min and max bot settings?

[silentrunner007]

i have been using hpb on my hldm server for quite a while. the problem i have ben having is that if i try to have the bots kicked as real players join the server crashes. so last night i decided to give grave_bot(v0.3mm) a try. i really like it but i didnt see anything about setting min and max bots. i tried using the settings from hpb but that dosent seem to work. is there a way to set it?

[Ghoul]

It seems the commands magically vanished. I'll reprogram them sometime in the near future when I have some free time.

I'm interested in how users want this function implemented. What exact purpose do you use the min and max bots commands for in HPB bot?

[BuMHeD]

Originally Posted by Ghoul

It seems the commands magically vanished. I'll reprogram them sometime in the near future when I have some free time.

I'm interested in how users want this function implemented. What exact purpose do you use the min and max bots commands for in HPB bot?

I share the concern of the above member.

My reason (and subsequent need) of a min/max bot function is for server integrity and true traffic monitoring. You see.. the only reason I would ever want bots in my server would be to entertain 1 lonely player who's in the server alone awaiting real people to show up. It's also nice when there are 2 bots in the server in order to make the server appear to be worth joining for players seeking a good time. For this reason, I used HPB in the past with this config:

max_bot 2
min_bot 0

In this instance, whenever the server was empty, it would fill it with a maximum of 2 bots. Each time a new player joined, the bots would systematically be kicked, creating 3 possible scenarios:

Server empty = 2 bots
1 lonely player = 1 bot
2 not-so-lonely players = 0 bots

In this way, not only does my server never appear to have less than 2 players at any given moment, but I also don't have to worry about bots disrupting my stats and being an annoyance when the server fills up. Naturally, when you have a bustling server, you dont want the last 2 player slots filled with non-human clients that (more than likely) are not worth fighting... although I admit, in my testing, your bots were QUITE challenging.

I'm just now starting to reach a point in my C++, JAVA, BASIC, .NET, PERL, and PHP programming courses that I MAY be able to offer some assistance... but I'm not entirely sure. Let me know if you have any other design questions... I would be glad to give you my 'unique' perspective.

Also, on a side note, is there any chance that we could get you to consider making a version of grave_bot that is tailored to Bubblemod (a few weapon changes and that's about it). If you don't have the time, I'll see what I can do with the code you've already provided. Thanks (and any pointers would be appreciated as to the best way to go about editing weapon information for the bots)

*~BuM~*

[silentrunner007]

The reason I tried the grave_bot is because every couple of months one of my clan's members will bitch about the bots in my server. One of there biggest complaints(about HPB...which is what i have used for years) is that they were always getting killed by the bots with the pistol from across the maps. The others just simply complain that there are bots in the server. I have told them the reason I use bots is because they draw traffic to the server(nobody likes joining an empty server). when my server was a WON server i ran maxbots as 2 or 3 and minbots set to 0. So as "live" players joined the bots would get kicked so that as the server filled there would only be real players in it. Since I switched to STEAM the server will crash when using those min/max bot settings. The only way i have found to keep the server from crashing is that I run min/max bot as the same(in my case 2). I hope you can come up with a way to get min and max bot settings working Ghoul.....I am truly impressed with your bots and to get the min/max settings working would make them perfect as far as I am concerned. If you need a test server for any future versions just let me know. I'll gladly test them on my server.

oh...heres a quote of a post from my clans private forum about the bots. I LOL when I read this...

I don't dislike them, it's just that some peeps are getting confused. It took me quite a while the other day to convince one guy in the server that the bots were really bots. He kept saying "no way, how the hell is a Bot winning?". Then he would go off on the Bot and accuse the bot of cheating. It was really quite funny. What made it even funnier was trhe fact that the Bot did win the game.

[silentrunner007]

hey ghoul any chance of being able to add the function back in?

(lol yes i still run a hl1dm server)