Sauerbraten need bots !

by maximusDM on 09/18/2006 21:39, 24 messages, last message: 09/20/2006 21:55, 6171 views, last view: 05/03/2024 04:29

I think the only major minus in Cube2 is the inexistence of bots for offline play.
There was a very good bot for Cube (Cube bot by Rick) and if it could be adapted to Cube2, it would be a huge achievement for this game.

I played long time Cube only because that bot and also custom maps.

Thanks.

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#5: Re: Agree!

by CrazyTB on 09/19/2006 02:36, refers to #4

And the disadvantages:

1) God-like bots (which never miss a shot).

2) Dumb bots.

3) Depending on bots, probably boring or unfair at multiplayer.

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#6: But...

by Blindabuser on 09/19/2006 03:00

Yes, but you aren't forced to play on bots server if you don't like them. Also, I mean that you couldn't choose between having bots or not, at the moment. ;)

All we are asking (begging :) for, is to have a choice, of course if it doesn't require too much work, and if some developers have the time to do it. It would spice up the game a bit, with pro and cons as happens for every thing in our life.

God-like bots/dumb bots: it depends on the human decision whether to make a good gameplay or not, not just on bots. I mean: you manage bots setup => you decide how your match is worth being played. ;)

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#7: Re: I Agree

by mitaman@work_cave on 09/19/2006 12:57, refers to #1

Yes, I also would love to see bots for Sauer. Good for getting a "quick DM fix", and practicing new maps.

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#8: ..

by SanHolo on 09/19/2006 13:08

I personally still think bots in online-games are useless - unless someone develops a really great AI, but I haven't seen even a close approach so far...

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#9: ..

by chead on 09/19/2006 13:50

I imagine that, with the development of NPC's for Eisenstern, bots in Sauerbraten would work their way in naturally, wouldn't they? *shrug*

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#10: Re: bots

by MeatROme on 09/19/2006 18:52, refers to #9

Well it's something completely different when all you want is to trade and/or steal from an NPC and might want him to head straigt toward the player and attack him.
The monsters AI is basically doing just that - nothing fancy is done ATM, like checking wether the next step will take it into a bottomless-pit ...

Also, the cube-bots took advantage - like the rest of the cube engine - of the extremely friendly (regarding calculations) map paradigm of the first incarnation of Cube. It's basically so that you could draw a 2D image of a map.
In Sauerbraten this is no longer possible ... in laymans terms : the bots would need to be aware of the 3D enviroment and all the possible movements this allows, insted of just checking in which direction the current oponnent is and heading that way (not caring about height difference and such).

I haven't studied the orginial Cube source much and never looked at that of the bots by Rick ... so this is mainly speculation, but I'm pretty sure it kinda boils down to what I just sketched out.

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#11: monster AI

by maximusDM on 09/19/2006 20:51

Sauer already have AI for monsters. I played DMSP with monsters many douzens of hours and in most maps and I noticed that it exist some room for improvement in path-finding, decisions, memory etc(the AI is anyhow decent). I think only it's useful to improve the AI already existent.
Eventualy this improved AI could be used to developing bots.

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#12: Re: monster AI

by Teddy on 09/20/2006 00:02, refers to #11

would it be possible to make normal monsters to play agains by making a command for it? That way the only thing you have to do is find a way to make the monsters spawn in multi-player.


7+3= pie :P

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#13: Re: ..

by kurtis84 on 09/20/2006 00:05, refers to #8

Salholo: I think the idea of dm bots would be to not play online with them, I.E. like Q3A bots.

I have put in many hours playing against dm bots in various games over the years. They never cheat, can usually be adjusted for skills, and are always ready to play. I am aware there is no replacing true human VS human battles...but bots are cool in their own ways too.

I would very much enjoy a good bot, but I suspect the current AI will be no help, as there is really no AI at all, just a couple variables.

Come on people, surely theres one of you that would enjoy making some wild AI for sauer ;)

P.S. damnit I wish I could code

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#14: Re: ..

by Aardappel_ on 09/20/2006 01:27, refers to #13

pathfinding in sauer would a bit of a challenge. The pathfinding itself is trivial, whats harder is finding good nodes that a bot can visit. Then there's the actual AI logic that is not difficult but a fair bit of work.

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#15: yes!

by whobob121 on 09/20/2006 01:40

i would love to see bots. after all, jedi academy was one of my fav games, and the high point was the bots.

so, im waiting!

(also waiting for waterfall bug fix, im too obsessive! and my computers to old!)

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#16: ..

by Teddy on 09/20/2006 02:16

I managed to get a monster(not a bot) to spawn in multiplayer, but only i cansee it and when it kills me or someone else, everyone but me crashes. It needs a lot of work.

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#17: Re: ..

by Max of S2D [Fr] on 09/20/2006 12:36, refers to #14

I noticed the IA of the monsters increased in the last release, aard ;)

7*9 = [ ]

Arg... 7 14 21 28... 63 =)

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#18: Re: ..

by Gilt__ on 09/20/2006 15:07, refers to #16

"everyone but me crashes."

see it's stuff like this that needs to get logged as a bug.

projects like this usually have no solid qa people helping out, and the devs usually only have time for basic sanity.

if people aren't interested in logging bugs, the response time on fixing exploits etc is going to be much much slower.

the flip side, is that if regulars see duplicate bug reports, not to bitch at the reporter. just thank them, yadda yadda. well written bug reports are mana from heaven.

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#19: Re: ..

by Gilt__ on 09/20/2006 15:26, refers to #16

also just to add, I bet one reason you didn't log a report is because you modded the client. but even so, if you find a way exploit other clients, it is important.

you have to remember that the line between modders and cheaters is a very very thin one. the people who are crashing others right now are very likely to just be some kids who wrote a buggy mod and found out it could crash other clients. it's very unlikely that they are people who actually know what they are doing.

people who are knowledgable are much more likely to handle something like that in a more professional manner.. ie: send a msg to the devs, and maybe log it at a security site.

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#20: ..

by Stakhanov on 09/20/2006 16:50

Most of the better game AI (Half-Life monsters , UT bots) use a pathnode network to navigate the map. They are rather dumb and incompetent without one. This would not be so good for Cube 2 because of the large amount of extra work , for maps that are currently easy to build and update.

I don't know how any AI could handle the octree without being utterly confused. Evolving neural networks might work out , growing the fittest genetic program for each map over time , but that's the heavier investment.

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#21: ..

by CrazyTB on 09/20/2006 19:36

Adding "navpoints" to maps for bots know where to go is an idea...

Also, (a bit off-topic), would be nice to have coop-sp and coop-dmsp.

Don't know x*9? Just concatenate x-1 to 10-x.

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#22: navigation nodes

by maximusDM on 09/20/2006 21:31

I played maybe tousands of hours the quake and unreal series, HL etc mostly with bots and i tested almost all bot-types made.
Some custom super-bots like Omicron for Q1 are quickly learning themselves the map and plays superb most maps(also custom ones), while another bots are lerning the map from me after I run through the map corectly in all ways to cover all places( nodes are dropped automaticly).
For example the Parabot for HL do well in the same manner.
Maybe this ideea to drop nodes automaticly by running through the map before or same time we spawn bots could largely help bots understand maps. Eventualy the routes made from the nodes to be stored for another time starting the map.

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#23: Re: navigation nodes

by MeatROme on 09/20/2006 21:45, refers to #22

AFAIK Rick's cube-bots do some autoplacement - with the editor manually tweaking these nodes for better performance.

Any bot working w/o nodes (of one form or another) isn't gonna go far IMHO.

Finding these nodes is (as aard said) the key problem. A number of approaches can be used, each with their merits and pitfalls; maximusDM covered some of them already.

If you require a player to "show the bot where to go" this might result in no-go areas, since the player didn't know he could rifle-jump somewhere (for example).

Auto-placement nearly never meets a maps specific demands, so you need to be able to tweak them (see cube-bots approach).

It's a monumental task - good luck to those willing to try!

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#24: Re: navigation nodes

by Eivets on 09/20/2006 21:55, refers to #23

I implemented an autoplacement system for nodes for sauer which works relatively good. It's not ready yet, but it can navigate many maps fine. The limitations are currently, that the bot cannot travel through teleports and it cannot follow jump pads. And it's using a lot of memory, still... I will continue developing this, though it's mostly for a role playing game where teleports and jump points are not used. But I will see what I can do about that...

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