Planning and design

[stefanhendriks]

lol @ Austin. I do test my code, don't be afraid. Like the last build, i got screenshots of bots planting the freaking bomb. And what do people say as a bug "they do not plant the bomb"... the problem with this is, there are several factors where the problem could be:

1) bots simply always meet and therefor fight and die
2) bots simply do not want to plant the bomb (because personality value is very low)
3) ct bots are higher skilled then t bots, so 1 ct takes out 2 t's.

etc. THe bomb code works, the defuse code works... yet i need people to test it out for me.

Don't be afraid, i never give a dll away without playing it for atleast 5 minutes myself!

[botmeister]

Originally Posted by Austin

This is a bad attitude to have as a developer!

I worked for 4 years in serious software testing before writing any code.
(testing things like backup software that fortune 100 companies used to back up / restore their databases / file systems / operating systems...)

This served me very well in my career as a developer. I saw the large amount of wasted time caused by developers releasing code they didn't even really test.

Strive for perfection from the start, as much as reasonably possible and then you will be in a better position to fix the myriad of bugs that will arrive anyway.

IMHO!

Austin, I know exactly what you are talking about

Most of the problems with software can be fixed before they even happen by coding in a "safe" way which lowers significantly the probability of errors from occuring. I found that you can do safe coding much faster than ad-hoc coding, and you can still have very efficient and readable software, ie there are no real disadvantages, only advantages. You can even create code that tests itself by doing comprehensive internal integrity checks, such as the NULL pointer test that has become common in C/C++ coding.

[stefanhendriks]

i will never regret my comments! Everything i code is atleast workable, re-read and thinked-twice before i even begin writing. I do understand your pov Austin & botmeister, but my comment was of course meant in a funny way.

[botmeister]

Stefan, your released code seems to very stable to me so you're obviously getting along quite well. My comments were not directed at anyone, just chatting about coding technique, which is a topic I enjoy discussing.

[stefanhendriks]

i understand thanks for the compliment btw

[koraX]

Originally Posted by stefanhendriks

Then add a simple form of navigation, like using waypoints/nodes/navmeshes/no waypoints (tracelines nav).

What is the difference between nodes-based and waypoint-based navigation ? Or is it the same ? o_O

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

It's pretty much a question of vocabulary. Depending on the meaning you put behind both. For example, almost everybody agrees that waypoints are "points", i.e. vector locations in the virtual world. Some may call waypoints nodes, but some also use the term "node" to describe a more generic concept, basically a leaf in a pathfinding tree. With my bot for example, which one uses a navmesh, the nodes are not points, but polygons on which players can walk. These "navnodes" can extend over 200 units length and width in the virtual world, depending on how the map was made and how it was compiled into the BSP tree.

The difference between the concept of "points" (waypoints) and "nodes" in the meaning I give them, is that for me, these walkable faces describe much better the shape of the world to a bot than what waypoints do. You have to imagine what a bot see. Where you, as a player, see walls, staircases, rooms and alleys, all a waypoint-based bot sees is a constellation of stars in the void, each star being a waypoint.