The future of Bots?

[MarD]

Heyyo,

True man. I think bots won't go away. How would single player campaigns exist without them?

Like for instance Halo, great game, but no multiplayer bots, which is a letdown cause the singleplayer AI's really good... Hopefully it's just a matter of time for a bot to appear on the scene like for HL multiplayer....

I know I will always use bots cause yeah, they're fun. I've tried playing battlefield 1942 against people, and the fun factor seems lower than with bots. Lol, oh god the funny things that have happened to me with bots on that game, lol, I don't remember 1 funny moment when playing online.

Also, I say bots can help create the game's overall feel. Cause look at bots for CS, they tend to go all lone-wolf and go for kills instead of level objectives. Hmm, compare that to the majority of the CS community??? uh huh, that's what I thought, influenced by bots.

[TruB]

i play alot online nowdays.. and i actually think bots or boring compared playing against reall players..

for instans.. i war really into bots when i only had modem.. bc i really wanted team play.. i could be so happy if i manage to walk a path with bots.. and they didnt suddenly turn around and walk back to spawn point,,

the online era do not got good team play either.. thats why i joined a clan (bf/dc) to see what it got for me..

still team play is what on got.. i didnt get the satifieing amount from bots.. so when i got online.. i played online.. oh.. i dont have hl1 so i kinda didnt stopped playin it..

[stefanhendriks]

Originally Posted by Pierre-Marie Baty

I don't know for you Stefan but for myself my intents (as a coder) have always been this:

make a bot that plays smarter than any human opponent.

When I will play against just one bot and I will realize that I'm unable to outsmart it, then I'll consider my task finished.

Isn't that a challenge ? 8D

yes, it is my goal too. Yet, although WE are interested in this goal and we are going for it, there are many people that are NOT interested in bots. So, its not like i think Bots will ever die out or something, i just fear it will become 'less important' to humans.

Hmm, when i think of it, who cares... i code for fun anyways

[stefanhendriks]

Btw, i always play online on the AOS server (see the ip of that server on the rb site) but i also play with bots. I am more interested in the bot logic, how humans respond , etc. Its a pitty because i can't see other servers (that i know off) that run CS 1.6 + WIP 10 for instance. When i see something that should not happen, i'd like to fix it immidiatly

[Thirdeye]

with enough " trial and error " wouldn't it only really be a matter of time ??? so i guess the real question is for you bot coders... you all willing to explore/create/learn etc etc

the bots you all have done are stepping stones for you ( bot coder ) and everyone else who seems to get wrapped up in all this ( yours truely and countless others )

im sure making a bot has been an experiance in it self ???

[KickBot]

Interesting thread and good points.
Well SinglePlayer game obviously will need bots so no worry here.
As for the Multiplayer part, I think Kadat and and biohazerd87 in particular have good points. Bots can be used as sort of sparring partners.
I think 2 points tend to be overlooked by bot programmers, and they could help keep bots alive:

1. Bots as specialized sparring partners
This idea hasn't really been completly exploited on the bot programmer side, since most bot coders focus on making complete bots players for offline play. Instead one could code bots specialized in simple training tasks.
For instance in CS you could have a bot that just behave like a moving target to train your sniping skills. You could program various movement patterns (moving in parallel, random movement, rushing on the sniper, zig-zag etc...) and the player could make snipe training sessions on those pattern. You could make some mini-game with that, so its not just some annoying shooting session. For instance on the first level the objective is just to shoot down the bot in less than 10 seconds, then you have to use a maximum of 2 shots etc...
Sort of specialized tutorials. With bot slaves
I don't think learned tactics would be revelant since human players behave differently and in different ways, but you could certainly improve your skills.
Programming such things would also be usefull for the bot developper, since those primitives behaviors could be re-used in someway in a real game.
I'm considering making such training mini-bots for IOS (International Online Soccer). I'm planning to do a set of one-on-one bots : one that do only defence on you, another that play with you and do crosses for you etc...

2. Bots vs Bots matches
Well there are computer chess vs computer chess matches, and various other AI/bots competitions (car drivers, ai soccer bot etc...).
That could be funny to make teams of bot compete in your favourite mod.
That one is only interesting for the programmers of course.
As an example again, I'm doing a system for IOS that allow you to do just this. Since I'm trying to make a team of bots for IOS I thought it would be cool to allow other bot developpers to make their own team without too much pain and pit them against each other Its easy for IOS because there's a very simple environement (a pitch, players and a ball) so you can make a simple bot api. Would be much hard to do in a standard fps mod I guess, unless you standardize stuff (maps...)

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Well, you can already do bots vs bots matches in CS, and a couple other mods using Botman's Botmixer 5000. So you can have bots such as PODbot, squaring it off against RACCbot. But some bots conflict and shouldn't be run together, like I remember JOEbot doesn't like playin against other bots (dunno if that compatibility error was fixed in the final release of Botmixer 5000....

[stefanhendriks]

with metamod in the house you would not even need Botmixer

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Hmm, I thought that metamod could only load one non-metamod dll through the target line in a shortcut, or are you talking about several metamod versions of bots like PLBot and PB v2.6mm?? cause like that yeah, but not the non-metamod ones, unless there's a way that I missed??? (cause the autoexec.cfg way is the same as the targetline way in shortcuts, the only diff is loading times...)

[Onno Kreuzinger]

i've 2mbit, yet for some reasons i love playing bots for training with my clan, for having fun w/o waiting and it helps to fill the server if you start with 6-on-6 in cs_italy