The Jungle of bot installation

[Exilibur]

I'm lost... just completely lost.

I know this is offtopic, but there isn't any "generel bot-talk topic", so i figured and since this isn't about any single bot, i figured that i'd just post here.

So this is my story:

A few days ago, I decided i wanted to play some counter-strike again. Now, the problem is that I'm behind a firewall, and can't play online games, cause my ping reaches 5-600 every two seconds. It's not something i can fix, belive me, I've tried. So after some consideration i decided to do some research on the alternatives.

I've played against bots before, but that's looong ago, back when the androidbot recently were released, so i didn't really know what was hot and what was not, in the bot community. I made some research and found out that nowadays, you were actually able to play against two (or more) different bots in the same game. Cool, I thought and decided that it was something i had to try.

After some time browsing around on messageboards, i finally ended up here, on bots-united. I was eager to start playing, but i wanted to find out which bot's i wanted, and how to install them.

I now found out that many of the bots were designed as a plugin for another plugin called metamod. I figured that in that case i'd better install metamod then. I then found out that in order for metamod to work, I had to install admin mod. I don't know if that assumption is true, and i suspect it isn't, but anyway, that was what i was really convinced of, at that time.

So i went on and installed adminmod, and metamod, and what a pain adminmod is to set up... but after two hours of reading through harsh written manuals, i finally managed to get them to work.

i went on and installed Podbot_mm, and it actually worked, to my big surprise and joy. Looking at how podbod_mm and botman's botmixer5000, i couldn't figure out exactly how they were supposed to act together since botmixer's ini file linked to e.g. //pod PODBot\podbot.dll Which as far as I know, isn't a metamod plugin.

I guessed that since metamod was never, and bot's were converted from normal to metamod, metamod must be better somehow, and from that assumption i concluded that metamod probably supported several different bots. I mean, if i didn't, how was i then supposed to use any of the bot's which were only developed as a metamod plugin?

So I went on yet again and installed realbot, or actually i was going to, but i noticed that it was going to override the liplist.gam file. I'm not stupid. Or at least, i try not to be, and i knew that metamod was added as gamedll in the liplist.gam file, so i installed realbot, but i made sure the liplist file wasn't overwritten, because i knew i needed metamod to run podbot_mm. (oh btw, just to find out which file to download at the realbot download section is a pain)

And of course Realbot didn't work, when i started up the game. Or... actually I knew the dll was loaded, but i couldn't add any bots or anything.

Fine, I though, I'll just backup the liplist file and make the realbot-changes to it. Hurray.... Realbot worked. But podbot_mm didn't, as i suspected. and realbot didn't work that well either, cause the bots kept dying in the beginning of a new round, but i don't think it has anything to do with my changes, so i ignored it, and uninstalled realbot again.

It might have been realbot that was flawed, I though, so i decided to install Joebot. As you might have guessed, that didn't went very well either. Joebot wanted to edit liplist.gam as well, and as usual, i didn't want it to, but that didn't do any good, so i tried letting joebot change the file, but now podbot_mm didn't work... and i figured i had done all this before.

I remembered though, from my first two hour read of the adminmod manual, that it mentioned something about putting a line in the shortcut when you start up a game. It took me some time to actually make a shortcut to counterstrike, cause steam has a habbit of getting in the way of everything, but I managed after some struggling, and added the line: +localinfo mm_gamedll joebot/joebot.dll. and to my big surprice, it didn't work. Yay... But now the game just comes up with an error when i start a game.

So what now?

Well, I think i'm just going to ask you guys for suggestions...

Issue 1:

IS it possible to play against two different bots, using metamod?
IF yes: how?
If no: HOW do i play against e.g. podbot_mm and joebot, if i can't use metamod?

Is there anyone out there who is able to help me?

Issue 2:

I have worked with computers all my life, I know some programming/scripiting, my point is, i'm not new with computers, and I should be pretty capable of isntalling some bots. But it took me TWO freaking days of research to get to this point, where the bot's still dont work! :/
The installation process of bots in counterstrike if you wan't more than one bot, is very untransparent.

I don't want to whine at you guys, doing a great job with you bots, but it's just not very userfriendly, because every single botprogrammer seems to assume that you as the user only want to use one bot. The solution here is not extra help files or long manuals. It's simplicity in the installation process.

---

I wrote this to give you guys some insight in what I have been thinking and trying, i my effort to get the bot's to work, and i hope, if nothing else, that somebody is able to help me solve my problem

[botman]

First, metamod can be installed and used without AdminMOD. AdminMOD includes metamod since AdminMOD is also a metamod plugin (like some bots are). If you don't use AdminMOD for anything, remove it (it'll just slow things down and complicate things).

BotMixer5000 is meant to run ALONE (without metamod or AdminMOD). If you want to use BotMixer5000, you should remove metamod (and AdminMod). BotMixer5000 will NOT work with metamod style plugin bots (it will only work with "standalone" bots).

You can run metamod and metamod plugin bots WITHOUT using BotMixer5000 and have several bots running at the same time on the same machine.

So, in conclusion...

1) Remove AdminMOD (and install just metamod, if necessary).

2) Use BotMixer5000 WITHOUT AdminMOD or Metamod and ONLY use it with standalone bots (not metamod compatible bots). ....OR....

2) Use metamod (without BotMixer5000) and run metamod compatible bots.

botman

[Exilibur]

Thanks for the quick reply

Well that cleared up some things.

There is one thing though, i still don't understand:

How can use metamod to run several bots at the same time?

Do i just put the bot's files in a random dir, and write the path to the bot dll in the metamod plugin?

It works fine that way with podbot_mm, but neither Joebot nor Realbot, both designed for metamod, seems to work that way :/

But i guess that is a question i should ask on their own message boards....

I think I'll try to get bots, that don't support metamod, to work together with botmixer, it seems like the obvious choice since most bots haven't been portet to metamod yet, afaik. But that leads me to another question; Why are the bot's being made metamodcompatible? What are the advantages of metamod?

[sPlOrYgOn]

using metamod can make the bot's source much more smaller.
usually more clear and is somewhat easier..
it'll make it easier for servers who have metamod installed..
most servers have metamod to use plugins like statsme or amx or adminmod..

[stefanhendriks]

as addition:

the theory is that you can run multiple BOT plugins. Ie, you run REALBOT_MM.DLL (the realbot METAMOD version, the RealBot V1.0 version is STAND-ALONE)... and PODMM, this way you can play with POD and REAL bots at the same time..

most bots use something like:

<botname> <command>

ie:

realbot add

dunno about pod though.

[Exilibur]

Well i tried to get realbot_mm and podbot_mm to work together with metamod, without luck, but that could just as well have been me messing things up...

I've tried to get two nonmetamod bots it to work together with botmixer, but no luck so far...

So i think I'll reinstall counter and start over again.

[Exilibur]

SUCCES SUCCES SUCCES!!!

Realbot and Joebot are now running fine together, using metamod. Realbot's menu doesn't work thought (it shows, but it doesn't do anything when you click ie. addbot), for whatever reason, but the commands work fine. (except endround)

now I'm trying to get podbod_mm to work too... but it's not very coorperative... yet...

A thing I'd like though: To be able to throw all bot's in the addons folder i created for metamod.

I'll write back if i get podbot_mm to work as well...

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I managed to run realbot and podbot at once the first try, so you must be able to have them massacre each other too

[Exilibur]

hmm... i wish i could change the icon of this topic to some smilyface, but i can't edit...

But yes, you are right, realbot and podbot seams to work together...

This i what i have concluded after some (a lot actually) trial and error:

Realbot works with everything
Joebot only works with realbot
podbot_mm works with everything except joebot (you can start a game, but it'll soon crash)
the same goes for YaPBot

Is there any other 1.6 metamod bot's outthere? Cause then i'd be happy to test them all together and maybe write some guide... Although it won't happen just from day to day, since i'm going to Bilbao tomorrow... yay! (and norway after that, and after that i have visitors from the us) but anyway, it could certanly happen, if i have time on my hands

[KWo]

Originally Posted by Exilibur

Realbot's menu doesn't work thought (it shows, but it doesn't do anything when you click ie. addbot), for whatever reason, but the commands work fine. (except endround)

It's because Stefan changeed a bit the syntax of commands for mm WIP version, so for example in Your commandmenu.txt there is still :

"1" "Add a terrorist"
{
"1" "Newbie" "rb_addbot 1 6"
"2" "Average" "rb_addbot 1 2"
"3" "Godlike" "rb_addbot 1 0"
"5" "Random skill" "rb_addbot 1"
}

but - I guess - it should be:

"1" "Add a terrorist"
{
"1" "Newbie" "realbot add 1 6"
"2" "Average" "realbot add 1 2"
"3" "Godlike" "realbot add 1 0"
"5" "Random skill" "realbot add 1"
}

Try this change - it should work.
Maybe Stefan will update comandmenu.txt for the latest WIP or (maybe he will make some menu like podbotmenu) for the next release?

Originally Posted by Exilibur

A thing I'd like though: To be able to throw all bot's in the addons folder i created for metamod.

Yeah - it's a standard for all mm plugins, so - since bots are ported to mm - what can be a reason to keep their directories still in old places?

[EDIT]
About these commands - I found in the filebase the commandmenu.txt compatible with RealBot Wip10:
http://filebase.bots-united.com/inde...on=file&id=147
[/EDIT]