NTBot

[vincentbihler]

Hi everybody !
I'm new here, and the reason of my recent inscription on this forum is because I have a project. I'd love to develop, and be helped, for the NeoTokyo mod for HalfLife2. Well to begin, I'd simply like to do simple bots running around the map, and shooting on the opposite team when seeing... Someone can indicate me in which direction I have to go ?
Thaks a lot !

[Whistler]

I don't have experience on anything HL2 related however I think these may be useful:
http://yapb.bots-united.com/files/HPB_bot2_Alpha_1.zip (botman's HPB bot2 Template)
http://rcbot.bots-united.com/

[ericvoid]

Hello, people. Like Vincent, I'm also interested to develop a Bot for NeoToko.

But before I would like to thank you for the home page inviting text. That's very friendly and encouraging. And please be patient with my "noobness".

I'm quite sad because people over NT's forum doesn't accept (nor refuse) my inscription. And also, many there are not interested in bots.


Hey Vincent, are you still there? Have you done something up to now?


I want to ask some questions. I read quickly the articles about Bot and AI programming in Source Dev Wiki, but they are too sparse, and there are many things that are still confusing for me.

Bots are implemented as a Plugin for the client side? Or as plugin for server side? Or are they are built in the server?

In CouterStrike Source man menu there is the option "create server". Is it really creating a server?

NeoTokyo does not have that option. If I want to play with bots will I have to setup a local server?

Thank you in advance.

[Whistler]

Bots are implemented as a Plugin for the client side? Or as plugin for server side? Or are they are built in the server?

most (if not all) of the HL1 bots runs at the server side which "hijacks" the communication between the engine and the MOD (with the purpose of adding functionality to the MOD). HL2 may have its own server-side plugin system though (I have zero experience on HL2 so maybe someone else can explain that).

In CouterStrike Source man menu there is the option "create server". Is it really creating a server?

yes, other clients can connect to the game.

NeoTokyo does not have that option. If I want to play with bots will I have to setup a local server?

I didn't know about this MOD however if it's multiplayer game then I dont think it's needed to run a dedicated server. It's just the text in the menu, which is not important.

[ericvoid]

Thanks for the response.

Sory, I was wrong. There is actually a "Create Server" option in NeoTokyo.

Some more questions. If the plugin "hijacks" that communication how can I know what communication to "intercept"?

Bot funcionality is assumed by the engine? (eg. those bot_* commands are defined by the plugin?)

[Whistler]

for HL1 read the botman's readme.txt file. Don't know about HL2 though.

basically (again for HL1):
pfnStartFrame() for running AI code
pfnClientCommand() for intercepting the command input (and if detected bot commands do the operation)
pfnClientMessage() for intercepting the messages engine sent to client to get information of players
etc.

the commands are defined by the bot itself (as noted above), however engine does provide pfnCreateFakeClient() for MODs to create "fake" clients (aka. bot), which can be used by the plugin as well.

[ericvoid]

Hey I have read quickly HPB bot's code. It does not look complex, but I found it very cryptic.

I tried opening it with Visual C++ Express, but looks like it's missing many .h files.

Besides that, I tried guessing some stuff that Sorce Dev Wiki did not explain and I got to an "startable" point. I managed to get Source SDK sample codes, and there is a simple Server Plugin src.

I'm going to study it by myself.

Thank you again and seeya later.