POD-bot back into shape.

[Hot-Doc]

@Pierre-Marie Baty

Thank you very much for delivering such frequent updates to the source code of PODBot 2.6!

Unfortunatly you don't plan to add any new features, but you made so many bugfixes to the originally released sourcecode that by now it surely became the most convincing source of the 2.6 PODbot available. Therefore imho it should become the basis for any PODBot 2.6 derivates.

Would it be possible to organize a project around this WIP (why not call it "PODBot 2.6 BU template")? I mean here at the bots-united forums are at least three members who use the original 2.6 source as a basis and they all have to fix the same bugs. That sounds to me like inventing the wheel three times. Would it be possible to split up the source code in more logic fragments (like aiming, weopon selection, combat tactics, squad tactics, waypointing, etc.) and then letting all developers concentrate on what they probably want to do - adding features that help making the bot more smart, easyer to use and more challenging? Or as a further thought, would'nt it be nice for the enduser to be able to choose your modified WIP and then select for example austins waypoint editor (ok, it's allready included but might be improved later on) and the aiming system of LightNinja, the Navigation of IvPBot and so on?

Of course all developers work on their bots for fun, but from the point of view of an end user it is a pitty to see that for example bot "a" has a new sensational combat mode but is not able to navigate doors, whereas bot "b" navigates smoothly but lacks convincing combat behaviour.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a coder at all, but seeing that we use the halflife engine, with a hack for plugins (metamod), a plugin for integrating a bot and then another hack (mEAn) that itself overrides the aiming of the bot that is running under metamod seems to be inefficient. Using a hack to hack a hacked piece of program is to weird for me - it somehow reminds me of the development of windows me...

Nevertheless this method works. But woldn't it be better to have metamod loading a plugin that works as a botmanager (without admin tools) that can run in multiple instances and handle plugins for navigation, waypointing, aiming, and so on? This way seems to be more straight-forward.

As I said most developers do it for the fun of developing their bot and beeing forced to certain interfaces may not be challenging enough for them since they would depend on others. But wouldn't it be what Bots-United stands for - joining forces?

there seems like a lot of changes in the last update - but i just formatted my computer, then realised i've lost my Half-Life CD >, when i find it i'll look forward to testing the changes

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Hot-Doc, then you might be interested in reading this

[Hot-Doc]

Sorry, I don't check out every forum of bots-united but I should have searched a bit more before. Stupid me, thinking you wouldn't have discussed this before...:o

It is really great to know that you are actually planning something like this! No, obviously you are planning somithing much bigger than this. I only hope that you won't get stuck because of the complexity of such a project. I remember that some time ago you wrote that you gave up on making your bot completely engine independent. Nevertheless I wish you good luck for that adventure.

In advertising words:

Nice - just do it!

Back to Topic: Do you think that KaCat, LightNinja, Whistler and all the others could easily integrate your improved basic source into their projects? Or did you have to do changes that are probably incompatible to other projects?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I believe there shouldn't be any problem for KaCaT, LightNinja or Whistler to integrate most of the bugfixes from this bot into their bots ; additionally if I wanted there shouldn't be many problems either the other way around, i.e if someone wanted to take code from these bots and put it into this one. I did not do anything groundbreaking while fixing the bot, and any ANSI C coder should be able to understand what the differences do when looking at the code, even a beginner...

If KaCaT, LightNinja or Whistler ever fiddle with a bug that has already been fixed in this bot code, I encourage them to come and have a look. Identically, if one of them could tell me about an elegant method to fix the occupied camp spot bug, I'd be very grateful. United we win

[SoUlFaThEr]

DUDE!!!!!!!! OMFFFFFFFFFFFFFGGGGGGG

you are without a doubt #1 on my list of people to squeeze!!!!!!!

so awesome man really.....some of those enhances of your own are sweet like the transparent spawn entities!!! the ct's reacting the T's rechecking thier goal after bomb pick up......man just dying to get this thing in........

I should send you my present copy of tundra and dust again because you will be happy with the results.......they are much better now.......tundra is fulll of waypoints so everything is open to the public.........

il send them in a minute.........i cant sit down long right now out of pure excitement.......our dreams are coming true

Originally Posted by SoUlFaThEr

DUDE!!!!!!!! OMFFFFFFFFFFFFFGGGGGGG

you are without a doubt #1 on my list of people to squeeze!!!!!!!

so awesome man really.....some of those enhances of your own are sweet like the transparent spawn entities!!! the ct's reacting the T's rechecking thier goal after bomb pick up......man just dying to get this thing in........

I should send you my present copy of tundra and dust again because you will be happy with the results.......they are much better now.......tundra is fulll of waypoints so everything is open to the public.........

il send them in a minute.........i cant sit down long right now out of pure excitement.......our dreams are coming true

Hehehe are the releases coming out with soulfather's wonderful waypoints? 8o
BTW, I can't see the bot going inside the corridors in de_inferno..

[]'s

DT

[SoUlFaThEr]

when i am finished fixing all of the standard map waypoints to fit the changes in this bot........they will be released with it........

what do you mean with inferno? they work fine here......its just an out of the way area for the bot from its goal areas......it will naturally have less traffic......give this bot time.......he will learn.....after all its AI

@PMB or AUSTIN
this new command Autopath setRadius N needs a menu with preset lengths just like the waypoint setRadius menu in the editor(say in 25 unit segments or whatever (wp radii are 16 unit increments)).......good or no?
are there enough slots open in the wp mainmenu to add this????

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

Hehe, glad to see I'm not the only one who'd like to squeeze PMB, our bot king!

Well, my experiences so far:

+ Bots DO choose more varied paths, they even stopped neglecting the right side of as_tundra, although the VIP still doesn't go there. Then again, I didn't tweak my WPs any further, and SoUlFaThEr did - according to him, that issue is fixed!
+ Those bastards once again throw grenades like maniacs...wow! Smoke left, smoke right, explosions in the middle, little black dots flying through the air in every direction, then a blinding flash... great! (as_tundra is great for this!)
+ The new brown lines for incoming connections in the WP editor are a great feature; that helps a lot to find bugs.
+ disabling autopath or choosing a radius has also proved very useful when waypointing - now jumps or ledges have lost 80% of their PITA-effect! I don't care if there's a menu with preselected radii or not. It's good the way it is, but a menu wouldn't be bad, either. I'm quite neutral concerning that aspect.
+ The editor is much more stable than before, making waypointing way easier and more comfortable than before.
+ You fixed that in older releases already, but I wanted to give some feedback nonetheless: The way the waypointer's name is displayed is just perfect now. It doesn't show too much, too long or too often and doesn't disturb gameplay. Moreover, it's easier to read than those blueish letters without a dark border. And besides, symbols are read out correctly - with POXBot and earlier releases of the PB plugin, my name showed like this: "Waypoints created by ;BKA: T Wrecks" instead of >BKA<. Now it's perfect!

Some tiny points to ask / criticise:

- I didn't see those translucent player models at spawn points. I only copied the new dll into my PODBot folder - do I need another file? Or does this feature only work in 1.6? But I have custom dll's in 1.5, because I use hi-poly weapon models and player models that use transparency...
- The message "waypoints saved" now appears on screen, but no longer in the console. I'm not too crazy about that because sometimes you don't pay attention, and then you didn't see if those WPs were correctly saved or not. This is only a minor aspect, but imo, it would be perfect to have that message in the console.

All in all, a great release and a good step forward! The list of really annoying things keeps getting shorter and shorter... So much for now - PMB go, go, go! 8D

[SoUlFaThEr]

ok
T-Wrecks...ist best to copy all the things from the update other than that wptdefault folder. i see them and LOVE them!

its much easier to waypoint now .......no crash as of yet and ive done 4 waypoints today......Awesome! but a new thing has appeared to my eyes in these last days(before this last update too): after having bots in.....changing the waypoint.....and getting the restart.......after the first round(sometimes during) the entire map goes into a slowmaotion effect except for me. they jump in slow-mo...even shooing is in slow-mo....i highly doubt that its my computer doing this because i move fine and have no lag.......

The brown one-way-To is just frickin awesome.

These bots are playing superbly. The only 3 things left in their nav and actions are this :

1) reload when they DONT have a guy in front of them......they have the worst timing on reloads......they should go for cover to reload.....not run right in with 3 bullets left in the weapon and then reload while jumping around in front of 3 enemy. (someone else mentioned this and its truth)
2) they need to take knife out when doing a jump waypoint. Austin should be getting this but when its in......the bot will move everywhere we can.......PROMISE
3) bots need to crouch at crouch waypoints......crouch while going to them.......crouch while going over them.

when those are in.......there is nothing stopping us waypointing something that every human can do....and the bots will be able to do it to.

I figured out why vents are so difficult for a bot to navigate:
with this new autopath setRadius(please allow to type "ap setradius" please like the "wp setradius")i shortened the radius to 120......and laid waypoints(all one-way) in that long tunnel in cs_747. I only did this because if a bot is crouching with a sniper......he will only have enough "patience" to get to the next waypoint.....if he runs out of patience before getting to this next waypoint(stuck halfway then) he turns around......whether the waypoints are one-way or not......THIS is causing them to get stuck in cs_assault the same way......so i placed the waypoints close to ewach other with a low(120)pathradius......and bingo......no turnarounds........so i fixed backalley and assault right away and played assault quite a few rounds and not one bot turned around......even the nerds in the vent with zoom on thier snipers!

hope that helps ya'll

Tundra......no T-Wrecks......my bots STILL neglect the entire right side even tho i added waypoints there(top of building etc.)

havana/747/backalley...i saw bots take hostages to all locations to rescue )))) and i am also seeing bots run right by hostages without trying to get them......sometimes a whole round will go by and they wont go for them.....this was real apparent in cs_747......i think thats just bot personality tho because they were getting saved often enough. when you see my waypoint for cs_747 you will see what good that autopath setradius command does......the worked WONDERS in this map. i had it set to 300 outside under the plane.......and as short as 80 inside the plane between all those seats! ...real nice now.

im having SO much fun waypointing again PMB SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE