A few more bot bugs

[the bindlestiff]

1. Whle playing Tram the other night, I discovered another Medic bot bug. Several times while I was being revived, the medic bot would not crouch, so his stab with the syringe was in the air. He'd make a few attempts, then stop in place. Eventually, an enemy would come by and shoot him to solve the problem. I belived I was lying against walls on those occasions.

2. While playing Brescia, all the allied bots had an extremely hard time climbing the ladder from the moat. Mostly they got stuck at the bottom. I watched a bot who had the "secret documents" repeatedly try to climb the ladder, backing up and running at it again and again. I finally descended, shot him, picked up the docs and ran to the finish. This happened on three rounds (on the fourth I had the docs myself). Bot_skill was set at "2."

The only way for the allies to win this map is for a human to grab the documents and carry them to the finish. If a bot gets them the game will hang until the time limit runs out.

3. Another problem with Brescia was that it would crash the system after a few minutes of play when thef0x and I and 14 bots were playing. I tried in in simple MP mode today and didn't have a problem, but then I was the only player in the game. I tried in Fritzbot (just me as the only human player), beginning with just 4 players and gradually increasing that by two (while playing several rounds for each increment of 2 bots), where it crashed with 12 players (11 bots and me) after about 5 minutes. Bot_skill was set at "2."

4. The bot problem of obiting around the flag poles on the Norway map still remains.

5. And now for another mystery. I finally got my Fritzbot dedicated server up and running. When I joined the first map, I seemed to be invisible to the enemy bots. I could stand directly in front of them and they wouldn't see me, even when I shot at them nose-to-nose. Same thing on other maps. Tried reconnecting, but got the same situation. Somehow I have become invisible. Bombs or arty will kill me, though. Thef0x isn't available at the moment, so I can't verify whether it will happen to him as well, when he connects. On my listen server, this has happened to me once (post #7 of "Carentan map bugs" thread).

Thef0x noticed this happening to him during a couple of the maps last night on my listen server, although I remained completely visible and vunerable throughout the night (I got shot many times!).

SEVERAL HOURS LATER:
After reconnecting to my server several times and still having the problem, on the last two times my invisibility to the enemy had "disappeared" (pun intended) and now everything works. Why????????

BTW, the bots are present now on each map when I log in -- it appears that they are happily playing the map in my absence because I always enter in the middle of a game. Maybe they're practicing for combat with the humans. . .

Will have to verify that it will still work if more than one human is logged in.

AND A HOUR OR SO LATER:
While playing in my dedicated server the "invisibility" returned after playing several maps. Even after several disconnects and reconnects. Very disturbing. . .

I can be killed by getting in the line of fire, by ricochets, by air and arty, by falling, but the bots just see me as a non-enity obstacle to be jumped over or avoided. I can walk up to a bot and shoot him point-blank without the slightest notice from him.

[renartthefox]

When we played last nite (Friday) and early this morning, Some of the maps I was able to run free throughout the map, killing at will, the bots played the game like i wasnt even there.

I got some good knife work in though.

[Sgt.slick]

Dude your paying to much attention to the flaws of Fritzy.

This mod is not perfect but at least it provides an exceptional alternative to on-line action.

I personaly couldn't be hapier with fritzbot. After All the mode is still in beta stage, and, true your observations a valid and I'm sure are being taken note by Maleficus but judging by your must recent post, It seems as though Fritzbot is more a problem than a solution for you.

Anyways, Long Live Rtcw and Fritz.

P.S: Im going to Jail on monday for a string of drink driving offences, at least when I get out I'll have fritzbot to comfort me

P.S 2 : It was really nice being apart of this community. Keep it up fellas. i'll enjoy Fritzy for many years to come but for now, Thanks Mal for Fritzbot + Denny, 420 blunt, Crapshot, Craig for the waypoints.

Thanks & Good bye.

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by Sgt.slick

Thanks Mal for Fritzbot + Denny, 420 blunt, Crapshot, Craig for the waypoints.

I think I can speak for everyone on the team when I say thank you.

I hope things go well for you.

Cheers!

[Denny]

Hey Bindle, could you attach you're server.cfg for us. These bugs happen on you're server correct? We're thinking maybe you have some cvars that aren't agreeing with Fritz too well and it would help to know what kind of server cvars you have set just in case.

Sorry to hear about that btw Slick, i hope everything goes well and all. Thanks for the comments, I appreciate it.

[Denny]

Nevermind, i found out why Norway is messed up, the flag actions have improper entity settings on them (i have no idea why i did that, doh!). I'll update and release with the next pack update. Thanks Blunt for helping with that, and to you to Bindle for noticing the bug.

[the bindlestiff]

Originally Posted by Sgt.slick

Dude your paying to much attention to the flaws of Fritzy.

This mod is not perfect but at least it provides an exceptional alternative to on-line action.

I personaly couldn't be hapier with fritzbot. After All the mode is still in beta stage, and, true your observations a valid and I'm sure are being taken note by Maleficus but judging by your must recent post, It seems as though Fritzbot is more a problem than a solution for you.

Hey, Slick. The idea is to make Fritzbot better for all the world to use. That means finding discrepencies and fixing them. That's what a "beta" stage is all about.

Yes, I enjoy playing Fritzbot, too. But it can be disappointing to a player when he plays hard and long, only to find out that it is impossible to win the round because of a bot problem, or, like now, when he is just an invisible player, able to wreak havoc at will without being shot at (not too much fun in that).

I expect that Mal, Denny, Blunt, and Crapshoot spend a lot more time coding than playing at this point. Thef0x and I spend several hours a night playing hard on the different maps, sometimes we'll be on the same team, sometimes on opposite ones. Thef0x is an experienced games player, I'm a novice player with lots of experience in things digital from designing microchips to coding in assembly language. We both are sensitive to small problems that occur during the action and want to do our bit to iron those out. We're not complaining or griping!

Denny, my server.cfg is attached. Mebbe you can glance at it and find something awry. Right now my dedicated server is useless to us because of the "invisible" problem. Playing on a "listen" server is fine tho (except for f0x's lag problem).

BTW, Norway is one of our favorite maps. Let us know when your fixes are ready to use. Thanks for your work on this!

[CrapShoot]

I actually don't code at all for this mod and have played quite a bit on a dedicated server. I've never seen the 'invisibility' bug.

I'll test mine with bot_skill 1 / bot_aimskill 1 as those 2 seem to be the major differences in our server configs.

Your feedback is appreciated bindle. Please keep it coming.

[Denny]

I only helped code the FG42 and some of the key binding stuff for the fritzbot menu and barrier exemptions and objective fixes.

Anyways, I'll take a look at that server.cfg in a bit, thanks for posting that. I mainly asked for you to post it so mal could look at it and maybe see what's going on if it's something server cvar related (you never know).

Norway will be out with my next pack release which i hope will be in a couple weeks, they'll be a few more maps supported and a couple other updates (Market Garden for sure, because the allied bots have an impossible time beating that map) as well so it'll be worth the wait. It's kind of a tough time for me now with Finals and i got a certification test Tuesday and some other things so i've been kind of sluggish waypointing for the time being. Sorry about that guys.

I'm gonna say this to the public just so they know. I know that in some cases my waypoints may seem crappy or whatever. But i want to let you know that my main goal is to get the bots running the maps well enough so they go where they need to, they don't get stuck and they complete their tasks and objectives as needed. My goal never was to make perfect waypoints. Bugs with my path files are always welcome (like the Norway stuff) so again, don't be bashful.

Also keep in mind Fritzbot's gameplay is varied, sometimes the bots will play hard and hold you off for long periods of time, and sometimes you can blaze through a map in less than 3 minutes (even playing the same map too). I like how it plays like that because you always face a new challange or get by quick and easy, it adds more variety.

[the bindlestiff]

By "coding" I meant waypointing as well. Takes the same kind of talent and time!!

Market Garden is one of my favorite maps. It usually takes two human players on the allied side to win for the allies. One of us guards the canal to keep the axis from getting close to their allied objective, and one of us swims the river and blows the tower. Sometimes it takes only one human to do the job if he gets the timing right.

BTW, in WW2 the allies did not win Operation Market Garden. They had too many bridges to cross, their intelligence about the german defenses near the parachute drop on the critical bridge was faulty, and they greatly underestimated the fight left in the germans at that time.

One of the great things about playing with Fritzbot is the variability -- nothing happens the same way twice! Of course, you can eventually figure out the general route the bots will take, but there's plenty of differences happening. The bugs that I'm looking for are those where the bots do not behave properly in their environment and disrupt the flow of the game.