HL2DM Bot Coding

[Raedur]

Hi All,

I am currently undergoing my honours at adelaide university in computer science and my honours thesis' topic is about writing a bot using the Source engine that is evolved using evolutionary programming to work in teams to complete a simple objective and compete against other teams. I have downloaded the SDK through steam and i have implemented the default bot functionality using the guide from the steam website, but i am not exactly sure where to go from here. I have looked at the RCbot2 but it seems a little complicated to start from. Is there anywhere i can read up on the basics of creating a bot using the Source engine or is there a simple bot that i can get hold of to read through and understand?

Ryan

[The Storm]

There is pretty big topic about the Source bots http://forums.bots-united.com/showthread.php?t=3629 but I will save you reading, you can't create functional bot from the current SDK as plugin for some MOD. There is no way the get the weapon that the bot is holding, how much ammo he have and other limitations. The only solution is to have the source code of the MOD and to integrate the bot directly in the MOD. The only MOD that Valve give us the source code is Half-Life 2, so if you want to create a HL2 bot go directly in to the source and make it. I don't know if there is really good start up tutorial for the bots but you have the basic, other part is learning the SDK and I think that the Valve developers wiki have pretty much information about the SDK.

Good luck.