YAPB UPDATE? /TRY YAPB PODbot 2.6mm ppl

[Denl82]

Hello,
I am a fan of your Yapb bot and would love to see it improve. Out of all the bots I've tried (PODBOT 2.5, PODBOT 2.6mm rb2.43-46 , realbot AI 1.0-wip build 3005--last one I was able to get working -- IVPbot, E[POD]bot, and Joebot), I use YaPB 98% of the time. Just to let all you PODBOT 2.6mm guys know how good of a bot this is. Because I like this bot so much, I thought of some ideas that can be skimmed down and added into Yapb, . I also wrote some much needed fixes.

I came across Poxbot a few days ago, and, even though its latest version was released May 2003, I immediately found it to be a very good bot, especially because it is strong where Yapb should be.

It has a cool system that uses 3 "fighting styles," e.g. it decides to crouch and shoot at you from a distance, and the bots, overall, decide to sit at camp spots more than any other bot I have played. I will discuss why I brought up POXbot later.

The reason I stick with Yapb is because I love the way the bot covers a whole map, and gives the player a feeling of this coverage being "solid," from how fast the teams moves across a map a.k.a its "GO, GO, GO" drive( in contrast to other bots that seem slow, or worse, that seem to be undecisive to a map's goal).I also like its stability, and it's firing code(?). As where in PODBOT 2.6mm, when the bots always shoot a certain, static burst, Yapb shoots burts accordingly, and holds the button to riddle your body when you're too close. Oh, can't forget those ownij grenades.

I believe Yapb can improve through a few "adds" and fixes, however.

- There is a bug in Yapb when a bot would sometimes just decide to "give up on life" and stay in one spot, and if not engaged by an enemy, will stay there until the round ends. ??

- An essential fix is needed to make the bots pick up dropped handguns when their's have run out of ammo, particularly during the first round of a map. It is blatently unhuman for a bot to pass several hanguns on the floor with a knife in its hand, to attack an enemy with a DE. Yet, I haven't seen any bot do otherwise. Hmm? hehe.o_O

-( A crazy one). The bots should switch guns with guns on the floor depending on which parts of a map it will take. With my limited knowledge of bot programming, I'm guessing this would involve using a vistable. To tell the truth, I have NO idea how this can be done, but one can bet this add would make a bot uniquely human-like.

-Also, in POXbot, if a bot endures heavy damage during a fight, it will run as far as it can away from the enemy. In contrast, a Yapb bot will often backtrack around the nearest corner and wait for its enemy to appear. This doesn't detract from Yapb's gameplay, but it can be improved if a Yapb bot decides to run to better safety, and even better, if it tries to find a teammate to stick with while avoiding danger. The bots should also randomly decide to camp in a well-covered area in this situation, to mix up its tactics.

-One fix I think is needed is for bots to know when not to rush into a room when a teammate right in front has entered a room and gets ambushed. I've seen 3 bots in a row run into a room just to be killed one after the other, without trying to take an alternative route, etc. Maybe this can be done by having Yapb judge where a room is by calculating how many bots on one team are near to each other, in addition to if the killing bot is in this group, and whether or not the ambushed enemy is close to this group. Dunno programming at all, but I guess one can change this idea to code.

-Yapb's game flow should remain smooth throughout a map when the bomb is dropped with CT's player numbers greater than T's player numbers. Currently, CT's all gather around the bomb until around :45 seconds in the game, then run around the map looking for a terrorist(and it's usually just one or two terrorist left, leaving little chance for the T's to get to the bomb). Depending on how many players left in a game, a certain amount of CT's should camp near the bomb, and a certain amount should strategically sweep a map for enemy's based on where it's teammates are, instead of running around without thought of possible backup. Appropriate counter strategic moves should be discernible by the Terrorist.

- And other important/Elite team tactics. Since I haven't played CS online in a almost a year(and with not much solid experience to begin with), I can only imagine a few team tactics that would be VERY l33t to add to Yapb right now.

1)One I can think of is that bots pair up in a complimentary fashion to take certain roles. For instance, maybe a bot who can only afford a handgun can be joined by a bot with a m4a1 or the like, to increase the chance of team survival. Or,

2)Two bots, one with a shotgun, another with a mp5navy, decides to roam through the dark hallway with the barrels, in cs_italy, for example. To take it another step, there can be two or three aggressive bots diverging toward a point in a map where a teammate sniper hangs back with a clear shot at any enemy intercepters( lol I don't know how this can be done, maybe using "Vistable"? hehe).

3)Also, if there are 3 CT's camping a dropped bomb in a room, with 2 T's trying to access the bomb, have the Terrorist use strategic methods to kill off the 3 CT's, perhaps through timed attrition, for example, or any other such l33t methods. Yapb bots always seem to know if the dropped bomb is being camped, so they can use this knowledge as an advantage.

4) If bots on a certain team(Terrorist, for example) are being killed time and again at a bottleneck doorway(etc.), have a pair or more of the T's flank the opposing team's oppurtunist in a timely fashion to relieve pressure off the bottleneck. I realize this will change the game pace Yapb has, but it sure as hell is more human, hehe.

5)Depending on optimal conditions, a bot should sneak around a map to effectively making it invisible to an enemy, while other teammates detract the enemy's awareness of that player with their sounds(footsteps).

I have not played CS online in a long time, so I don't know much real team tactics, but i know that what all current bots need is a strong emphasis on teamplay. Any bot that has got an advantage here is THE bot to play.

-I think it is very important for the bots to know when exactly to slow down and perhaps even crouch if needed, when they have an AWP,and specifically the G3SG1 and SG550 sniper guns. If the sniper aiming was somehow fixed, Yapb would easily take a few steps ahead in its gameplay.These bots work very well with a scout, for current bots, satisfactorily with the AWP. But they miss way too often with the other two sniper guns because,I believe, they aim too quickly and move around too much while shooting. What is also important is for the bots to know when to use their handgun, and when to use their sniper guns,and possibly using a sniper gun/handgun=DE buying combo. This isn't exactly necessary when it has a scout, in any room, lol, but it is critical for firefights in small rooms if they have the other two sniper guns.

Great Sniper Aiming is critical to keeping cs offline on par. I'm going to try the bot_aim plugin, since I've read that it makes bot aiming more human.

Extra: In a further step to make these bots human-like, Yapb bots should conditionally and randomly decide which paths to take in a map when buying a sniper gun, instead of moving around a map with a SG550 as if it were a shotgun( I guess vistable can be used for this, too?).

-Have the bots decide to camp more often, and for longer durations. This will be especially cool if you can do this without slowing down Yapb's pace in a game severly, if it's even possible. I am able to do this particular tweak by raising all the botskill's settings to about the same range off 100, and loading bots with skills from the range of 0-100 from the main config.This is my way of making Yapb a bit more like POXbot while keeping Yapb's fast pace. For extra camping treats, I think it would be cool if Yapb bots make strategic camping decisions based on game conditions, e.g., the terrorist, with 1 point to CT's 5 out of a 7 limit, decide to camp more, to "bring the fight to them" so to speak; or, the Terrorist decide to camp close together, with 2 of them left vs. 5 CT players , etc. Of course, there are other game conditions that can determine camp goals, that should be intergrated into Yapb.

Ok: here is why I talked about POXbot in the beginning. POXbot has an effective system which makes the bots switch fighting styles depending on the surrounding conditions. It's sort of like a PODbot solution to NNbot/joebot, and it works very well. I believe if these fighting styles were somehow intergrated seamlessly with Yapb's current fighting system--somehow retaining Yapb's fighting flavor-- THIS will make Yapb one hell of a bot. How can this be done? I have no clue. If POXbot's fighting styles were added to Yapb without effectively making it Yet another POX, LOL, I guess Yapb would be 5 steps ahead of all other PODbot's out there. Hehe

Anyway, this is my first post, so I have been shooting off ideas that I've imagined would make botplay a whole lot better.
Thanks for your time, and THANKS for Yapb TRY YAPB PEOPLE
TRY IT

[Whistler]

Thanks for your suggestions. However now I want to write my own bot and something above needs some really big changes to POD-Bot, like the bots going into the same room problem.

anyways I will still make small updates to YaPB. Thanks again.

[CoCoNUT]

Oh my god...we need 13 Whistlers here o_O.

[haha]

YAPB RULES! well. execpt on amxmod BUT YAPB STILL RULES.