fakeclientless bots

[Brainz]

I know Halo PC has no fake client support, which means no bots.

Or Does it?

Would it be possible to construct a program that intercepts the game's network communication, and creates Virtual Clients, that Halo believes are connected, but are just incarnations of the program?

In other words, make a program that tricks the Halo server into thinking that other players are connected, when instead they are just the program?

+EDIT: Wrong place again, I think

[DrEvil]

Probably possible, but not worth the effort.

[MarD]

Heyyo,

People have already spliced singleplayer ai into multiplayer, and gottem them to pop up in the scores on some HaloCE maps, but the AI for Halo definately ain't built for mp, as such, there's only basic bot support on mp. I'm hoping Halo2PC will at least support fake clients if not come with bots.

[Brainz]

Originally Posted by MarD

Heyyo,

People have already spliced singleplayer ai into multiplayer, and gottem them to pop up in the scores on some HaloCE maps, but the AI for Halo definately ain't built for mp, as such, there's only basic bot support on mp. I'm hoping Halo2PC will at least support fake clients if not come with bots.

The idea I was getting at was to create a "Virtual Client" that connects to the server, and runs AI and other bot-related processes. So Instead of a fakeclient, you've got a virtualclient.

Either as a stand alone program, or with a packet sniffer type setup.

Anyone here good at netcode?

And if a basic framework is put together, it could possibly be adapted for other game protocols with no fakeclient suport... If there are any out there.

[The Storm]

So you mean something like the IRC bots? They connect as virtual clients and do the stuff that they are coded for. Well for this you need to know what network protocols the game use and how to open the socket. I don't have expirience in that so maybe someone else can help?

[DrEvil]

Unlikely. It's probably relatively easy to sniff the network data and possibly figure out what is being sent from client to server, but in the end that doesn't really give you much.

Unless your 'virtual client' was a hacked up client of the game or did some heavy reverse engineering it couldn't do much.

Your client wouldn't have the map loaded, so you couldn't do raycasts and such needed for a bot to actually 'see' the level. This alone cripples the concept, though there is other things that the game client & server loads that the bot needs. Your virtual client would have to do prediction for all the entities it knows about, which it probably would have no idea how to do.

How are the people getting AI into MP ? Does the game have a proper C++ SDK where you can make signifiant modifications? Last I heard it wasn't going to have much more than a map editor and maybe some scripting support.

[The Storm]

So DrEvil I'm interested is it possble to be created a HL bot from the client.dll source code. I mean the bot to connect like a virtual client. It will be better for the coders because the bot will use all the game rules like the players without need to export some special function to get the bot to move correct, to have good hitboxes, and such stuff. Maybe there is way the bot to get the level data in this way ?

[DrEvil]

It's probably possible, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that billdoor was working on client side bots at some point. I don't know where he got with them. There's really no point in doing a client side bot though. You wouldn't be able to run but 1-2 bots because each one would require it to run in an instance of the client. This would waste tons of memory. It's better and easier to do server side bots. If the game doesn't support them, their loss as far as I'm concerned. Client side bots open a huge door for cheating, so it's probably very difficult to do if its even possible.

[jeefo]

This is possible (atleast with Half-Life), and already was done by one guy with nick "Vasily Pupkin", this bots was called ClientBot, but in 2003 Vasily disappeared from coding (and CS) scene, and close all websites & support to his projects, however, some info & code still can be found on web archive at http://archive.org, (search for clientbot.narod.ru or clientb0t.counter-strike.ru)...

(sorry for my english)

[The Storm]

Thanks for the info guys.