FritzBot Preview #3 Comment Thread

[Denny]

Originally Posted by PrestonKh

PS: PLZ MALEFICUS COME OUT WITH DEPOT ON THE NEXT RELEASE!!!!!! I'll PAY YOU!

When he gets a waypointing system down i wouldn't mind helping get the vanilla RTCW maps waypointed for release with his mod. Castle and Keep are de best!

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by PrestonKh

WTF!! I GOT PWNED BY A BOT!!:'(

LOL! Than my work wasn't a waste! I told you I had some tricks up my sleeve.

I love depot too - it WILL be supported, don't worry!

ANCIENT:
You extract fritz into your "RTCW" directory, not the "MAIN" directory. The easy way to start Fritz is to start up Wolf like normal, and select "FritzBot" from the mod menu.

Denny: Glad you like them! I've been working really hard to get them to intelligently play Obj. Working on the script/path system will be one of my next priorites.

GateKeeper: oh don't worry, they will knife/shoot you eventually. I've seen it quite a few times. Yes, there is a small memory leak somewhere in the code that causes the crash - I almost considered canceling the release date so that I could find it and fix it. Its very minor, and doesn't happen often, but I'm still not happy about it, and will probably end up releasing a patch in the next week or two to address that issue, and a few other small bugs and annoyances.

Panzer: yes, its a bug. The whole time I've worked on the bots, I've always had Friendly Fire on. A week ago, I was playing with it off, and I liked it on BEACH. However, I forgot to let the medic bots know that! What the bot was trying to do was TK REVIVE you, but since FF was off, it didn't understand why you couldn't die, so it just kept on shooting you, trying to TK you. If you put FF back on, you'll see them TK REVIVE like normal, under certain conditions.

What I'll do is let the bots understand that if FF is off, that a TK REVIVE is not possible. That fix will be included in the patch.

Crapshoot: the fix for the bots being kicked will also be in the patch.

Thanks for the comments guys - I'm glad your enjoying Fritz. The bugs and annoyances will be addressed in a patch - give me a week or two.

Cheers!


ps: PrestonKh, I'll be waiting for my check in the mail!

[PrestonKh]

Come out with Depot tomorrow or sooner and you will !
A suggestion when you do work on it, please script "some" bots to spawn kill. I have crazy ideas where they can. What I really wish though was some capability with shrub. Now that my friend would kick @$$!

P.S. if you got PayPal, email me it at PrestonKH@excite.com
It will be a surprise.

[Denny]

Originally Posted by Maleficus

What I'll do is let the bots understand that if FF is off, that a TK REVIVE is not possible. That fix will be included in the patch.

Amazing! I mean to get the bots to understand when and if FF is turned off is just sick! These bots are shaping up to be even better than some retail bots i know of like Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942 and Quake 3 to name a few.

IMO i keep FF turned on, just makes it a bit more challenging.

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by PrestonKh

Come out with Depot tomorrow or sooner and you will !
A suggestion when you do work on it, please script "some" bots to spawn kill. I have crazy ideas where they can. What I really wish though was some capability with shrub. Now that my friend would kick @$$!

P.S. if you got PayPal, email me it at PrestonKH@excite.com
It will be a surprise.

Heh, it will be a month or more, most likely, before Depot is supported. Its not because I can't do it now, its because I want to finish creating a easy to use path/script system that anyone can waypoint for.

Right now, I can barely use it, its so cumbersome and ugly. Its still changing too - so it doesn't make sense to keep re-waypointing for maps when the system is changing every week (I'm constantly trying new ideas and expanding it, to see what works best and cheapest). Thats why I'm only releasing a few maps at a time.

I used to play DEPOT to death for a couple years on this crazy 64 player server that only played DEPOT, so I know that map really well and a lot of its tricks and hiding places.

You don't really have to pay me - it was a joke. I wouldn't accept your money anyhow: I do this for love of AI and the Wolf community.

btw: there are a LOT of shrub features already in the mod - I've just never really advertised them.

EX:

Helmets actually protect against headshots.

Can revive underwater.

Medics drop health packs when die.

Get another helmet with ammo pack.

Get more needles with ammo pack.

You can shove blocking players on your team (bind a key to "shove").

Meds and Engs can pick up other team's SMG.

You don't pick up ammo if you dont need it.

Lts can only pick up their own ammo, not the ammo of other LTs.

etc, etc - I don't even remember all of the features, I'd have to look thru the src, but most have been around since the very first version of Fritz.

[The Ghost]

I have to say great work Maleficus, looking forward to the weekend so i can have a thorough fragfest with them.

[Denny]

I have a couple of possible bugs.

One is i keep getting random memory errors when running Fritzbot and it crashes to the desktop. This is on Windows 2000 SP4, Wolf 1.41, i think this may have been mentioned before, and it could just be from something totally different because it doesn't happen often. Twice and i've run Fritzbot about 5 times now.

Second is the shove command, i don't know if this can be fixed though but i went to camp on the file cabinet in the war room with the good ol tuna burner (aka flamethrower) and there was an LT up there, so i kept shoving him until he fell off the side, then he kept running against the cabinet as if he was lost. There was also a medic up there camping and when i shoved him off he camped right below the cabinet and didn't move.

Just thought i'd mention those.

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by Denny

I have a couple of possible bugs.

One is i keep getting random memory errors when running Fritzbot and it crashes to the desktop. This is on Windows 2000 SP4, Wolf 1.41, i think this may have been mentioned before, and it could just be from something totally different because it doesn't happen often. Twice and i've run Fritzbot about 5 times now.

Second is the shove command, i don't know if this can be fixed though but i went to camp on the file cabinet in the war room with the good ol tuna burner (aka flamethrower) and there was an LT up there, so i kept shoving him until he fell off the side, then he kept running against the cabinet as if he was lost. There was also a medic up there camping and when i shoved him off he camped right below the cabinet and didn't move.

Just thought i'd mention those.

Yea, your talking about the same memory leak I described above. I don't know whats causing it ATM, so I'll have to REALLY comb thru the code and find it, and once I do, it WILL be fixed in the patch.

The camp area in the warroom is a bit small - all thats required is a slight modification of the nav file, and that won't happen anymore. It will also be included in the patch.

[Denny]

Excellent, thanks mal.

Just one more thing for next release or something. I think you should not implement those specific abilities that the bots have in their bot files, reason i say is they play pretty good at the moment, i mean it wouldn't be too bad to implement those, but they'd be a pain to edit when it came down to it. I mean they'd add more realism (as far as actual server play) but they'd be tough to get right and n00bs would have a tough time editing those.

This is totally up to you of course, either way, doesn't matter to me, i think they play great right now and adding those abilties may drown the power & challenge of Fritzbot i think. Not unless you removed those and added say an Easy, Medium & Hard setting, possibly through a server cvar. That's up to you though, i'm pretty sure if those were implemented that probably wouldn't be finalized for awhile, and even then, they may be pretty cool anyway.

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by Denny

Excellent, thanks mal.

Just one more thing for next release or something. I think you should not implement those specific abilities that the bots have in their bot files, reason i say is they play pretty good at the moment, i mean it wouldn't be too bad to implement those, but they'd be a pain to edit when it came down to it. I mean they'd add more realism (as far as actual server play) but they'd be tough to get right and n00bs would have a tough time editing those.

I've been thinking the same thing, to be honest. Right now, their behavior is intelligent, yet varied enough, that each bot ends up with their own personality anyhow.

I'll probably remove them, and just simplifiy the whole .bot file feature.