The future of Bots?
 

Lately i came across a newspost on cs banana. It was about a waypoint pack and one of the comments on that was "who is using bots nowedays?". That also got me thinking.

Cable/asdl internet connections are growing fast. With even wireless (satelite) sollutions we eventually will have most of the people having a good internet connection to enjoy a good internet game.

So, how will bots fit in this future? I know bots are used to get people joining, but that is not a very popular method. Bots can be used for practice, but then again, internet can be too.

Bots can probably stimulate the 'enemy ai' in general to get more tough, smart, etc. But you see this development on-going already.

I am wondering what we, as Bots-United can do about this, or better said, how we will deal with this situation. I think this new game we want to develop will eventually have more feature then our United Bot? I don't know, but somehow the statement of that guy scared me a bit. :(

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I think it'll take same time... many years.
For practice for sure, try to make people on the server stop attacking you, join opposite team and run around so U can practice AWP ;). I think clans use bots extensively, practicing on the net reveals your tactics. Bots that can be programmed to do what U want, or show them some tactics and then play/practice against it…

Bots are slaves (and this fact will always give them some advantages over humans, and many disadv.) and human never should be and never will be especially on the net :D

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I have DSL and I only play bots unless I am playing CAL. For many reasons

1. When I die I can end the round so I don't have to wait
2. I don't have to worry about people cheating hacking or acting dumb
3. Increases skills that you can't get by playing people. IE Reflexes oe Headshots

Re: The future of Bots?
 

i dont know about other countries.. but very few dont have good connection.. i live in a really small town.. and we got really good dsl here.. still only 1mbit.. but we can get higher in a few mounth..

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I don't know for you Stefan but for myself my intents (as a coder) have always been this:

make a bot that plays smarter than any human opponent.

When I will play against just one bot and I will realize that I'm unable to outsmart it, then I'll consider my task finished. :D

Isn't that a challenge ? 8D

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I think the bots are already outsmarting me :D
well I think my goal is to create a bot so human-like that if you put them on a server with humans, they would never know that they were playing against bots =)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

here in new zealand we only just got adsl and wireless connections started up last 2 years...............

we have no cable or anything like that and the majority of ppl are still probably 56k

the best price for an adsl connection is $80 for a 256k 10gb max limit connection...a month...not including set up fees....which is alot of money :'(

so i'm pretty sure bot's will be around and used alot for at least the next 5 years.....=)

also game dev's will able to make better ai for games like cs:cz where u can have a single player mission as well multiplayer online. and the bot's don't get scripted to do certain things..

imagine finding barney type guys and them being able to move and shoot and kill..run when they come under heavy fire on their own instead of acting like hostages and dying so often :(

and a bot thats able to be used in any game will mean u'll almost never have to search for a bot :D

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I always thought bots were a way of AI creators giving a true product, something a user could use and interact with, that wasn't just a chat screen with a robot that would simply repeat user phrases.

AI is growing tactically within the bounds of the gaming community, but I am a firm believer that the developments and fundamentals created within the gaming community will be far more reaching than the ways we look at them now.

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Also, there might always been gaming companies out there looking to improve their single-player opponent AI- B-U would be a good place for them too look, and who know, maybe at some stage someone is going to be recruited here ...

Re: The future of Bots?
 

I have a great adsl connection, but I kept on using bots for two reasons:

Training and fun

The game play between humans is very diffrent than humans against bots. Even if the bots simulated human play perfectly, the game would still be different because we know they are bots and we know they are not cheating (more or less) and they'll always be there, round after round.

I think people will always have a use for bots. The better we make em, the more use they'll get.

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Heyyo,

True man. I think bots won't go away. How would single player campaigns exist without them?

Like for instance Halo, great game, but no multiplayer bots, which is a letdown cause the singleplayer AI's really good... Hopefully it's just a matter of time for a bot to appear on the scene like for HL multiplayer....

I know I will always use bots cause yeah, they're fun. I've tried playing battlefield 1942 against people, and the fun factor seems lower than with bots. Lol, oh god the funny things that have happened to me with bots on that game, lol, I don't remember 1 funny moment when playing online.

Also, I say bots can help create the game's overall feel. Cause look at bots for CS, they tend to go all lone-wolf and go for kills instead of level objectives. Hmm, compare that to the majority of the CS community??? uh huh, that's what I thought, influenced by bots. :)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

i play alot online nowdays.. and i actually think bots or boring compared playing against reall players..

for instans.. i war really into bots when i only had modem.. bc i really wanted team play.. i could be so happy if i manage to walk a path with bots.. and they didnt suddenly turn around and walk back to spawn point,,

the online era do not got good team play either.. thats why i joined a clan (bf/dc) to see what it got for me..

still team play is what on got.. i didnt get the satifieing amount from bots.. so when i got online.. i played online.. oh.. i dont have hl1 so i kinda didnt stopped playin it..

Re: The future of Bots?
 

yes, it is my goal too. Yet, although WE are interested in this goal and we are going for it, there are many people that are NOT interested in bots. So, its not like i think Bots will ever die out or something, i just fear it will become 'less important' to humans.

Hmm, when i think of it, who cares... i code for fun anyways :)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Btw, i always play online on the AOS server (see the ip of that server on the rb site) but i also play with bots. I am more interested in the bot logic, how humans respond , etc. Its a pitty because i can't see other servers (that i know off) that run CS 1.6 + WIP 10 for instance. When i see something that should not happen, i'd like to fix it immidiatly :)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

with enough " trial and error " wouldn't it only really be a matter of time ??? so i guess the real question is for you bot coders... you all willing to explore/create/learn etc etc

the bots you all have done are stepping stones for you ( bot coder ) and everyone else who seems to get wrapped up in all this ( yours truely and countless others )

im sure making a bot has been an experiance in it self ???

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Interesting thread and good points.
Well SinglePlayer game obviously will need bots so no worry here.
As for the Multiplayer part, I think Kadat and and biohazerd87 in particular have good points. Bots can be used as sort of sparring partners.
I think 2 points tend to be overlooked by bot programmers, and they could help keep bots alive:

1. Bots as specialized sparring partners
This idea hasn't really been completly exploited on the bot programmer side, since most bot coders focus on making complete bots players for offline play. Instead one could code bots specialized in simple training tasks.
For instance in CS you could have a bot that just behave like a moving target to train your sniping skills. You could program various movement patterns (moving in parallel, random movement, rushing on the sniper, zig-zag etc...) and the player could make snipe training sessions on those pattern. You could make some mini-game with that, so its not just some annoying shooting session. For instance on the first level the objective is just to shoot down the bot in less than 10 seconds, then you have to use a maximum of 2 shots etc...
Sort of specialized tutorials. With bot slaves :D
I don't think learned tactics would be revelant since human players behave differently and in different ways, but you could certainly improve your skills.
Programming such things would also be usefull for the bot developper, since those primitives behaviors could be re-used in someway in a real game.
I'm considering making such training mini-bots for IOS (International Online Soccer). I'm planning to do a set of one-on-one bots : one that do only defence on you, another that play with you and do crosses for you etc...

2. Bots vs Bots matches :D
Well there are computer chess vs computer chess matches, and various other AI/bots competitions (car drivers, ai soccer bot etc...).
That could be funny to make teams of bot compete in your favourite mod.
That one is only interesting for the programmers of course.
As an example again, I'm doing a system for IOS that allow you to do just this. Since I'm trying to make a team of bots for IOS I thought it would be cool to allow other bot developpers to make their own team without too much pain and pit them against each other :D Its easy for IOS because there's a very simple environement (a pitch, players and a ball) so you can make a simple bot api. Would be much hard to do in a standard fps mod I guess, unless you standardize stuff (maps...)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Heyyo,

Well, you can already do bots vs bots matches in CS, and a couple other mods using Botman's Botmixer 5000. So you can have bots such as PODbot, squaring it off against RACCbot. But some bots conflict and shouldn't be run together, like I remember JOEbot doesn't like playin against other bots (dunno if that compatibility error was fixed in the final release of Botmixer 5000....

Re: The future of Bots?
 

with metamod in the house you would not even need Botmixer ;)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

Heyyo,

Hmm, I thought that metamod could only load one non-metamod dll through the target line in a shortcut, or are you talking about several metamod versions of bots like PLBot and PB v2.6mm?? cause like that yeah, but not the non-metamod ones, unless there's a way that I missed??? (cause the autoexec.cfg way is the same as the targetline way in shortcuts, the only diff is loading times...)

Re: The future of Bots?
 

i've 2mbit, yet for some reasons i love playing bots for training with my clan, for having fun w/o waiting and it helps to fill the server if you start with 6-on-6 in cs_italy

Re: The future of Bots?
 

"with metamod in the house you would not even need Botmixer"
...but there will be some problems because other bot plugins calling MDLL_ClientConnect() or MDLL_ClientPutInServer() won't get intercepted by my bot plugin and this will bring some problems

Re: The future of Bots?
 

...that's why in RACC I don't use ClientConnect(), ClientDisconnect(), and ClientPutInServer() anymore now.

I put this code all in StartFrame(), where there is a check that determines each frame who just joined and who just left.

Re: The future of Bots?
 

interesting....

is it a simple 'loop through players and see what has changed compared to previous frame' thingy?

Re: The future of Bots?
 

yes, sort of...
I'd post the code here but it rather belongs to the bot coding forum... not the offtopic one... lets not scare people :D