Question about Austin's Bot Server Forum

[Austin]

Originally Posted by botmeister

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.

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.

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.