, players can get into a “full” server at map changes and you can end up with like 8-9 humans on when the server is tweaked for at most 5 humans for good challenging game play. We have a group of player who are part of ABS that we want to give first choice in getting into the servers so I needed a way to let ABS on, that would kick non-ABS when the max human count was reached.

MAP HACKING:
A long time ago I decided that since it was getting frags that was fun, I would set up bot servers to maximize kills without making it too easy, which would ruin the fun. The problem was I needed like 20+ bots to maximize the fragging potential and I soon discovered that most maps only allowed 10 players per side. Someone on NB told me the limit was due to spawn points and by searching google I found this excellent site:

http://www.joe.to/cstrike/ents/

I started hacking maps by hand to add in more spawn points. This was a real pain and the main motivation for learning HL / Metamod coding. This is about the time I met Pierre-Marie Baty! We decided about the same time, due to some cross posts on botmans forum to work together on a map editing utility that allows editing/adding the spawn points as well as some other things. PM sent me the first Metamod project I ever saw.

MODIFYING MAPS FOR BETTER BOT SUPPORT!
Pm and I worked on a utility where you can start a LAN game and then runs around the map add/removing spawn points and other items like guns and grenades and then simply save the changes right back to the BSP file! I continued to enhance this utility and it is still a little rough BUT it works great to hack maps to add more spawn points and you can add guns and grenade into your maps. I think this is an area that needs to be better investigated along with bot coding. The bot code could “adjust” spawn points on the fly for some interesting effects. For example if 28 bots are being added to the map why not automatically add in dynamically more spawn points so the bots will spawn into the map without modification? There are way more things I have done to hack maps for cool effects . Things like spawning guns above the players/ bots so they fall into their hands at the start of a round. Modifying / REMOVING doors from the maps so the bots navigate the maps much better, hacking maps so you can’t buy anything to force some interesting rounds (check out my bot servers when they are on cs_assaut) adding crates in certain places, and on and on, and ON. This idea of map hacking along with bots has not really been investigated as well as it needs to be to create some VERY interesting game play…

RUNNING DS UNDER THE DEBUGGER
I have a PC setup to run the DS under the VC debugger. This is a server that fills up very fast after it goes on-line since people have been connecting to it for 2 years now and it has been popular. What this means I have a great way to quickly debug / test things on a live DS.


THE SHORT ANSWER:
Botmeister do you remember when I asked you for your source code on NB? Probably not! But you said if there was something specifically I wanted to know just ask and you would let me know how you did it. I guess now is the time we can get together and work out some cool things! We both run bot servers so we know what is needed and what is cool to have.

Lets talk about what we want to have in an easy to use MM utility and get a group of people together to work on it.

I would like to see a project through from specification, to design to release.
I will start a document that specifies everything I need and want and will email it to you.