Caha_tavern_b2 waypoints

[TomTom]

version 0.04 posted.

Added functioning camps inside the roof temple and a minor bug fix to prevent rare premature re-activations of the other roof camps. (and I upped the botsight a bit JIC)

[Nova2001]

Great. I'll check out 0.04 tomorrow.

The stairs I was talking about are here. I'm sure, now, that something is wrong there. I can stand at the base of the stairs and shoot people running up the stairs, too. If they get on the first step, they're locked in to running up the stairs and ignore my fire completely.

Engineers will also start running for the third floor without responding to fire. Everyone else realizes that something is wrong if they reach the second floor landing (where I'm standing).

[TomTom]

OK that makes more sense. The other bots kill me all the time at this location. What you are observing about the 3 axis engineer bots is what happens when Engineer bots have selected high priority tasks (and there are 3 such tasks on the floor above, flags being lower priority for engineers). Mal made the engineers act this way because in a early version engineers wouldn't defuse or dynamite when enemy players were in sight and consequently they would lose the game. As long as other bots tend to go along the same path with the engineers things should work out reasonably.

Anyway this is an important defense point for the allies since this is the most efficient path for axis in both directions, and the longer the axis don't get to blow the gen b and own the third floor flag the greater the chance that axis might run out of time (though they are heavy favorites). Now the map does have a couple of highly defendable points for humans against bots partly due to bot behavior and partly due to the map's single access points.

Thanks again for the feedback. If you find you can own the map camping at this point post the details and we can discuss options.

[CrapShoot]

the workaround for that behavior is to extend routing as far as you want them to shoot at enemies. as long as their current goal is an alt_roam, they will target enemies normally.

[Valiant]

I've done a few test runs using the waypoint version 0.04 and it is looking rather good so far. The bots get around well, make good use of alternative paths and seem to know what they're doing.

The only thing that caught my eye is that the bots occassionally land at the bottom of a ladder in pairs, then they fumble around for a minute trying to officialy reach the pathnode at the bottom - details follow.

At the (constructable/destructable) ladder near the 3rd floor spawn flag: pathnode 186 is at the bottom of the ladder, with a radius of 20. It seems to work in most cases, but if the radius were widened a bit it would probably clear up the potential bot confusion.

At the (constructable/destructable) ladder to/from the roof: pathnode 191 is at the bottom of the ladder, with a radius of 40. This one would be trickier I bet, given the narrow space the bots are already negotiating. A slight radius increase might help, but maybe not.

Hopefully this feedback is helpful. If you've already experimented with this and settled on the current numbers then please disregard.

[TomTom]

Thanks for the feedback Valiant. Anyone who helps out is a prince in my book. On your suggestions I have made a mix of radii tweaks and some extra connections in the down path, and will test them out in a few hours from now.

Hey Crapshoot, hadn't thought about that as a method. I'll try something out to verify it. Since they are high priority tasks it should work on cascaded routes too I expect. The thinking being that if the primary alt-roam and secondary route pair are at a location where the fighting is expected there is a small chance that if the engineers survive the fight that they will be inside the secondary route radius, respond to it and then be willing to fight for the second part of the route.

- - -
OK your suggestions are in 0.05. I still have to verify the engineer fighting spirit.

[Valiant]

You are most welcome Sir.

I've done another test run using the version 0.05 waypoint and I wanted to share a few comments.

The tweaks to the 3rd floor to 4th floor ladder area seem very good so far. The traffic jams that I had observed there seem to be completely eliminated. The bots tend to hop down, grab the ladder to stop their fall and then rush off normally. Well done!

The traffic jams have stopped at the temple to 4th floor ladder also, but they seem to stick the landing just hard enough to take minor damage. My best guess is that the connection from pathnode 233 to 190 may be the cause. I looked at this for awhile and I'm pretty sure that this does help them avoid getting stuck on one another and so I hesitated to even mention it.

Thanks for working on this waypoint by the way, this map lends just the sort of variety that I really crave these days.

[nedd3h]

v0.06 on my server

[TomTom]

OK my unattended testing for bot vs bot balance on 0.06 is done
axis wins 17 of 24 matches about 4:1 axis:allies
no error messages
2 warnings not fritzbot related
2 killed himselfs total
40 fell to his deaths about 2.4/match
Still saw a bot catch the temple door but my workaround of making some allies pass by the door cleared the bot after 20 seconds. I might do a split node so 2 nodes will have walk flags on the way out.

The big issue remains balance. So I am polling for preferences; Reduce the match to 15-17 minutes, reduce the initial Allied spawn time (currently 24 allies vs 15secs. axis), reduce the allied spawn time when the docs are stolen (currently 19 vs 15secs.) or something else.?

[Nova2001]

Tough question. I'd lean towards reducing the allied spawn when the docs are stolen. Can't guarantee that'd do it, but that's my guess. Reducing the match time comes in second. Reducing the Allied overall spawntime might make it impossible to build the third floor ladder.