Anybody here to continue E[POD]bot?

[LightNinja]

Hi,
as you propably know (see website www.epod-bot.net.tc) I stopped working on E[POD]bot.

When I checked the Forum today to see if anybody reacts to the news the page did not load properly at first and I could only see the bar at the top, where you see the different softwares I noticed that EPB isn't in the quickbar any longer.

So I decided to take care of E[POD]bot, so that it is not a dead bot. I think I will get E[POD]bot IIIa up the next days. I will not continue coding the bot myself because I am not able to do that. But I wish somebody could do it. There are 2 possibilities:

1. E[POD]bot is continued with his original name. Someone who will try to work on it gets the source code from me and I will stay in the project as a kind of advisor. I will also still maintain the website and perhaps code some parts of the bots, but the main programming is in the hands of the new programmer. The advantage of this would be the philosophy of Enhanced POD-Bot will be the same and not change to Advanced E[POD]bot *g*

2. E[POD]bot will be continued with a new name, as a kind of following bot. The one who programs it sets up an own website for it, gives credits to me somewhere (e.g. like the message about pod-bot appearing on the screen in E[POD]bot). Of course I will answer question this programmer has.

There is no difference concerning the progress the bot may make.

There is no use in making it open-source I think. It's not very clean code, not something which can be a template for dozens of people to program bots. And I think it gets confusing because there are already so many PB2.6 modifications around and if they get more nobody can overlook this. In this forum, however, I can post code extracts if somebody wants to use e.g. a specific feature in his bot. The good thing is, I can "clean up" the parts of code I post. If E[POD]bot is continued by a new programmer (possibility 1) this has to be talked over with him of course. It can get open source if he wants that.

It would be very cool to have MarD as waypointer, even if the bot is not continued. I already mailed him but I now try the forums, because I feel somehow ashamed because I "disappeared" for months and I don't want to disappoint everybody.
There can be more waypoint packs and other additions (language files). The bot won't be dead as long as people use it and it seems as if there is still big interest. The version IIIa is much more stable and some annoying bugs are fixed.

You cannot download it now, but it won't take very long. Here is already the changelog. It's now version IIIa because this changelog should have been at least two times that big, but I failed to implement some of the features and did not have time for the other ones, because of school and some other things I had to do in real life.

* FIXED: Bots having problems to navigate the map and staying
at one place for a long time
* FIXED: Bots tending to move towards the target zone but then
turn around and go somewhere else.
* ADDED: EPBcfg.exe, a tool where ýou can do all the settings
for the bot and select your language files for Chat and
Bot-Menu/Console.
* ADDED: multi-language support. Comes with chat-files for
English and German and with Menu/Console-Files for English,
German and French. Language files are plain text files which
can be translated by users. (see directories titles and chat)
* Changed the layout of the podbotmenu a little bit.


I hope somebody will react on this post.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Geez, now HOW are we supposed to react ???


OT: glad to learn that you're not dead.

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Yeah, I'm also glad you diddn't vanish off the face of the earth. Lol, I just realized this, but when I read your post, I was 4 inches away from the monitor, with a shocked look on my face... a fellow student asked me if I'm "ok..." I'm sleepy, n' trying to read important news. what's what I am...

Did you send an e-mail to my hotmail account? I havn't gotten anything there form you lately...

I'd wanna continue E[POD]bot... but I still need to learn some C++... n' trying to compile HPBbot seems to be hard... lol, but yeah, I probably just need to update my copy of bloodshed's DEV C++..

I got some manual on "how to learn C++ in 21 days." I'm hoping that it does teach me good C++... but it wants me to learn using visual sudio... n' I'm too cheap for that.

[LightNinja]

Hi MarD, do you have experience in other programming language. I do not mean web programming like PHP, but like Delphi, Pascal, Basic or something like that?

If yes you can learn C++ by doing and figuring out how things work...

See ya!

LightNinja

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Well, I know Pearl programming language cause that's apparently the programming language of BW's Mission Builder for the GTA series.

It looks like this:

:Bodyguard4FollowW
00D6: if 0 
00DF: actor $Bodyguard4_For_Player driving
004D: jump if false ££Bodyguard4FollowPlCarStart
0005: $Bodyguard4_OffbikeTimer = 0.0 \\ floating-point values
0170: $Bodyguard4_Z_Angle = player $PLAYER_CHAR z_angle 
00D6: if 0 
0030: $Bodyguard4_Z_Angle >= 67.5 \\ floating-point values 
004D: jump if false ££Bodyguard4FollowSW
00D6: if 0 
0032: 112.5 >= $Bodyguard4_Z_Angle \\ floating-point values 
004D: jump if false ££Bodyguard4FollowSW
0054: store player $PLAYER_CHAR position to $Bodyguard4_X_Pos $Bodyguard4_Y_Pos $Bodyguard4_Z_Pos
0009: $Bodyguard4_X_Pos += 1.6 \\ floating-point values 
0009: $Bodyguard4_Y_Pos += -1.0 \\ floating-point values 
00A7: car $Bodyguard4_Bike drive_to $Bodyguard4_X_Pos $Bodyguard4_Y_Pos $Bodyguard4_Z_Pos 
0002: jump ££Bodyguard4FollowSpeed0

That part of my bikerbodyguard code makes the biker bodyguard figure out if it should follow the player who's facing (vaguely) West, and what offset he should use.

[EDIT]
Lol, oops, forgot to mention my next big modding project for GTA VC.. it's called: Gotham City. YEP! BATMAN! and not just that... but OLD SKOOL BATMAN! like, the 1960's batman. We've already acomplished quite a bit. Monty (Rober Yeomans) is our lead Texturer and mapper, and me (ThE_MarD) is the coder. We've also gotten help from an italian batfan who converted our batmobile from the game known as Mafia. here's a link to check out some pics n' stuff: http://www.thebatcave.8k.com/gotham_city.htm

I dunno PHP, n' the rest of those programming languages ... you mentioned..

I tried figuring out C++ by looking at it... right now to me it looks like a foreign language... I know it makes sence to people who know it, but I'm completely confused by it. I'm sure eventually I'll figure it out.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I believe I know Perl a bit too (it's a widespread interpreted language especially used in UNIX scripts), but this language you posted doesn't look like it at all ?

[LightNinja]

Of course you can try it, but I think you won't do better than me, since you have the ViceCíty project and your "real life"

If you coped with that strange language you will be able to cope with C++... don't be shocked because it's C++, it's not much harder... some things are difficult because there are symbols used instead of words... but that's a thing you can learn while time passes...

Actually the point is: Don't mind your programming in C++... Imagine it's "POD-Bot-Programming-Language" or something like that. If you look at two different C++ programs you could easily think that are two different programming languages. On the first sight. At the second you will see the characteristics such as the { brackets } and the funny && and such things.
Because of that the book "how to learn C++ in 21 days" (there is a german translation of it in our city's library) would not be very helpful. You will of course learn the basics of C++ but the book is about programming some tiny windows software and not a DLL for some ego shooter.

If you do not use VC++ it will be quite hard to compile it, because POD-Bot is written with VC++. But it's not impossible, you should be able to compile it with almost every C++ Compiler (which supports Windows DLL), you just have to know how to do it.


Anybody else who has interest?


I noticed that E[POD]bot IIIa does not show many bugs anymore, but it's just weak. They can use snipers properly, but a friend of mine got stats of 20:3 after 6 rounds. He was alone in a team of bots fighting against a team of bots-only with equal size. The bots are equal enemies for me, because I very seldom play CS now... But after 30 minutes I also can beat them high.

The most important thing is to get it tougher. It sounds easier as it is, because I tried hard to get the bots better but it did not work well. Okay, there are some possibilites to get them better, but this would bring some bugs back or let them act very inhuman like fragging machines.The ultraskill mode with skills up to 200 does not improve the skill of them much... They are a little better, perhaps 20 percent. but not twice as good.

Somebody else who wants to keep E[POD]bot alive?


[ The third possibility I figured out today, if nobody will continue E[POD]bot is to give the source code to the developers of yaPB and mmPOD, so they can use it to improve their bots. But that would be a sad end for a glorious bot. ]

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Well, I was told it was pearl cause it was like dollar signs n' stuff... lol, I dunno what programming language I know then.

Apparently DEV C++ can do bot ones if you get one if you upgrade... I'll do that come monday when I get highspeed internet again.

[elitejavi]

well, i wold like to try, but there are 2 problems:

1) i don't know nothing about c++ and i, trying to learn it, downloaded visual vasic 2005 express beta, and there are no oportuniti for me to learn it, becouse i have a lot of strange errors(do not find iostream.h(i use the cprogramming.com and the cplusplus.com(the first program, i can't do hello world, i am pathetic) guides)) o_O )i'll try to save money to buy VC 6.0 (i think that there are 3 cd)(and i'll only can buy a copy, sorry, i'ts not my fault)

2)i need a 8 in math, oh my god!, and i have until 19 of november to study, then, i'll can start to learn C++ from morrow to night!

so i'll need a lot of time, so probably anyone can make me a mini guide until i start,so i don't think i'll can't continue E[POD] Bot, i'm not very luky

seeya

[Exilibur]

It's very nice to see that the bot is not lost

I would really be happy if anyone could convert the bot to metamod... that would be awesome!

Then new features could always come after that.

As far as i know, it's currently not possible to run two non metamod bot's on steam at the same time.