Fritz Phase Two Progress Thread

[Maleficus]

Heres a thread for questions, comments, suggestions, and also a place where I can show off some of the latest work on Fritz.




Heres a small .avi movie of the new movement code that I'm working on ATM. Hopefully the bots will be getting stuck a LOT less now. This movie shows me down beside a MG42, which is blocking a medic bot from healing me, and how the medic bot figures out how to get to me anyhow. He then revives me as he's jumping over me, pops me a health pack, and then turns and runs off to fight some incoming enemies. Theres still a lot of work to do yet on this code, but its looking better every day, and they move pretty much like humans do (at least I think so ).

[Maleficus]

More progress today..........


In RtCW, you spawn with a limited amount of ammo, and there is no way to get more ammo, except from someone playing the LT class. A good human LT playing on a server will often drop ammo packs around the spawn area, so teammates can grab some as soon as they spawn.

So does Fritz.

In this .avi - I demonstrate his ability to lay down packs in a spawn area intelligently, and also another example of his teamwork: when I kill the bot, then revive him, he thanks me, and pops me some ammo for my trouble. Another good trait of a goodh human player, tho 80% of pub players don't understand that!

[Maleficus]

Also - be sure to check out my .plan file, which is at the top of this forum. Tho it doesn't show up in the "new posts" search, its being updated fairly often. This thread is a good place to discuss whats in that .plan file.

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

You've already finished the movement code ??? o_O
that's what eating all my time !!!

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by Pierre-Marie Baty

You've already finished the movement code ??? o_O
that's what eating all my time !!!

Heh, well - its probably NEVER going to be 100% perfect, hence the "for now" line in my .plan file, but yes - it works well, is realistic, and handles what I need it to do, so its done...... for now.

Trust me, it wasn't easy - what I've incorporated into Fritz has been my experience over the last 5 years playing with bots, AI, and the Quake series of engines.

Also, I think it may be simpler in RTCW than in HL - I don't have to do a bunch of sanity checks to make sure the bot isn't moving in a way that a client can't, because Fritz's movement is treated just like a clients in the game; so you won't see floating bots in RtCW, which is something I've seen in HL.

I REALLY wish you had access to RtCW - I'd like to hear your thoughts on how Fritz moves and behaves.

[Maleficus]

Some more movies. Recently I got the panzer into the game, and its looking pretty good.


Here are two movies - panzer1 is where I jump out from behind a wall, and jump back, the bot fires the rocket down at the ground where he saw me last, in the hopes of splash killing me - which he does! You see my brains splatter all over the map.

In Panzer2, I'm playing a game of cat and mouse: the first rocket nearly kills me, but I heal myself. He chases me down and finishes me off with the 2nd rocket.

The panzer and flamethrower will be fully supported this release. I'm not sure about the sniper yet - thats a bit more complex on a lot of levels, but it will be added in time.

[Maleficus]

One of the skills of the LT class is its ability to call airstrikes: it throws out a smoke cannister, and an airstrike comes a few seconds later. Its a powerful weapon, and can be used to flush out enemies, or kill a bunch in an area.


In this movie, Fritz uses it to cut me off in this room with pillars. Blocked by his air strike, I run right into his trap.

[Sniper]

oooohhhh Your FPS is really bad!!

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I can't help to be constantly impressed by your progress, Mal. It's as if you were coding for Fritz all day almost everyday !

[Maleficus]

Originally Posted by Sniper

oooohhhh Your FPS is really bad!!

Thats because of the way I make movies. Heres how its done:

1. I record a normal demo. Here, I'm getting normal frames with no problems.

2. I playback the demo, and while doing so, turn on Wolf's CL_AVIDEMO feature, which has it taking about 15-20 screenshots a SECOND! This is why you see the hurt on my frames - the computer is REALLY busy creating those shots. BTW: the best setting is CL_AVIDEMO 15, which is 15 frames per second. You can do more, but its not really needed.

3. I take those screenshots and use a program to combine them into an .avi movie. I use the "pjBmp2Avi" program, which lets you pick whatever codec you want to use, and how you want to compress it. I compress them pretty hard, to keep the filesize down, which is why they look fuzzy.


Playing normally, with the settings turned up fairly high, and 10 or so bots on a map, playing on a P3, 866, I never dip below 60 FPS.
Needless to say, keeping these bots fast is very important to me, since I have an older system - if I wasn't careful, I wouldn't be able to play them myself.