AT LAST something !
 

ah, but it wont be said my bots are dead!

I FI-NA-LLY managed to write a navigation in the style I like! and one that works good enough for me to be proud of it somehow. Yeah, not perfect yet. But I'm on the right fucking track AT LAST. Geez. Something that works. Gimme a smoke.

The demo I'm uploading to the filebase shows a CT bot walking around in cs_italy in condition zero on a track I told it to follow. Basically what I did was 1°) erasing the bot's nav brain, 2°) slapping him in and 3°) have me walk around the map until the hostages so that my bot would discover of the map only the track I walked.

To increase the difficulty I told him to always look at vector (0,0,0) while following it. Unless for jumps. Yeah because also, this bot does not separate the head angles and body angles, and it does not cheat with strafe speeds and move speeds either ; you can witness it by the zig-zags he makes around the path he's following: exactly the same inputs as a human.

My biggest pride: the bot climbed through the window near the marketplace like a charm. Not many bots, even the waypointed ones, can boast about that.

http://racc.bots-united.com/racc-nav-cs_italy.png

This one has the particularity to selectively update its navlinks each time it uses them. If a "better" one is found, the bot updates its location, but only when it's certain to be a better link (better placement, most chances of success in jumping, etc). I shall post more demos about that.

I enabled the AI console during the demo so that you could see the internals.

http://filebase.bots-united.com/inde...on=file&id=303

Grab and watch.

Now I gotta improve that and clean it up. You should see the code. It's a mess. 8)

Re: AT LAST something !
 

thank you for the information, watching the ,,demo" now :)

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Anyway PMB, I've notice something , on my P4 2.0G , r9600xt , 384mb ram , I get something like 60fps with 2 bots , i get full 99fps when there are no bots . So i think the cpu load may are too huge

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60% on such machine?
omg i won;t even dream to start it on my poor pIII 800.... :D

to bad, it looks so nice

but be patient, maybe some day it will be optimized

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Rifleman, I WILL NOT release a bot that hogs the CPU. If the source code you have (which is almost 1 year old btw) is such a CPU hog it's 1°) because it's got a SHITLOAD of debug calls and 2°) because NOTHING is optimized. It's a bit early to say that the bot won't run on low-end machines.

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bah, i was hoping that the demo file was mpg or avi... i can't watch it as i don't have condition zero...

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Neither do I... :(

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I see , its good to hear that , I hope the CPu load will be reduced to the same state of the official CSbot :)

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@stef & $eu: anybody who owns HL2 should have Condition Zero too, no ?

but if you know how to convert a demo file to AVI let me know, and I'll do it.

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mr Pierre , www.fraps.com ;)

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Here some tutorial from me to make a .avi file. ;)
So you must start the game and load the demo(you know the command :
playdemo

After the demo is started and when you reach the moment that you want ot put in to the .avi file you must tape in the console :
startmovie <name> 30
Don't change the number 30 cuz just must be 30 :).
Now the CS will start to make 30 screenshots per second. Maybe it will lag your computer. After you finish just tape
endmovie
And the CS will stop to make screenshots. Then exit the game.
Now in you czero folder you will have a lot screenshots of your movie.
Now you need by one program :
videomach.
After you install it just load one of the screenshots and the program will automatically load them all. Now you can choose the compresion method and save the .avi file. Now you have your demo in .avi file.

Re: AT LAST something !
 

WOW, that stuff rocks =)
Thanks THE_STORM

I'm uploading the video here:
http://racc.bots-united.com/racc-nav...n-preview1.avi

please wait a bit while it's uploading.

*edit* finished! you can go for it :)

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very cool bro, is that using your nav mesh planning?

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yes, exactly, all the "waypoints" you see are passage points between two walkfaces that have been recorded by player motion tracking ; this way their placement is optimal which makes the bot able to do that jump through the window you see (yeah OK, the last window was problematic, but it learned to make it through successfully since).

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Yeah, very cool indeed...

/me makes popcorn for next preview :D

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That was cool to watch. Makes me want to start working on a bot again.

I think navigation is probably the most difficult part of bot programming next to strategy and planning.

I was wondering what happened to the bot at the end of the demo where it seemed to be stuck in a loop trying to get through the window?

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Hey PMB your compression choise is really bad. What compression method you choose ? I use XDIV. Maybe you can make this movie better than that.

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You mean XviD... He used DivX for this one. Must have chose the low quality, high speed encoding mode, maybe to save some MB to dial-up users ;)

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Since it was the only path it knew, after three trials it deleted the navlink, and stood still because no other path was available. I would have had to get out of spectator mode, and climb this window in front of it for it to recreate the navlink by watching me. But I have stopped recording at this point, else it would have been twice as long. 5 megabytes of demo was way enough already.

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i own HL2, Collectors Edition even. but no CS CZ for me! :(

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watched the avi... VERY impressive PMB. Really neat! Congrats!

I saw for once an odd 'jump' trying by the bot when it wanted to turn around the corner... (from CT start, jumping on the window, then at the last corner before you reach the hall-way to enter Terrorist area outside). It was not a place to jump at all ;) Nevertheless i must say i am very suprised. :D

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yeah, that was part of the obstacle avoidance strategy. If you notice there's a tiny obstacle in that room, can't remember what but I believe it's a little light spot on the wall. But I changed some of the bots' reflexes, I believe it wouldn't jump here anymore if I was to try it on that path again.

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that's wickedly awesome :)

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Next step: have the bot jump on the roof of the marketplace, and from there, over the ledge to the roofs like a carefully-waypointed podbot.

I'm all excited it works so good. Now I can admit it but my goal was initially to work out a better navigation than the CZ bot. Just for the challenge. I'm on the right track :)

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Heyyo,

Aright! an avi! btw, I don't have CZ either, I bought HL2 norm retail not collectors. And online you don't get cz unless you buy the silver or gold packages so there's still quite the hefty crowd out there without CZ.

And nothing's wrong with divx. works fine. I use it all the time with that videodub I think it's called, free, works great, I'm happy with it. ;)

gotta min and a half ti'll it's done downloading.. I hope it plays fine on these crappy school comps... wait.. divx... argh, I hope they have the codec, or I'm gonna have to wait ti'll home.......... oi.

And yeah, just like anything in the works rifleman, usually they just want the core done, optimizations is like, the last part. cause before, my main mod for vc, the biker bodyguard was over 2000 lines of code, lol, sloppy, and crashed often. After rebuilding it much more efficiently I got it down to maybe 500 lines, and not a single crash (well, that I observed.) ;)

ACK! no divx plugin.. darnit... I'll have to watch this beaute at home I guess... but from the reviews everyone else has been giving, I'm gonna enjoy this. :D

less waypointing means more gaming. ;)

[EDIT]
Btw, I downloaded it n' watched, very nice PMB, that was great to watch. a couple major advantages I see on your navmeshes over the official csbot is it can conform to the shape of the object underneeth it, I saw for the barrel, that the navmesh onnit was actually an octagon, and the small crate for the window jump at the T's spawn was actually fitting the crate. Other obvious differences is the jumping. I doupt I'd ever see the official CSbot pull off really good jumping techniques like racc did. It's annoying to watch the CSbot to rapidly leap up n' down while barley moving forward trying to get ona crate..

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the csbot can't even play all the levels with its superb technology called 'navmesh'.... :)

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I've just uploaded a higher quality version of the vid:

www.frostycoolslug.f9.co.uk/racc.avi

Its 30megs and XviD encoded, only problem is the AI console seems to flicker on and off, and there isn't much i can do about it :/

--
This is another major step for PMB, the bot plays like a complete newbie to the map, and this is what i love about it, if it watches a player make a jump, it will learn and better understand how to do it itself in the same way humans to.. its great :D

Congrats are in order :p

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looks impressive,
two notices
1. bot when running aims to the one map point (the running backward without checking what is behind corners)

2. jump bug - looping

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1°) that was a feature ; I made it aim to Vector(0,0,0) to show that it was possible for a bot to run backwards and sideways accurately without using some false strafe speed techniques.

2°) yep. That one will be fixed.

I should get back to it. Weeks that I haven't put my hands in the code.

Promised, after the Oktoberfest, I'm back to RACC :)

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yea, have a drink :D