Waypointing

[hiyahin]

Wait... the bots work fine for you CoCoNUT? Doesn't the game freeze when you play on si_overtime?

[CoCoNUT]

No, I have no freezing on si_overtime. Here are some si_urban-waypoints with some sniper-waypoints. The bots behave a bit stupid there, but check it out .
---Edit---
Another update for the waypoints: all-in-one-zip. Fixed some things and added si_mill. Very good bot overall. I saw them having trouble going through breakables with certain weapons (si_mill). And they tend to use the same paths too much. Everyone try it- really fun!
---Edit---
Now I had this freezing- with 14 bots ingame9_9

[hiyahin]

So, how many bots do you usually test your waypoints with?

[CoCoNUT]

8-10 bots usually. Works fine and without any problems for me. Yesterday I played this mod online (I was a super-noob). Wonder how good they play. They know all tricks, this mod is not really easy online, but it was great fun.

[Ghoul]

Sniper waypoints don't work right now, but perhaps in the next release I'll have it so bots on a defensive role will camp at sniper points and use the crossbow and gauss.

I've been doing testing in attempts to locate the crash/loop, it's prooving to be a very difficult task. So far the bug seems to be related to weapon usage somehow:

1. In games where spawn equipped and everything researched on, the crash usually seems to happen within 5 minutes, sometimes in less than 1.

2. When I disabled weapon switching (the bots only stayed on one weapon), the crash didn't happen (at least not in the three or so hours of steady gameplay).

3. When I told the bots only to use a few weapons (colt, shotgun, tommy gun, uzis), the crash took an hour to occur, rather than a few minutes.

In the games where freezing doesn't occur, are there any specific research paths you're not taking? Not researching a lot of weapons? I'm also looking into if it is related to collecting resources and the forced "resource weapon". Do the games you've played without crashes have resources or no? Any details are appreciated.

Thanks for using my bot, despite this horrible bug.

Oh yeah, the bot has been ported to metamod and is working fine. The next release will have both the standard 'hooker' method, and a metamod DLL.

Good day!

[BuMHeD]

Great news Ghoul!! Wow you work fast ... Glad to hear it. I'll definitely try to give the bots a test run when you release the metamod version, and will be glad to keep detailed logs for you to help debug. Once I test them and confirm that they're working, maybe we can talk about a bubblemod project in the near future ... Keep up the good work man... and happy holidays!! If this all works out, don't be surprised if you have a present under the tree from a recently-acquired fan... BuMHeD

*~BuM~*

[hiyahin]

Actually, you might be right about the weapon thing. I like to do research where it is as little weapon-based as possible, so that I can take someone/some bot's weapon and take it back to base.

This is just a really guess, but would it be because of the ranges you told the bots to use certain weapons actually clashed? eg:
0m-5m Briefcase
5m-10m Shotgun (double barrel)
10m-12m Shotgun (single barrel)
11m-15m Tommy gun

So, when a bot stands near you at 11.5m it then has to decide whether to use the "shotgun (single barre)"l or the "tommy gun", but because both weapons fit within the radius and the bot tries to use both weapons, causing a loop. (Note: This is a guess from a person who doesn't do any coding at all)

[BuMHeD]

Originally Posted by hiyahin

Actually, you might be right about the weapon thing. I like to do research where it is as little weapon-based as possible, so that I can take someone/some bot's weapon and take it back to base.

This is just a really guess, but would it be because of the ranges you told the bots to use certain weapons actually clashed? eg:
0m-5m Briefcase
5m-10m Shotgun (double barrel)
10m-12m Shotgun (single barrel)
11m-15m Tommy gun

So, when a bot stands near you at 11.5m it then has to decide whether to use the "shotgun (single barre)"l or the "tommy gun", but because both weapons fit within the radius and the bot tries to use both weapons, causing a loop. (Note: This is a guess from a person who doesn't do any coding at all)

Yes, another experienceless person with an opinion here (me)... but I think he may be on to something. I remember reading through Botman's error log history, and there was, at one point, a conflict with weapon usages (it was for TFC) that would cause a problem that eventually led to the crash of the servers. Here's a link to his news page... scroll down to the date http://www.planethalflife.com/botman/old_news.shtml September 29th, 2001 perhaps that will give you some answers. The error that he references in that news report is the same error I was getting on my server when the bots would crash it. I suspect it had something to do with bots being added or removed at inappropriate intervals, but I can't say for certain. It's possible that bubblemod caused the problem since we do have some modified weapons that could be related to this looping issue... *shrug*. I will be willing to test this theory in the coming weeks with and without certain weapons to see if the crash issue comes back.

*~BuM~*

[Ghoul]

The way weapons are handled for the bots should make it so even if some ranges are overlapping (and a lot of them do, there's no reason a bot shouldn't use a colt at 100 units or a shotgun at 100 units) the weapon to be used is chosen by priority. Each weapon has a priority value (which can be changed if you want), 0 - whatever, 0 being the best (which is the brief case).

This is the case in both HLDM and S&I, and HLDM can run for hours on end fine. It's really confusing me. :-/

[CoCoNUT]

A little waypoint-update. You can disable certain techs and researches in the listenserver.cfg (cvarlist.txt). So maybe the problem can be isolated (didn´t have the time to do it myself). Maybe you should disable some researches for the bot until the problem is fixed. Nevertheless the bot is great fun overall and the missing of one or two features can be "fixed" with harder bots . I mean for me there´s only one 12-slot server with a good ping available online and I think many people would love to try the mod with bots. All details and goodies can be added later .

Maps:
si_daybreak, si_deep, si_laser, si_mercato, si_metropolis,
si_mill, si_mtg, si_replicant, si_retrovirus, si_urban

Note: Some more complicated paths are not waypointed yet.
Only flags: team, weapon, health, armor, door, crouch, ladder, jump
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Edit: You see in my posting that I don´t have a clue about bot-programming, anyway, hope you can fix it