botman's bots
Half-Life bot development
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May 21st, 2002:
The bug that effected the BSP tools also effected my
Darkulator utility. If you've had the
"Token too large on line 1" error dialog box pop up on some maps, you'll want to
download version 2.0 of The Darkulator.
May 20th, 2002:
I've fixed a small bug in my BSP tools
utilities. Some maps contained large key/value pairs that caused the utilities
to spit out an error message saying "Token too large on line 1". I've increased
the size of the key/value buffer to 4096 bytes which should prevent this problem.
May 15th, 2002:
I've created a new little utility that I call
The Darkulator. The Darkulator is a utility
for Half-Life BSP map files that will allow you to adjust the light levels of
maps. You can increase or decrease the light levels making the maps brighter
or darker. You can also change the skymap texture name if you wish. This
utility is mainly meant for dedicated server operators if they want to create new
versions of existing maps with slightly different light levels (for example de_dust
at night, or stalkyard on a bright sunny day, etc.). If you are just running
the client, don't try to save the modified BSP map file with the original name or
you won't be able to connect to any servers running that map (since your copy of
the map file is now different than the server's copy).
April 30th, 2002:
I've released version 5 of my BotMixer5000
project. The BotMixer5000 allows you to run several different type of bots at the
same time in a MOD. For example, you can run both PODbots and REALbots at the same
time in Counter-Strike. This latest release of the BotMixer5000 fixes a crashing
bug with the Half-Life 1.1.0.9 update.
April 28th, 2002:
I've released version 2.1 of the HPB bot.
This release includes the new entities for Frontline Force 1.5 and has a few other changes.
The biggest modification is that the bots have a more human aiming style. They will no
longer "lock" onto a player and always get headshots. With the modified aiming,
Holy Wars in instagib mode is actually
a whole lot of fun! :) Bots will also spray logos a lot better now and
will often spray them on the ground. The install batch files now copy the HPB_bot_logo.cfg
file into the MOD directory so even if you don't have custom bot logos set up, they will pick
from a list out of the standard decals.wad file. I've also released the source code
to my bot_logo.exe application (included in the HPB bot source code) in case you wonder how
I store the custom bot logos.
NOTE: This release of the HPB bot REQUIRES that you upgrade to version 1.1.0.9 of the Half-Life engine.
April 25th, 2002:
Nevermind. The problems reported to me yesterday and this
morning about the HPB bot crashing servers were due to other problems (people thought
that they had the latest metamod 1.12 when they actually didn't, people had changed
other server settings, shortcuts or startup scripts which lead to the server crashing).
I have been running the HPB bot on a Half-Life deathmatch Linux dedicated server and
on a TFC Linux dedicated server for about 6 hours straight with no crashing problems at
all. I can't reproduce the crashing problems that people had reported and when
I e-mail them back for details they report that the problem was fixed by changing
other things (many of them getting rid of some AdminMOD plugins). I will continue
to run the HPB bot 2.0 release on my Linux dedicated server and will run them on my
Win32 listen server continously for the next couple of days to see if any problems
occur. So far, I haven't seen a single problem after upgrading to metamod 1.12
after installing the Half-Life 1.1.0.9 update.
April 25th, 2002:
Correction: Several people have e-mailed me that even with
metamod 1.12, the HPB bots still can crash servers. If you are running bots with
AdminMOD or metamod you should disable them for now. I will try to determine
what is crashing and fix this as soon as possible. That is all.
April 24th, 2002:
I will have another release of the HPB bot with support for new entities in Frontline
Force 1.5 available sometime late this weekend (probably Sunday afternoon).
I want to throughly test the HPB bot with the 1.1.0.9 Half-Life engine and latest
version of TFC and Counter-Strike to make sure there aren't any problems with the
new releases before I release another version of the HPB bot.
This is just a note to let you know that the HPB bot 2.0
release should work fine with the Half-Life 1.1.0.9 update. If you are using
bots on your dedicated server (or listen server) with AdminMOD or metamod, you will
need to update to the 1.12 version of metamod.
You will also need to update the the latest version of metamod if you are using my
Stripper2 plugin.
April 14th, 2002:
Over the years that I've been viewing the Half-Life SDK, I've run
across some pretty humorous comments in the source code. I thought I would post many
of these comments on my website so that other people can view Valve's jocularity. Just
click on the "SDK Humor" link in the column or the left, or click here
to see these humorous comments from the SDK source code.
April 1st, 2002:
I've released version 2.0 of the HPB bot
(no, it's not an April Fools' joke). This release includes 5 new waypoint files for
Holy Wars Beta 2 (ABRAHAM, FATE,
FAITH_BETA, NAIR, and NOIR). I've modified the bot turning code so that they will
turn at a consistent speed (they used to turn faster with higher frame rates). I've
also modified the bot navigation code so that they don't tend to drop off of high ledges as
much anymore (especially when heading towards an enemy). There is a Linux version
as well as a Windows version available for this release. Go download
it NOW!
March 28th, 2002:
Someone on one of the Half-Life dedicated server e-mail lists
had asked about how to extract spray logos from the custom.hpk file. There wasn't
a utility to do this, so I hacked one together real quick. If you run a listen
server or dedicated server, you can download my hpk_extract
utility and try it out. The download includes a Windows version and a Linux version
as well as the source code.
March 25th, 2002:
The bots in Holy Wars will vote for game mode changes and will occasionally start
a game mode vote on their own. I have tweaked the aiming in Holy Wars Instagib
mode, but the bots are still VERY deadly when playing Instagib and I may need to
tweak the aiming some more. The waypoint files included for Holy Wars Beta 2
are only for the original 7 maps. I will be working on creating waypoint
files for the new Holy Wars maps over the next week or so and hope to make another
release sometime late next weekend with waypoint files for the additional maps.
I've released version 1.9 of the HPB bot.
This version includes support for Holy Wars
Beta 2 and I've also added support for single player games. Now you can play the
single player version of Half-Life or Opposing Force without having to remove the
HPB bot (and reinstall it when you want to play deathmatch again).
March 11th, 2002:
Update: I forgot to mention that the bug with the
Egon gun (Gluon gun) beam being the wrong color was due to a bug in the Software Mode
video drivers (not the SDK). I was using Software Mode for all of my testing of the SDK.
When I switched to OpenGL or DirectX mode, the Egon gun beam was drawn correctly
in blue. Valve is aware of this bug and will fix it.
I finished all the work I had been doing on getting
SDK 2.2 to compile with the Borland
and MinGW compilers. You can now build the
SDK 2.2 server DLL and client DLL file using these freely available C++ compilers.
The patches also modify the SDK 2.2 source code files so that they will cleanly build
with the newer gcc compilers on Linux systems (for those of you porting your MODs to
Linux). I was able to get around the problem with using the VGUI library by
creating a new DLL file called NoVGUI.dll that will initialize the client's display
and update the rendered view. Since the scoreboard in SDK 2.2 was done using
the VGUI library, I replaced the scoreboard in SDK 2.2 with the scoreboard from
SDK 1.0 using the old text style scoreboard (oldschool style!). You can find
all of the details and download the necessary files by going here.
March 3rd, 2002:
I just thought I'd post a quick update on what I'm
currently working on. I've created a set of patches for the Half-Life
SDK 2.2 release to allow it to work with the
Borland C++ compiler, the newest MinGW C++ compiler
, and also the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. I was planning on releasing
the patches for the Full SDK and Standard SDK, but when I tested the server DLL
that I built with the Borland compiler and used the client DLL from the Valve
folder, I discovered that the Egon gun was firing a yellow beam instead of a
blue beam. I'm currently trying to track down why it's doing that.
I'm also making a second attempt at being able to build the client DLL using
the Borland or MinGW compiler (but I'm not having much luck). All of the
client DLL code will compile with the patches that I've made to the default
SDK, but the exported functions in the VGUI library is only compatible with
the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. I'm trying to use the "impdef" and
"implib" tools from the Borland compiler and the "dlltool" from the MinGW
compiler to create an import library for Borland or MinGW from the Microsoft
VGUI library. I might go ahead and release the SDK patches to build only
the server DLL if I can't get the client DLL stuff working, but I won't
release anything until I can figure out why the Egon gun beam is the wrong
color.
February 20th, 2002:
I've been having some problems with my Windows machine at home over the last
few days. First my GeForce2 video card crapped out, then my machine
started locking up after 30 or 45 minutes of use. I guess it's time
to wipe everything out and reload Windows and all my applications once again.
The good thing is I get to get rid of all the little applications that I've
downloaded and installed, but never used. Needless to say, the hardware
problems have impeded my progress on the metamod monster plugin.
Hopefully I'll have things straightened out by this weekend and can spend
several hours in a row working on the code without my machine locking up in
the middle of things.
Hey! I've got over a MILLION hits on my main
web page today. If I had a penny for every one of those web page
accesses, I'd have over a million pennies! :)
February 13th, 2002:
I've started working on another project (a plugin for
metamod). This plugin will allow
server admins to spawn some of the monsters from Half-Life single player in
any MOD. I'm having to take the monster source code from the Half-Life
SDK and modify the AI and navigation so that it will work in multiplayer MODs.
This is a fairly tedious process and each monster has to be done one-by-one.
So it will probably be several weeks/months before I have very many monsters
working in the plugin. I plan to start with the simpler monsters (snarks,
headcrabs, etc.), move on to the more complicated monsters (houndeyes, zombies,
bullsquids, etc.) and eventually add the most complex monsters (human military,
scientists, barney, ninja babes, etc.). I won't give any kind of expected
release date until I get a week or two away from releasing the first version.
Keep checking the news here for further updates.
February 2nd, 2002:
I've even included a Stripper2 configuration file for the deathmatch map "crossfire"
that shows how to add a button to open the "secret" door that leads to the
blue room. Since the BSP map file isn't modified, clients won't have to
download a new version of the map when they connect to a server running the
Stripper2 plugin.
January 28th, 2002:
I've also begun working on another project. This project is an enhancement
of the Stripper add-on I made for Half-Life
deathmatch over a year ago. This new project will be called Stripper2.
The Stripper2 project will be a MetaMOD plugin
that will allow you to strip items from a BSP map file and will also allow you to
add items to a BSP map file (without modifying the .bsp file itself). You
will be able to add new player spawn points, weapons, ammo, teleporters, ambient
sounds, buttons to control doors, explosions, monstermakers (to drop snarks
anywhere in the map), etc. Since it's a MetaMOD plugin, it will support
any MOD that MetaMOD supports. For example in Counter-Strike, you can
add new hostages to the map anywhere you want. You can even set up the
Stripper2 config file so that it locates entities at random locations each time
the map loads (for example, one time you play the map and there's a shotgun at
a certain location, the next time you play the map, there's a crossbow at that
same location, and the next time you play the map, there's a monstermaker spawning
snarks!). You can even "spray" permanent decals on walls so that you can
put the name of your server (using the letters in the decals.wad file) in every
map that gets played to let people know who's server they are playing on.
I think this should be lots of fun and allow maps to be easily customized by the
server operators.
P.S. Since you aren't modifying the .bsp file, the client won't have to download
anything.
I hope to have the first release of Stripper2 out in the next week or two. January 7th, 2002:
Also, since I haven't had any time recently to update the HPB bot
and since it doesn't look like I will have any time in the near future to
update the HPB bot, I am releasing the FULL SOURCE CODE to version 1.8a of
the HPB bot. I occasionally get e-mail asking "How do I use the stupid
WaypointRouteFromTo() function?", or "How do I get my stupid bot to spray a
stupid logo?", or "How can I make my stupid bot follow waypoints?", or "How
can I get my stupid bots to chat?", or "How can I get my stupid bot to read
bot names from a text file?". All of these questions and more are
answered in the FULL SOURCE CODE to the HPB bot. Download the HPB bot
source code from the bottom on the HPB bot web page here. January 2nd, 2002:
December 21st, 2001:
November 25th, 2001:
November 22nd, 2001:
The latest version of my BSP tools includes many enhancements to the BSP
viewer (BSP_view) as well as a new utility called BSP_slicer. The
BSP slicer tool allows you to generate bitmap images (or 2D "slices") of
the BSP data. It will make horizontal slices along the Z axis and output
this information to a bitmap file to allow you to view the layout of a
level. There are some sample pictures of the output of the BSP slicer
utility on the BSP tools web page here. November 11th, 2001:
The BSP viewer is pretty crude right now. It should display most maps
to some extent, but there are MANY things that aren't handled properly in the
BSP viewer right now. I will be adding features to the BSP viewer over
the next few months so hopefully it will support more and more of the things
that are available when you are using the Half-Life engine to display a level.
The automatic waypoint generator (included in the bsp_tool.exe application) is
also pretty crude right now. The main reason I am releasing this at this
time is so that other bot developers can see what I have done so far and maybe
make some use from it. I will continue to update and improve the
automatic waypoint generator code, but if you download it and try it out,
don't be surprised if the bots actually behave more poorly when using the
waypoint files that it generates than they would if there were no waypoints
at all!
FOR BOTH THE BSP VIEWER AND THE AUTOMATIC WAYPOINT
GENERATOR, PLEASE READ THE ENCLOSED README.TXT FILES (THERE'S ONE FOR EACH
APPLICATION). THESE WILL EXPLAIN HOW TO USE THE APPLICATIONS AS WELL AS HOW
TO SET UP THE .CFG FILES REQUIRED BY EACH TO MATCH YOUR SPECIFIC SYSTEM
CONFIGURATION.
November 6th, 2001:
October 22nd, 2001:
I don't have the source code in a state where I can release anything yet and I'm still
adding features (like animated textures). I want to also be able to add a method where
you can see entities in motion (like doors, elevators and moving platforms). I also
need to add some water code so that the water areas look like they do in the game.
Right now I'm able to get between 180 and 240 frames per second on my 1.3 GHz Pentium 4
with a GeForce2 MX video card (at 800x600 resolution). Also I'm not real happy with the amount of time it takes
to load a map. It loads a map more quickly than it does with the Half-Life engine
but I would like to reduce the load time if I can. Perhaps in the next week or two
I will have enough done to make a release of the executable and source code, but it might
be another two or three weeks before I have enough working to release anything. October 2nd, 2001:
September 30th, 2001:
September 29th, 2001:
I've updated the HPB bot to fix a bug with the
latest version of TFC that comes with the Half-Life 1.1.0.8 update. If you've
been getting an error message that says "SZ_GetSpace: Tried to write to an
uninitialized sizebuf_t ???" while playing TFC with the HPB bot then you will
want to download this update. It took me a while to figure out what was causing
this problem. It seems to happen when a TFC spy bot throws a gas grenade. I've
disabled the grenade throwing for spy bots in TFC to prevent the game from
crashing. I'll release a new version of the HPB bot with the gas grenade stuff
put back in if I can figure out how to work around this problem. I've only
tested the HPB bot with Half-Life deathmatch, TFC, DMC and Counter-Strike (after
upgrading to the 1.1.0.8 version of the Half-Life engine). I think the other
MODs (Frontline Force, HolyWars, and Opposing Force) should still work okay
with the latest version of the HPB bot, but these haven't been tested at all.
I've also updated the BotMixer5000 to work with
the Half-Life 1.1.0.8 and Counter-Strike 1.3 updates. I've added BotMixer5000
support for another Counter-Strike bot called Wbot.
Remember to install BotMixer5000 last (after installing any bots that you want
to use) or you will have problems starting the game.
I've also started working on a new project that doesn't have anything that can
be released yet. The new project will be a set of tools to use with BSP
files. The tools will include a BSP utility that will aid bot developers
in automatically waypointing a map file. I will also create a BSP viewer
that can run on Windows and Linux to allow dedicated server admins to monitor
a game in progress without having to start up a Windows client and connecting
to the game. The BSP viewer utility will also have the ability to create
in game screenshots that can automatically be displayed on a web site (for clan
matches and whatnot). I plan on using the same chasecam observer code
that is used in TFC and Counter-Strike to create something similar to HLTV (but
you won't have to start a Half-Life client to view the game). This tool
is mainly meant for bot programmers and dedicated server admins. I'm NOT
trying to come up with a replacement for HLTV and I'm NOT trying to create my
own Half-Life game engine. Of course, source code will be available if
I am actually able to get any of this working. Oh, by the way, don't expect to
see anything available for at least 2 or 3 months. I hope to release
something before the end of the year, but other distractions in real life
take up much of my time these days. August 26th, 2001:
August 24th, 2001:
August 18th, 2001:
The source code to BotMixer5000 didn't change, but I did modify the
Install and Remove batch files to prevent a nasty little bug that would
occur if you reinstalled a MOD and then tried to run the BotMixer5000
Remove batch file (it would leave the MOD in a state where it would not
run and you would have to reinstall it a second time). Also many
more MODs are supported now including Action Half-Life, Day of Defeat,
and The Opera. There still aren't very many bots available for most of
the MODs that the BotMixer5000 supports, but as more bots show up that
support these MODs you will have more bots to choose from for these new
MODs.
August 5th, 2001:
July 29th, 2001:
Also I have updated the HPB bot to modify some of
the filenames that it uses. This is done in conjunction with the release
of the BotMaster5000 to handle some filenames that clash with other bot filenames
(like "bot.cfg", "bot_chat.txt", etc.). I also changed the "bot" CVAR for
dedicated servers to be "HPB_bot" so you will have to modify any console scripts
that you may have that use the "bot" CVAR and change them to "HPB_bot" instead
(for example, "HPB_bot addbot 2 5" instead of "bot addbot 2 5"). There are
no other changes in the latest release of the HPB bot besides the filename changes
and the CVAR change (i.e. no new features were added).
Please see the "changes.txt" file that comes with the HPB bot for a full list
of which filenames were changed and what they were changed to. July 25th, 2001:
July 11th, 2001:
July 8th, 2001:
July 5th, 2001:
July 1st, 2001:
Also, I had previously posted a message in my forum, saying that I thought I had
found a bug in DMC where you couldn't select the crowbar sometimes. This bug
was affecting the bots in close range combat (since they couldn't select the
crowbar that they love SO much). I've modified the weapons selection so
that the DMC bots will use the shotgun at close range if they aren't able to use
the crowbar. It looks a little wierd with them blasting players in the stomach
with the shotgun all the time, but at least they don't just stand there doing their
little "dance" with each other anymore. June 25th, 2001:
Also, a few people have e-mailed me about a file in the Half-Life directory
called "bot.txt". This is some debugging output from the 1.5a release that
I forgot to turn off before building the release version of the HPB bot. You
can safely delete this file from your Half-Life directory (the HPB bot doesn't
need this file to work properly). June 11th, 2001:
June 10th, 2001:
June 8th, 2001:
May 24th, 2001:
Thanks to the people who e-mailed me about this bug (especially the ones who sent
crash logs). I appreciate the feedback and realize how important it is to have
a game that doesn't crash, especially for those of you that operate dedicated servers. May 20th, 2001:
May 14th, 2001:
April 29th, 2001:
April 22nd, 2001:
Dedicated server admins can now configure the HPB bots so that they will
spray logos. Unfortunetly the logos can only be chosen from the standard
decals available in decals.wad so color logos aren't possible for dedicated
servers. See the Bot_logo_ReadMe.txt file for more details. April 19th, 2001:
I haven't been spending much time working on code for the HPB bot due to some other
real life distractions (getting a DSL line installed at home, stuff at work, daydreaming,
etc.), but I hope to spend more time this weekend adding some stuff. I did manage to
fix a problem with the bots trying to aim RPG rockets at player's feet(s). The bots
would "forget" that they are supposed to aim at the feet and the rockets would still
wind up going toward the head. This bug will be fixed in the next release of the
HPB bot. If I don't get much else accomplished this weekend I will at least add the
missing FLF 1.2a entities and release the HPB bot with the RPG aiming bug fix sometime
late Sunday evening. March 30th, 2001:
March 26th, 2001:
There was a problem with the bot_logo.exe application not setting the palette up
correctly for monochrome spray logos. If you added any monochrome spray logos
using colors from the pull down list, you will need to use "Remove" to remove
the old bot logos and use "Add" to add them back in again. The spray logo
shown in the game would looked "washed out" and wouldn't appear as solid.
The new bot_logo.exe application should fix that problem. March 22nd, 2001:
March 18th, 2001:
March 16th, 2001:
March 5th, 2001:
I'm still continuing to work on getting custom spray logos working for bots.
I've had a few small problems with the Windows utility that I am creating to
manage these logos. Logos aren't working in the HPB bot Release 1.0 version,
but logos will definitely be added in the next release. February 24th, 2001:
I haven't been doing much on the HPB bot for the
last few weeks. I was waiting for Front Line Force to release the 1.2
update before another version of the HPB bot would be released. I didn't
want to release a bot then have to release another version after FLF 1.2 came
out because I know that there will be some things in FLF 1.2 that won't work
properly with the existing HPB bot code. I'm not sure when the next
release of the HPB bot will be. Just keep checking this website every
2 or 3 days to see if there's any update (or just check the news on
planethalflife.com) January 29th, 2001:
January 28th, 2001:
January 7th, 2001:
December 17th, 2000:
I've also released a new version of my
HPB bot template source code. This version includes my Floyd's algorithm
path finding code as well as source code needed to display waypoint menus.
Source code showing how to assign random names to bots from a text file,
how to implement a bot chat feature (bot_whine.txt) and source code required
to get bots working on Linux dedicated servers is also included.
I will be out of town for the next 2 weeks, so I would like to wish
everyone a very Happy Holidays and a safe and Happy New Year.
December 11th, 2000:
December 3rd, 2000:
November 29th, 2000:
November 26th, 2000:
Please note that the Linux version of the HPB bot does NOT fully support
Front Line Force due to some differences between the Win32 version and
the Linux version of this MOD. The bots in FLF on a Linux box will attack
their teammates. I will get the Linux version of FLF fixed as
soon as I can.
Here's a list of what was added/changed in the HPB bot...
November 19th, 2000:
November 12th, 2000:
November 1st, 2000:
October 29th, 2000:
October 24th, 2000:
October 18th, 2000:
October 15th, 2000:
October 8th, 2000:
I've included waypoint files for the maps: 2FORT, BADLANDS, CROSSOVER2, PUSH,
ROCK2, and SNIPRWAR. If you haven't tried SNIPRWAR, you really should try
it. You can download the SNIPRWAR map from
www.fileplanet.com October 4th, 2000:
October 3rd, 2000:
I will set up a "Waypoints" section (on the left) in the next few days
where I will make future waypoint files available for download (as I create
them). I hope to create a new waypoint file about every 2 or 3 days. Once
I've got the standard Valve TFC maps waypointed, I'll begin making changes
to the bot code and release another version. It will probably be a month
or so before the next HPB bot version will be available. October 1st, 2000:
September 28th, 2000:
September 26th, 2000:
September 18th, 2000:
September 8th, 2000:
August 29th, 2000:
August 27th, 2000:
By the way, you can now build the HPB bot using
the free MingW32 compiler available from my web site (see the "Building
the SDK" link to the left). Everything you need to build the HPB
bot using Microsoft Visual C++, MingW32, or the LINUX gcc compiler is included
in the source code zip file. Just rename the "makefile_ming" to "makefile"
to build with MingW32, or rename the "makefile_linux" to "makefile" to
build with the LINUX compiler.
Several people have written and said they like
the new website layout. Many people have told me that my site loads
quicker than any other site they visit. Several people said that
they like the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle and are happy the
way I have things now. So I think this is the way the site will stay
for a while. I will be making improvements in the Forum section in
the next few weeks. I like the concept that YaBB has in creating
an Open Source Bulletin Board package and I already have a few things that
I want to change. Plus it'll give me a chance to brush up on my Perl
skills.
August 25th, 2000:
August 20th, 2000:
I now have ONE bot that supports all four games
(Half-Life deathmatch, Opposing Force deathmatch, Team Fortress 1.5, and
Counter-Strike). You download the HPB bot, install it, then select the
bot you want using an Install batch file. This doesn't make the bot code
any bigger (all four bots in one file) since 95% of the code is the same
for all four types of bots.
Also I have received several e-mails from people
asking where the other 6 CS bot websites were. I never said that there
were 8 websites with CS bots. I said that I had been contacted by 8 people
who were making a CS bot. Two of them (DaTa and Paulo) have made enough
progress to make a CS bot available for download. I don't know how far
along the other CS bot developers are. All they did was e-mail me and say
"I'm also making a bot for CS!". If I get any e-mails from CS bot developers
who have a website with a bot that can be downloaded, I'll post the URL
here. Until then, you will probably know about these CS bot sites long
before I do. By the way, Paulo sent me news that he now has a new URL for
his Rambot website. The new URL is here.
Put this new URL in your bookmarks (or favorites) and delete the old URL.
August 18th, 2000:
August 16th, 2000:
I have been contacted by no fewer than 8 people
who say they are developing a bot for Counter-Strike. Two of these people
have already released a bot (Android
and Rambot). I
expect a few more to be released in the next few weeks. So far no one has
contacted me saying they are making a TFC bot or an Opposing Force bot.
Some people feel that these CS bot authors should get together and make
one bot. They think that this will allow the bots to be released sooner,
but I don't think that it's a good idea. It takes very good coordination
to have more than one person working on a software project and having multiple
people code the same bot would probably only slow things down. Also having
multiple bots allows you to choose from the bots available and play the
one that you like the best. Not everybody likes the same kind of bot. That's
why I originally worked on creating a bot for Half-Life. There already
was The Jumbot and Phineas Bot, but I wanted to make my own bot that had
a little different style of gameplay. So don't complain about there being
too many Counter-Stike bots out there. The more bots there are, the more
competition there will be, and the more competition there is, the more
the developers will try to make their bots better.
August 11th, 2000:
But I'm not going to let one person screw things
up for everyone else. I will continue to release my bots as well as release
the source code that goes along with them. I can't change the behavior
of other people and if I let them change the way I do something, then they've
won and I've lost. I'm not going to let that happen. People can't take
advantage of you if you don't let them. Enough said on that subject, now
back to bot coding...
August 9th, 2000:
Okay, so be it. From now on all of the future
versions of the bots will have an identifier in them that labels them as
mine. I started doing this with the HPB bot (TFC version) where it uses
the "Say" command to send you a message 5 seconds after you join the game
and prints out the URL to my website. I originally wasn't going to release
the source code and knew that there would be people taking the executable,
changing the text files, then posting it on another web site as their own
work. Well in the future, if that happens, the people downloading it will
know right away where the bot originally came from. I am now undecided
whether I will release any more source code either.
I will continue to work on the TFC/CS/OpFor/whatever
bot, but it REALLY ticks me off that someone would take something that
I've worked so hard on and post it as their own work.
August 5th, 2000:
I've also continued to work on the HPB bot. I'm
making progress with the waypoint and path finding code but don't have
anything that can be downloaded yet. I've managed to get the waypoint code
working in Counter-Strike. There were problems with the way I was determining
which team the bots were on and that caused the waypoint code to crash
the Half-Life engine. I did figure out how to get bots into OpFor. I was
trying to figure out why they were being kicked out and correct whatever
the problem was. It turns out that all I had to do was ignore the "kick"
command to prevent them from being kicked from the server and they work
fine!
August 4th, 2000:
July 31st, 2000:
I am working on incorporating these changes and
finishing up the path finding code using waypoints before another test
release. The next release will support TFC and CS (and possibly OpFor).
I'm having problems with OpFor kicking the bots out of the game as soon
as they join. At first I thought it was because bots don't have a WON ID,
but that's not what's causing them to be kicked from the server. I did
add code to support manually kicking a bot from the game (it used to crash
when you do this), so you will be able to add and delete bots without having
to restart the game. The next release will probably be in 2 or 3 weeks.
July 15th, 2000:
Oh yeah, I got a nice e-mail from Yahn about the
HPB bot. I wasn't sure how Valve would react to something like this since
it's kind of borderline reverse engineering, even though I'm not decompiling
any code, just looking at exported function names. Valve has always been
helpful in answering questions from developers and does encourage MOD authors
to show off the capabilities of the Half-Life engine. I hope that I am
able to create a bot for existing MODs like TFC or CS that will allow people
to continue playing these games. With all of the cheating and childish
behavior that occurs on some of these servers and the fact that some people
have to pay an arm and a leg for Internet service, it will be nice to be
able to play these games without all of this and have no network lag to
boot!
July 4th, 2000:
July 2nd, 2000:
I've also been spending some time working on a
waypoint system for the HPB bot. I have implemented
a system that allows you to add or delete waypoints as well as save them
to a file. I had originally intended to release a "cannon fodder" version
of the HPB bot where it just randomly wanders around and let people play
with that, but the bots do SOOOOO POORLY at wandering around that even
that isn't much fun. With the waypoint system the bots follow a specific
path and almost look like they know where they are going. I still don't
have a path finding algorithm yet to allow them to get from point A to
point B in a map. Right now the bots just randomly follow waypoints around
in the map.
The code that I currently have allows for up to
4 teams (each team has a separate waypoint list). Currently only team 1
follows the waypoints correctly. The other teams just bump into the walls
and tend to stand in one spot. Once I fix this where both teams follow
their respective waypoints, I'll release a "Waypoint Test Release" that
will allow everyone to try out what I have so far. I don't expect it to
take more than a few days to correct this problem, but it could be several
weeks before I figure out what's wrong. Once again, I am NOT going to give
a specific release date for anything. This is a labor of love for me. I'm
not working under any contract that says I have to have something available
by a certain date. I've never promised anyone that anything would be available
by any specific date. I know things are taking longer than I thought they
would, but PLEASE don't e-mail me asking when it will be available. If
you do, I'll just ignore your e-mail and delete it.
June 22th, 2000:
June 5th, 2000:
I am also continuing to work on a TFC
bot. Once the new Half-Life update is released, I will check to see
that my TFC bots still function properly (I don't expect any problems,
but if Valve has changed too much code, they might not work at all anymore).
I am currently working on waypoint code so the bots will be able to roam
around the levels somewhat intelligently (at least better than I can anyway!).
I will then start working on getting the bots to know how to use the weapons
that are available to them. The roaming around and weapon support will
be somewhat primitive at first, but will get better over time. All bots
start out this way and gradually get better. I'm just willing to release
a bot that is far from perfect so people can have something to play with.
I expect to release a playable version of the TFC bot in the next few weeks,
so keep checking this page for updates and availability.
Several people have e-mailed me and asked to be
Beta
testers for the TFC/CS/whatever bots. I don't
need any Beta testers at the moment but I will always welcome any constructive
feedback that anyone has about how to improve the bots. However, please
realize that I will NEVER be able to create a bot that can play anywhere
NEAR as well as a human opponent. Bot AI just hasn't developed that far
yet due to CPU and memory restrictions (as well as my limited coding skills).
Don't expect the bots to be just like human players. They won't be.
Other people have e-mailed me and asked "How
did you get the source code to TFC/CS/whatever? Can you send it to me?
PLEEEEEEASE!". I don't have the source code
to TFC or CS or any other MOD for Half-Life (other than my bot code found
on these web pages). I am creating a bot in EXACTLY the same way that the
Half-Life engine creates any other player. I am spawning a bot using function
calls in the MOD that are available to the Half-Life engine code. You can
think of my HPB bot as an extension to the Half-Life engine where bots
are created just as if a real client had connected over the network or
from the Internet.
May 29th, 2000:
I plan on having ONE generic bot, that can handle
simple roaming around (via waypoints) and using the weapons, and use that
ONE bot for both TFC and CS. The method that I am using to create the bots
does not seem to depend on what the MOD actually is. Obviously the game
rules and weapons are different for different MODs, but the way that the
engine creates a player (and a bot) seems to be the same for all MODs.
Thus there will be one universal HPB BOT!!!
By the way, for those of you concerened about
the size of the download once the HPB bot is released, right now all that
is required is a single DLL file that is currently ONLY 137 Kbytes.
May 25th, 2000:
Keep checking this site after Valve has released
the update for a version of my bot that will work with Half-Life version
1.1.0.0
April 23rd, 2000:
I'M NOT GOING TO USE THIS TO MAKE AN AIMBOT FOR
HALF-LIFE!!! PLEASE DON'T E-MAIL ME AND ASK ME TO MAKE AN AIMBOT. IF YOU
WANT TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT PEOPLE WITH BETTER ACCURACY, YOU SHOULD PRACTICE
MORE, NOT CHEAT!!!
April 2nd, 2000:
I had hoped to be able to use this method to add
bots to other MODs that didn't already have bots, but I have not been having
much luck with this. I will continue to work on this (off and on) over
then next few months to see what (if anything) can be accomplished.
PLEASE DON'T SEND ME E-MAIL ASKING ME TO MAKE
A BOT FOR CS, TFC, AHL, OpFor, OR ANY OTHER HALF-LIFE MOD!!! I'M ALREADY
TRYING TO DO THAT, SO THE MORE YOU LEAVE ME ALONE THE MORE PROGRESS I CAN
MAKE!!! OKAY??? (P.S. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE E-MAIL ME ABOUT MAKING A BOT FOR
OTHER MODS I'M VERY LIKELY TO DROP THE WHOLE THING AND GO LIVE IN A CORNFIELD
SOMEWHERE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!)
January 22nd, 2000:
I've also been working on creating a Half-Life
Dedicated Server version of the bot MOD. I have created a Win32 version
and a Linux version for those of you who wish to use my bots on your Half-Life
Dedicated Servers. You can get details on running the dedicated server
version here.
December 21st, 1999:
I have also added an Unofficial
Half-Life MOD FAQ that describes everything you need to know about
creating a MOD for the game Half-Life.
December 12th, 1999:
November 14th, 1999:
Some MODs have begun to incorporate bots and that's
great! However, if you create a MOD using bot code from this web site,
at least do the decent thing and give me some credit for creating the bot
code that you based your bot on. I don't have a problem with people taking
my bot code and adding features or just using it as is from my code, but
DON'T try to pass off the bot as your own original work. There are various
ways that I can tell when this has been done and if I see others using
my code without at least some credit to me, I will stop releasing source
code to subsequent versions of the bots. PLEASE
DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS!
October 24th, 1999:
October 8th, 1999:
I also have added some information on the Half-Life
SDK and C++ objects. Check out "Some basics about
C++ and the Half-Life SDK" for details.
September 25th, 1999:
I have received much e-mail from people asking
me to build a bot for Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic, or Action
Half-Life. I can not build a bot for these MODs without having the source
code to these MODs (NONE of which has been released to the best of my knowledge).
PLEASE DON'T WRITE ME AND ASK ME TO MAKE A BOT FOR CS, TFC, OR AHL!!!
I can't do it and even if I had the source code I don't have the time or
any desire to build a bot for any Half-Life MOD.
September 20th, 1999:
Some people have sent me e-mail saying "Dude!,
you need a good webmaster to make your site look WAY COOL!". My intent
here is not to create a "way cool" web site. My intent is to provide Half-Life
bot source code so that other people can create Half-Life bots, or modify
my bot to their liking. I don't like a lot of graphics on a web site. I
don't like a lot of ads. AND I HATE BLINKING TEXT!
September 14th, 1999:
I've released the first version of my
Stripper2 plugin for metamod.
The Stripper2 plugin allows you to remove entities from Half-Life and MODs.
You can also add new entities to maps using a map specific Stripper2 configuration
file. You can add new player spawn points, weapons, ammo, and create effects
like teleporters, explosions, ambient sounds and permanent decals. If you
run a server for Half-Life deathmatch, Team Fortress 1.5, Counter-Strike, Day
of Defeat, Frontline Force, Deathmatch Classic, or any other MOD supported by
metamod, you should definetly give the Stripper2 plugin a try.
There was a bug in Beta 0.3a of the
BSP tools package that prevented waypoints from
being generated properly by the automatic waypoint generator function in the
bsp_tool utility. This bug has been fixed and I've released Beta 0.3b
of the BSP tools package here.
There was a bug in Beta 0.2 and Beta 0.3 of the
BSP tools package that would cause the applications
to crash if you had more than 20 MODs installed. I have fixed this problem
and increased the number of MODs to 100. If you have more than that
installed you will get an error message indicating you have too many MODs
installed (instead of it just crashing). You can download the BETA
version 0.3a of the BSP tools package here.
I've released a new version of my
BSP tools package. I've fixed a few bugs
in the BSP Viewer (bsp_view) and added a new feature where you can display the
name of a texture used in a map. Holding down the 'T' key will display
the name of the texture pointed to by the crosshairs. There weren't any
significant changes to any of the other tools in the BSP tools package.
See the "changes.txt" file included in the BSP tools
package for details.
I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be
traveling for the next week and won't be answering any e-mail or posts in
my forum. I want to wish everyone a safe and happy holidays and a
happy new year.
I've just released a Half-Life Winamp plug-in
that I call Singing Walter.
This is a visualization plug-in that will display one of 4 scientists,
the guard (Barney) or the G-man. The model will move it's mouth
in sync to whatever music or sound file is playing in the Winamp player.
It's pretty funny watching Walter (the first scientist) or Barney or the
G-Man singing along with your favorite songs. Hey, Walter likes
to karaoke too! Check it out here.
Gobble-Gobble! It's turkey day (Thanksgiving)
here in the States today. I'm thankful for many things. I'm
thankful that I have my family and friends. I'm thankful that I have
all of the things that I need to live a happy life. I'm thankful that
I live in a country where I can do all of the things that I like to do.
And I am thankful that I finished the latest enhancements to my
BSP tools package. :)
I've released the first version of my
BSP tools package. The BSP tools include
a BSP viewer and a BSP tool that can print out information contained in a
BSP file as well as automatically generate HPB bot waypoints for a Half-Life
deathmatch level (TFC, Frontline Force, Opposing Force, Holywars, and Deathmatch
Classic aren't currently fully supported by the automatic waypoint generator,
use it for maps for these MODs at your own risk).
Wooo-hooo! I finally got skyboxes working for my
Half-Life BSP map viewer (well, mostly working anyway). I've got the transparent
and animated textures working (scrolling textures aren't working yet). I've
got it where the lighting can be enabled or disabled while you're running the
viewer. There's an adjustable gamma and brightness setting in the .cfg
file I'm currently working on the automatic waypoint generator. The
automatic waypoint generator is pretty crude right now, but it does correctly
floodfill the map with waypoints (and filters out waypoints that aren't on the
ground). I've made enough progress in the past few weeks that I feel I can
release a beta version of my map viewer and waypoint generator sometime this
comming weekend (probably in the afternoon on Sunday, November 11th).
Check back here then to take a look at what I've done so far.
I've been working on my Half-Life map viewer. I started
with source code from several different BSP viewers/engines (mainly for Quake I and
and Quake II) and have been adding stuff to support Half-Life. I recently got
transparent textures working (like fences and railings) and am currently working on
animated textures. I've got it fairly configurable right now. You can
turn on or off lighting. You can enable or disable the displaying of special
textures (like clip brushes). You can specify which spawn point entities to
use and start at a random spawn point. You can also invert the mouse Y axis,
for those of you that play the game with that kind of a screwed up configuration. :)
I've update the HPB bot to
fix the bug with the gas grenade in TFC (thanks to
RedFox of the FoXBot for help on this one).
It turns out that bots throwing the gas grenade wasn't the problem.
The problem was bots getting effected by the gas grenade (when TFC was trying to
send the hallucination effects to the player) that was causing the crash.
So even if bots didn't throw gas grenades, the game could still crash if a player
threw a gas grenade and a bot was effected. I have fixed this bug and have
re-enabled the gas grenade and normal grenade usage of the spy bots in TFC.
I've received a couple of e-mails about sound problems with
the Half-Life 1.1.0.8 update when using the HPB bot (sound not working, etc.).
When I was trying out the beta release of the Half-Life 1.1.0.8 update I also had
sound problems and Mike Dussault (from Valve) gave me a couple of things to try.
One solution that worked for me was to run the "System Setup" option in the
Half-Life\voice_tweak.exe application. If this doesn't work, you may need to
disable voice communication support completely (this includes with bots AND when
connecting to Internet servers). To do this, look for the "voice_enable" in
the config.cfg file for each MOD (i.e. Half-Life\tfc\config.cfg).
Change this option from "1" to "0" to completely disable voice communication support
(the engine will not try to use the voice communication drivers and the sound should
go back to the way it was before the 1.1.0.8 update). You might also want to
look at the
Tech bag on Planethalflife.
Okay, it's been a while since I updated my webpage
(so sue me). :)
Someone had asked in my forums if there was a Linux
version of my Stripper Add-On for Half-Life
deathmatch. I replied that there wasn't but that other people had asked
about that before, so I decided to create a new release of the Stripper Add-On
that would support Windows and Linux. The Stripper Add-On allows you to
strip out weapons, ammo, healthkits, long jump modules, wall mounted health and
HEV chargers, buttons, water and other entities from a Half-Life deathmatch game.
It does not modify the map files so items are not removed permanently.
There's nothing new in the latest release of Stripper for Windows so you don't
need to download this release if you already have a previous release.
I've changed my e-mail address from botman@mailandnews.com
to botman@planethalflife.com (since I was having problems with my old e-mail
account). I will terminate the botman@mailandnews.com e-mail account in a few
days so you won't be able to reach me there anymore. Perhaps I will stop
getting e-mail that says...
Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice
See you later. Thanks
I've renamed the BotMaster5000 project to
BotMixer5000. There was already a
Bot-Master 2000 project for
Counter-Strike bots and I didn't want people getting confused by the
similar names (also I didn't want people complaining that I stole someone
else's project name). The new release of the BotMixer5000 supports the following
MODS...
If you already have BotMaster5000 installed, you will HAVE to run the
BotMaster5000 Remove batch file for the MOD before you run the Install
batch file for BotMixer5000.
I've updated my newest project, the
BotMaster5000. The BotMaster5000 is
an Add-On DLL for Half-Life MODs that will allow you to add multiple
bots to the same game at the same time. The latest version (Release 2.0)
fixes several bugs that caused some bot Add-Ons to crash. The
RealBot now works
properly with the BotMaster5000 without crashing (thanks to Stefan lending
me a copy of his RealBot source code). This was not a bug in Stefan's code
but was a bug in the way the BotMaster5000 was switching between bot MODs.
I've also created a Linux version of the BotMaster5000 for those of you that
want to run multiple types of bots on your Linux servers.
I've added a new project to my Projects section on
the left. The new project is called the BotMaster5000.
The BotMaster5000 is an Add-On DLL for Half-Life MODs that will allow you to add
multiple bots to the same game at the same time. It currently supports the
same MODs that the HPB bot supports (Half-Life deathmatch, Team Fortress Classic,
Frontline Force, Opposing Force, Holy Wars, Counter-Strike and Deathmatch Classic).
This project is still in the prototype stage so download it at your own risk!
I figured I'd better update my webpage before everyone
starts e-mailing me and asking me if I'm dead. No, I'm not dead,
I'm just resting and pining for the fiords. I've been working on
a separate project over the last few weeks but haven't got enough working
yet to announce what it is. If I can get things working, I'll post
some news here about what it is. Stay tuned...
I downloaded The Opera
on Monday and started taking a look at it. Several people have asked me
if I was going to add support for The Opera to the HPB bot. I was thinking
about doing that, but everytime I try to play the game it crashes (with a different
error each time). This makes it VERY difficult to develop a bot for the MOD.
I never know whether the MOD is crashing because of problems with the MOD code or
because of problems with the bot code. I will put off adding bot support to
The Opera until most of the bugs have been fixed. I'll post some news here
when (if) I do start adding The Opera support to the HPB bot.
I've released Version 1.6a of the HPB bot.
The only changes from the 1.6 release were some bug fixes for TFC. If you
don't use the HPB bot for TFC, there's no reason to download the 1.6a release.
Here's the list of changes...
Fileplanet.com is REALLLLLLY SLOOOOOW today (it must be that Anachronox demo) so
don't be surprised if it takes you a while to download the bot.
I've been working on a few bugs in the HPB bot 1.6
Release. I've fixed the problem where the medic in TFC won't attack enemies.
I've also tweaked the sniper position adjustment code so that they will aim in
the proper direction as soon as they get close enough to the sniper position.
I'll work on fixing a few of the problems with the engineer bots in TFC getting
"stuck" trying to upgrade or repair other player's sentry guns. I'm planning
on making a bug fix release this coming weekend. If you don't use the HPB bot
for TFC, there won't be any need to download the update since there won't be
any other new features.
I've released Version 1.6 of the HPB bot.
Here's a list of the bug fixes and enhancements...
Whew! That's a lot of new stuff! :) I recently got a new Dell PC
(1.3 Ghz Pentium 4 with GeForce 2 MX video card) and got such a HUGE increase
in framerate from my old PC (300 Mhz Pentium II with Voodoo card) that the HPB
bot was seriously whippin' this llamas ass! I quickly decided I needed to add
the "bot_reaction_time" setting to be able to stand a chance against them.
Before I got my new PC, I didn't realize that the bot's reaction time was as
big as a problem as it was. Things are MUCH better now. You should at
least be able to get off a shot or two before the bots kill you now! :)
I've been working on stuff for the next release of the
HPB bot. Most of the changes are for deathmatch
(Half-Life, OpFor, DMC) but there are also changes to the bot chat messages
for all MODs. I'm also adding a "bot_reaction_time" setting that will add a
slight delay between the time the bots see you and the time they start firing
their weapon at you. This is to simulate the reaction time that human players
would have when spotting an opponent. The reaction time is configurable and
can be disabled if you want to go back to the old HPB bot playing style. The
next release should be out this coming weekend (end of June). If you like
playing Half-Life deathmatch, I think you will like some of the new features
in the upcoming HPB bot.
There were a couple of bugs in yesterday's release of the
HPB bot. Players (or bots) with long names can
cause the server to crash. Also bots wouldn't rejoin the game after a map change
occurred. Both of these bugs have been fixed and a Linux version of the HPB bot
that supports DMC is now available. Download Version 1.5a of the HPB bot for all
your DMC fragging pleasure.
I've released Version 1.5 of the HPB bot
for Windows (the Linux release will come out tomorrow due to some minor problems
with my Linux machine at home). Here's a list of the bug fixes and enhancements...
The bots don't really understand the teleporters in DMC yet. They just
randomly wander into them and get teleported elsewhere. They also don't
understand that buttons in DMC will open doors (again, they kind of randomly
wander into them while roaming around). The bots in DMC will go hunting
for better weapons right after they spawn and they know how to use all of
the weapons in the game (including the dreaded crowbar, which does some
massive amount of damage). I've created waypoint files for all of the DMC
maps and even added a waypoint file for a new map created by Ingenuity that
you can download
here.
I downloaded Half-Life Deatchmatch Classic and plan
on modifying the HPB bot to support DMC. Since
DMC only supports deathmatch it should be fairly simple to add DMC support to
the HPB bot. I will need to modify the HPB bot to keep the bots from falling
into the lava (which they don't do right now) and add support for teleporters (which
they don't know anything about right now), but these features probably won't be in
the initial release of the HPB bot that supports DMC. I'm trying to get a new
release of the HPB bot out late this weekend or early next week (with preliminary
support for DMC).
There was a bug in Version 1.4 of the HPB bot
where TFC bots would try to "taunt" sentry guns after killing them. This caused
the game to crash. I have fixed this bug and released Version 1.4a of the HPB bot.
If you are having problems with Version 1.4 crashing (or if you use the HPB bot in
TFC) then you should download the new version and use it instead.
I've released Version 1.4 of the HPB bot
. Here's a list of the bug fixes and enhancements...
The "bot_whine.txt" file has been replaced by the "bot_chat.txt" file. You can
delete the "bot_whine.txt" file from your MOD directories after installing the
new version of the HPB bot. Included are the waypoint files for all of the
maps that come with Holy Wars
and I've updated the waypoint files for the TFC maps CASBAH and BADLANDS to
include sentry gun waypoints.
It's been a while since I've posted any news so I
thought I'd put something here so you'd know I'm still alive. The
Front Line Force 1.3 release seems to
work fine with the HPB bot 1.3 release (there
were no new entities in the FLF 1.3 release so no HPB bot update is required).
I've been working on a few minor things on the HPB bot over the last few
weeks. I've modified the waypoint editing so that when you add a waypoint,
the tags for Health, Armor, Ammo, and Weapons are only added for the nearest
item (not all items within the search radius). This allows you to specifically
mark each item with it's own waypoint and gives better control when the bot is
searching for items. Also there was a bug where waypoint tags would get added
for items that were on the other side of a wall (now the item must be visible
from the waypoint location before a waypoint tag will be added). I've added
support for the green backpacks in TFC so that adding a waypoint near a backpack
will detect whether the backpack contains Health, Armor, or Ammo. I've
modified the waypoint files for the BADLANDS and CASBAH maps in TFC to add
sentry gun waypoints (now that the engineer bots know how to get metal from
the green backpacks they build and upgrade sentry guns more often). All of
these changes plus a few more will be available in the next release of the HPB bot
(which I hope to make sometime this coming Sunday on May 20th.
I've created waypoint files for the rest of the
Holy Wars maps. These will
work with the HPB bot 1.3 release. Just download them and extract them into
your Half-Life directory (where hl.exe is located). The bots don't handle
the jump pad too well yet, but at least now they know how to quickly get to
the halo when it spawns and how to quickly get to the weapons. You can
download the HPB bot Holy Wars waypoints from
here.
I've released Version 1.3 of the HPB bot
. Here's a list of the bug fixes and enhancements...
There's a waypoint file included for Holy Wars
(hw_gluttony.wpt) where the bots can now jump to reach the halo (Holy Jumpin' Bots, Botman!).
If you are creating your own waypoint files for Holy Wars, you'll have to bind
keys to "menuselect 1", "menuselect 2", "menuselect 3", "menuselect 4", and
"menuselect 5" since the Holy Wars client doesn't handle the old style text
menus the same way other MODs do (Bad Nusco! Bad Nusco!). I haven't had
a chance to update the HPB_bot_waypoint.txt file yet with details on the JUMP
waypoint, so if you want more details just send me an e-mail. I'll be adding
other waypoint files for Holy Wars with the next release of the HPB bot.
The HPB bot 1.2 release seems to
work fine with Front Line Force version 1.2a except there are 3 new entities
that the current HPB bot won't support:
I'm not sure which maps include these entities, but until I can update the HPB bot and
make a new release, you may have problems with some maps if you are using the HPB bot.
I get e-mail all the time from people asking for information
about me so I figured I add some information to my web site about me. There's a
new section on the left called "About me" so you can find out more about who I am and
where my bots came from.
I've released Version 1.2 of the HPB bot.
I managed to get the bots to understand the halo in Holy Wars
and I added a few things to TFC and Front Line Force. Here's a list of the changes...
The bots are LOTS of fun in Holy Wars. They don't know how to jump to
reach the halo in one or two of the maps, but they do look for it and chase
after it, if the saint gets killed. The bots now use all the weapons in
Holy Wars and can be pretty tough to play against especially if you have 8
or 10 of them all whailing on you at once. If you haven't tried out the
Holy Wars MOD, you should definitely give it a try for some fun and unique
gameplay.
Hot on the heels of the HPB bot
Version 1.1 is another release that has Beta support for the
Holy Wars MOD! This
is Version 1.1a and is only a Win32 release at the moment. The bots don't
understand the rules of the game yet (they think it's deathmatch and don't know
anything about the halo), but I'll be working on getting them to understand the
game rules for the next official release. The bots don't use the jackhammer
since I'm having a little bit of trouble getting them to aim it correctly, but
they do use the other four weapons. The major purpose for this release is just
to give you something to run around and shoot at and become more familiar with
the weapons and map layouts. I'm already aware of the fact that the bots sometimes
get "stuck" standing next to each other in HolyWars. Like I said, this is a BETA
release and isn't anywhere near perfect. It will get better. I've also noticed
what I think is a bug in HolyWars where the players sometimes stop doing damage
to each other (you shoot and shoot and shoot and nobody gets hurt). I don't think
this is a bot thing, but I've only see it one time during the few hours that I was
playing the game.
I've released Version 1.1 of the HPB bot
. I fixed the problem with the HPB bots running too fast in Counter-Strike 1.1
and finally added in the bot custom spray logo support. Here's a list of
the additions:
I have confirmed that the HPB bot does indeed run too
fast in the latest Counter-Strike release (version 1.1). I will fix this bug in
the next release of the HPB bot, which should be coming out sometime this Sunday
evening. The next release of the HPB bot will also include the long awaited
bot custom spray logos. There will be one or two other minor enhancements
specific to TFC (marking waypoints as ARMOR and AMMO).
I've released Version 1.0 of the HPB bot
. This is no longer a Beta release since I feel that I've managed to get
most of the features working as well as I wanted to and since most of the bugs
have been shaken out. Here's a list of the features in Version 1.0:
The old waypoints for FLF 1.1 should work with this version of the HPB bot.
The only 2 waypoint files that changed for TFC was 2fort.wpt and crossover2.wpt
to add support for sentry guns and dispensers. See the HPB_bot_waypoint.txt file
in the HPB_bot directory for reasons why sentry guns and dispensers aren't in
the other TFC waypoint files.
I've released a new version of my
HPB bot template source code (release #3). I think I've gotten
all the bugs out this time and have included a very detailed
ReadMe.txt
file that explains how to modify the HPB bot source code to get it working
in other MODs.
I've fixed the problem in the Beta 4.2 release
of the HPB bot where teammates would attack
anyone yelling for a medic. Release 4.2a is the corrected version
and is now available for download.
I've released Beta 4.2 of the HPB bot
. I've had a real nasty flu bug for the last 3 days so I didn't get
any bot coding done this weekend like I wanted to. I decided to go
ahead and release what I've got done so far just to give people something
to play with. I'll continue working on the other features I wanted
to add later this week and will probably release the next version in
another week or two. . This version includes the following...
See the "changes.txt" file included in the HPB bot download for more bug fixes
and enhancements.
I've received a couple of e-mails from people
asking when the next release of the HPB bot will be coming out. I'm working
on trying to fix some bugs that affect dedicated servers and a few other
minor bugs. I'm hoping to get the following features added to the
HPB bot for the next release...
The next release probably won't be out for another 2 or 3 weeks. I really
needed to take a little break from bot coding over the Christmas holidays.
Sometimes I get REALLY tired of working on the bot stuff month after month
after month and occasionally just need to take a little break. Now that
I've "got my mind right", I'll be able to get back to some more bot coding
and hopefully get something out before the end of this month.
I've updated my "Building the SDK" web page
to include support for the free
Borland C++ compiler. You can find out the details, and download
the necessary changes, to get the Full or Standard SDK 2.0 source files
to build using Borland's compiler by clicking here.
I haven't posted any news in a while because I
haven't been doing any bot related coding for a week or so. I have been
working on getting the Half-Life SDK (Full and Standard version) to
compile using
Borland's free C++ compiler (command line version 5.5).
When I have everything working with it, I'll add a web page showing
how to build the SDK using Borland's compiler. You still can't build
the client DLL file because of the VGUI library built using Microsoft
Visual C++, but at least people will be able to build the Full SDK
for single player MODs without having to buy the Microsoft compiler.
Also the Borland compiler is MUCH quicker than MingW32 so you can
rebuild the mp.dll file much faster than before.
I've released Beta 4.1a of the HPB bot
. There's a bug in Front Line Force version 1.1 where the capture
points are the wrong color for the first round after a map loads (they're
RED before they are captured, but they should be BLUE). I've added
a workaround to the HPB bot to handle this FLF 1.1 bug. This is the
only change from HPB bot Beta 4.1, so if you don't play Front Line Force
with the HPB bot, you won't need to download this bug fix release.
I've released Beta 4.1 of the HPB bot
. I fixed the problem with the Front Line Force Linux server where
bots would attack their teammates (sometimes the bot thought it was playing
deathmatch instead of teamplay). I also added a new waypoint file for
Front Line Force (for the map FLF_JOB). Here's a list of the changes...
I've released Beta 4.0 of the HPB bot
. I've added support for
Front Line Force! There are 2 waypoint files included for FLF
(flf_lombardi.wpt and flf_village.wpt).
I've released Beta 3.1 of the HPB bot
. This is only a bug fix release and doesn't contain any new features.
I fixed some bugs with the map specific bot.cfg files. There was a problem
before where bots would be respawned from the previous map AND bots would be
added based on the map specific bot.cfg file settings. Now only the map
specific bot.cfg file commands will be used (if a map specific bot.cfg file
exists). See the HPB_bot_ReadMe.txt file in the Half-Life\HPB_bot folder
for more details on map specific bot.cfg files. I also fixed a bug where
the "botskill" setting could be set to invalid values in the bot.cfg file.
I added the HPB bot version number to the welcome message so that
you can tell which version of the HPB bot you are running.
I've released Beta 3.0 of the HPB bot
. Here's a list of the changes...
(OpFor requires mp_teamlist to be "hgrunt;scientist" on my machine)
I've released Beta 2.1 of the HPB bot
. I fixed the problem where bots would just jump and spin on machines
with high frame rates. If you already have Beta 2.0, you don't need to
download this version unless you are running a dedicated server or have a
graphics card that gives you more than 50 frames per second.
I've released Beta 2.0 of the HPB bot
. Here's a list of what's been added...
There are waypoint files included for: OP4CTF_CRASH, 2FORT, BADLANDS,
CASBAH, CROSSOVER2, EPICENTER, HUNTED, PUSH, ROCK2 and SNIPRWAR.
I figured I'd update the web page to let you
know what I'm working on. Here's a list of features that will be
available in the next release of the HPB bot...
The next release will probably be available sometime this coming
weekend.
I've added a few more things to the
HPB bot. They now know how many teams are
valid when a map is loaded and will randomly choose from the available
teams. They know which classes are valid for each team and will only
select a valid class (no more manual adding for sniper maps). I modified
the waypoint path code so that it will save the calculated path information to
a file and load that file instead of recalculating it the next time that map
is loaded. If the waypoint file (*.wpt) is more recent than the waypoint
path files (*.wp1, *.wp2), then the waypoint path files will be
recalculated. Also there is now a "bot_whine.txt" file which contains
phrases the bots will say when they get killed. They don't SPAM the
console with messages so it doesn't happen so frequently that it is a
nuisance. If you don't want any phrases to appear, just delete the
"bot_whine.txt" file in the MOD directory. You can add your own phrases
if you'd like. Each phrase must be on a separate line and must be less
than 80 characters long. You can use "%n" in the phrase to substitute
the killer's name. I haven't fixed the problem with the "map" command
causing a crash yet, so use it at your own risk.
I've been working on cleaning up a few minor
problems with the HPB bot. The following items will be available in the
next release (which should be available for download in a few days)...
I've fixed a few bugs in the latest release of the
HPB bot. There was a problem where bots aiming
at certain angles wouldn't hit their targets. I also modified things so that
bots carrying the flag won't engage in combat and will head straight for the
capture point instead (this means that any other bots or players that gets
in its way will just whail on it and the bot won't fight back since it's
difficult to have things both ways). I also fixed a bug where bots would
target their teammates if the teammate was carrying the keycard. They don't
do that anymore. I modified the sniper waypoints so that bots now know which
direction they are supposed to be facing when they reach a sniper waypoint.
It doesn't always work 100% of the time, but they do seem to face the correct
direction most of the time now. I haven't fixed the problem with the "map"
command causing a crash yet, so use it at your own risk.
I found a bit of a problem in the HPB bot Beta 1.0
release last night. If you use the "map" command to manually change maps in
TFC, sometimes the game will crash! I also found if you manually kick a bot
from the server, then later try to add the bot back, it will not join the game
properly and is left in Observer mode. I believe this has something to do
with the changes I made to keep Counter-Strike from crashing at the end of
a round if a bot is kicked during the round. I'll have to go back and
double check things to figure out what I broke in TFC. If the time limit
is reached and a map change occurs, that seems to work fine. It's just
a manual map change that causes the crash. I haven't had time to check if
this bug effects Half-Life, OpFor or CS yet. For now, just don't use the
"map" command and don't kick bots if you plan on adding them back again
later.
I've just released the first Beta version of the
HPB bot (Beta 1.0). The bots now know how to
get to the flag and return it to the capture point. There are 3 waypoint
files included with the HPB bot for TFC (2FORT, BADLANDS and PUSH). The
bots do pretty well in PUSH (you should definitely try that map out) but
they tend to jump in the water a lot in 2FORT (they NEVER want to run from
a fight). They know how to navigate in water now and will find their way
out of the water when they do fall into it. The bots currently don't try
to "load up" on ammo or health, but I plan to modify things in the next
release so that they will search out health or ammo when they are low on
these items.
Well there won't be a release of the HPB bot
tonight. I've just found a major bug in the path finding code where the
path information is getting wiped out. At that point the bots just run
back and forth between 2 waypoints. I suspect there's a pointer to memory
that's getting screwed up causing the path information to get trashed.
I'll continue working on trying to fix this problem and hopefully release
the HPB bot in the next few days, but if it's a really sticky problem I
might not have a release available until next weekend.
I've fixed the bug I had with the path finding
code for team specific waypoints. It's really cool watching the little
buggers spawn and then head straight for the flag taking the shortest
route to get there. Now they know how to get to the flag and return
it to the capture point. I still need to add code to get them to recognize
flags that have been dropped and pick them up when they see them. They
have to know whether someone is currently carrying the flag and whether
or not the flag is for their team or the other team (the flags don't
appear in color to the bots, since the bots are color blind). Everything
looks like it will be ready for a release this weekend so check this site
on Sunday evening to see if I've put up a new version of the
HPB bot.
I've made some progress on the changes for the
next release of the HPB bot. I've got the sniper waypoints working and
waypoints for short pauses (for doors in CS). I've got the underwater
navigation working better now. The bots TRY to use ladders to go down
(they just aren't always able to grab the ladder if they fall). I've got
the path finding code complete and it works fine for normal waypoints but
I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to handle team specific waypoints
(where you've got a waypoint that one team can get to but the other team
can't). I hope to have this sorted out in the next few days. The only
other thing that I wanted to add is putting in a text file of phrases that
the bots can say every once in a while when they get killed. If things
get fixed before this weekend I'll make another release on Sunday night,
it not, it'll probably be next week (or later) before another release is
available.
I've continued making changes to the waypoint code
on the HPB bot. I'm still having problems getting the bots to follow waypoints
up and down ladders correctly. Going down ladders is tricky enough for human
players. Trying to get bots to line up with the ladder and use it to go down
reliably is a little more tricky than I had thought. Once the ladder stuff
is working I'll begin writing the path finding code. Once that is complete
I'll release another version of the HPB bot. There won't be any new weapons
or any additional skills (other than knowing how to get to flags, hostages,
rescue zones, health, ammo, etc.) in the next release. It will probably be
another week or two before the next release is available for download.
I've been reworking the waypoint code for the
HPB bot. There will no longer be a separate set of waypoints for each team.
There will only be one set of waypoints per map. There will be a way to
mark a waypoint as being specific to one team or another. I've just finished
changing the underwater waypoint code so bots will know how to roam around
underwater now. Next I'll be working on getting them to use ladders to go
down (instead of always going up). After that I'll finally get around to
writing the path finding algorithm so bots will know the quickest way to
get from one place on a map to any other (as long as waypoints are available).
The next release should be available after a few more weeks.
There was a bug in the LINUX version of the HPB
bot where it wouldn't load the waypoint files correctly. I didn't
catch all the places where '\' was used in the file pathnames (MS-DOS uses
'\' and LINUX uses '/'). I've corrected this problem for waypoint
files and custom player model files (in Half-Life and OpFor). Only
the LINUX version was effected. I've also put up the corrected source
code in case anyone wants to take a look.
I've updated the HPB
bot to make it compatible with Counter-Strike Beta 7.0 (it will still
work with CS 6.5 or 6.6). I've added the ability to spawn a bot in
TFC using the "civilian" class so now maps like "pull" will work properly.
I also fixed (I think) a bug in TFC where the "random" player class would
just jump in place after respawning. I've reduced the amount of jumping
that the bots do when no waypoints are available. They jump when
they think they're stuck and can't move forward. Without waypoints
they tended to jump A LOT. Now they will jump once when blocked by
something and if they still aren't able to move forward, they will turn
and head off in another direction. They will still jump over railings
and boxes that are in their way (like in crossfire or stalkyard).
I've also got a LINUX release available now for those of you that run LINUX
dedicated servers and want to use my bots in TFC, CS, OpFor, or Half-Life
deathmatch. See the HPB bot page for
more details.
I've redesigned the website (if you can really
call it a redesign), to clean things up a bit. PLEASE don't e-mail
me and say "Dude!, your website design sucks!". I'm not trying to
make a really cool website with lots of neat graphics and sound and java
script and animation and blinking text. I just wanted to clean things
up to keep things from being so cluttered. My goal is to have a web
site that loads quickly, not have one with tons of cool graphics.
To me, performance is more important than good looks.
Okay, I've released another version of my HPB
bot. This version is somewhat unstable (seems fine in Half-Life and
Opposing Force, but TFC and Counter-Strike have problems). I didn't get
nearly as much done as I'd hoped to. The only real change in TFC is that
I added weapons support. Most of the changes are "behind the scenes" stuff.
Bots will automatically be spawned at the start of a game. You can set
a time limit or frag limit (on MODs that support them) and bots will respawn
in the next map. You can change maps using the console "map" command. You
can kick a bot off of the server using the console "kick" command. I fixed
a few bugs with the help of several people who e-mailed me stuff.
Well here's something I haven't seen before.
The author of the Rambot (Counter-Strike
bot), Paul George, sent me an e-mail stating that the webmaster of his
site has "hijacked" the web site and is preventing Paul from getting access
to it! I assume Paul will either have to work it out with the ISP that
hosts the site, or try to open a new site somewhere else. The web page
here
used to have Rambot stuff, but now is a broken link. I hope Paul is able
to straighten things out and continue working on the Rambot. I know that
everybody would like for these bot authors to have as little distractions
as possible so that they can continue working on the bot code and not fighting
with other people or ISPs.
I've been making quite a bit of progress in the
past week on the HPB bot. I've got them mostly complete for OpFor and Half-Life
deathmatch (based on the Bot Number 10 code). I've got them using most
of the weapons in TFC now. I'll be adding some weapon support for Counter-Strike
over the next few days. I'll probably be releasing another version this
coming weekend (notice the word PROBABLY).
The new version of the HPB bot will allow you to specify the bot's name
and model (if the MOD supports custom models). It will also allow you to
automatically spawn bots using the same bot.cfg used in my Half-Life deathmatch
bots. The new version of the HPB bot will allow you to specify a time limit
or frag limit to automatically change maps and will allow you to use the
"map" command to manually change maps. The waypoint editor will remain
included in the next release which will allow you to create waypoints for
maps that don't have waypoints. I still need to work on creating some waypoint
files to include with the next release of the HPB bot. The waypoint file
format has changed from the previous version so any old waypoint files
that you have will not work. I had planned on creating a Linux version
of the HPB bot for Linux dedicated servers, but this may not get done by
the time I make my next release. If it's not done at the same time, I will
release a Linux version very shortly afterwards.
Okay, sorry for the ranting and raving in the
previous news item. I have been getting e-mail from some people who were
concerned that I didn't want ANYONE to use my source code. That's not what
I was complaining about. I have always encouraged people to download the
source code from my bots and use it in their MODs (exactly as it is or
modified to improve it). I REALLY DO want people to use my code to build
other bots from. I, like all of you, get tired of playing with the same
stuff over and over and over. Having a variety of bots to choose from makes
the game play all that much more fun. Everybody who creates a bot puts
in their own special stuff that other bots don't have and I don't want
someone to think that I will complain if they release a bot that started
from my source code (even if it's a TFC bot!). The complaint I had was
someone downloading my executable, changing the zip file name, modifying
the ReadMe.txt file, then uploading it to their web site and claiming that
they had created this bot.
I've just discovered a web site where someone
posted a version of MY bot and called it their own. I won't post the URL
of the web site since I don't want to give that person publicity. I have
asked this person to remove that bot and told them if they want to post
a link to my site that's fine. But I doubt that the bot will be removed.
The idiot didn't even have enough sense to change the readme.txt file contents
to remove my name. It's not a modified version of the code since the executables
are exactly the same size and have exactly the same timestamp. It's just
someone posting my work as their own and trying to get credit for it.
I've put a new version of my Half-Life deathmatch
bot up on my web site. No, it doesn't work
with TFC or CS or Firearms or any other Half-Life MOD.
The new version fixes a few bugs and adds better support for dedicated
servers. Now you can use the console command "map" followed by the map
name to switch maps and bots will be recreated when the new map loads.
You can check out Bot Number 10 here.
DaTa sent word that he's got a temporary web
site set up with a downloadable version of his Android Bot for Counter-Strike.
You can check it out here.
P.S.
I didn't write this bot code!!! Please don't e-mail me with problems or
complaints or praise for the Android Bot! Contact DaTa using the e-mail
address on his web site!
Good news everyone! Someone named DaTa sent me
some code last week to fix the problem where bots were not joining teams
properly in Counter-Strike. Thanks to DaTa, I am now able to spawn bots
in TFC and CS! DaTa's change was using ClientPutInServer() instead of DispatchSpawn()
after the ClientConnect() in the BotCreate() function. Also some stuff
had to be changed in the BotThink() function where the bot selects the
team and model it wants to use.
I've been putting off writing the path finding
code for the HPB bot because I have been trying to get the HPB bot to spawn
properly in Counter-Strike. I'm still having problems getting the stupid
bot be assigned to a team properly. There appear to be differences between
the way real clients connect to the server and the way the HPB bot is connecting
to the server. I suspect it's something in CS to try to prevent cheaters
from changing client properties without the server know it (TFC doesn't
have this problem). It's REALLY frustrating trying to get it to work. I've
learned about 1,000 different ways to crash the Half-Life engine. :) I
really wanted to get a simple CS bot going that would use the existing
waypoint code I had, but I'm not having any luck at all with this. I guess
I'll give up on the CS bot for a few weeks and get back to coding on the
TFC bot. Please don't e-mail me and say "Don't give up on the CS bots!!!".
I'm not giving up, I'm just putting them off for a little while. The code
I write for TFC would also be needed for CS, so I'm not "wasting my time"
doing TFC stuff. I think I've worked out the way I want to do the pathfinding
(which means the waypoint file format is going to change in the next release).
I don't know when the next release will be. It could be a few weeks, it
could be a month or more. I'll make updates here when anything changes.
I've released a test version of my HPB
bot for everyone to play around with. It doesn't know how to use weapons
yet. It doesn't know how to navigate in the level. It doesn't know any
of the rules of the game. All it does is run around and let you shoot at
it. The bots will respawn when killed and will follow waypoints (for maps
that have them). It may be several more weeks before I have anything more
to play around with, so download this version and, hopefully, it will keep
you occupied for a little while.
I've updated my Stripper
Add-On to work with Half-Life version 1.1.0.0 or higher.
MANY, MANY, MANY people keep e-mailing me and
asking how to download the HPB bot. You CAN'T because I don't have anything
ready to download yet. Also people keep asking "Can you please tell me
the release date of the bot? I gotta have it or I will die!". Well, I'm
sorry to hear that your life depends on downloading a bot, but I just don't
know at this point when the bot will be ready. I'm not going to promise
everyone that they will be ready by "such-and-such" a date, then not make
that release date and have everybody sending me e-mail whining about "Why
isn't the bot ready yet?". The bots will be done when they are done. I
will post news here when ANYTHING changes and I will send the various Half-Life
news sites (planethalflife.com, etc.) an e-mail stating that something
is available for download when there is actually something available to
download. Until then CHILL OUT! RELAX! Go
outside and play (or something).
I've updated my bot so that it will work with
the new version of Half-Life (version 1.1.0.0). You can now use custom
models for the bot. I've also tweaked the bot aiming code so that the bot
doesn't lurch about as much. I've added "taunt speaking effects" for the
barney and scientist models. Check out Bot Number
9 for the latest version of my bot.
I've continued working on creating bots for Team
Fortress Classic (TFC), Counter-Strike (CS) and other MODs. I have made
quite a bit of progress in the last few weeks. I put together some screen
shots of the bots in TFC. You can see them here.
The bots don't know how to roam around very well yet (waypoints are a MUST
for this). The bots don't know anything about the weapons (yet). Right
now they are mostly just target practice, but they still don't wander around
well enough to even be easy to find.
I will be updating my latest bot (Bot
Number 8) to work with the upcoming Half-Life Update (version 1.1.0.0)
shortly after Valve releases the patch to the general public. I have the
bot working with the new SDK 2.0 and will be making a few minor enhancements.
I've added the NetProbe
web page with information about a proxy network monitor for Half-Life that
I've created. NetProbe allows you to capture network packets being sent
back and forth between the client and the server. I will be adding a performance
section to this utility to aid MOD developers in reducing LAG in their
MODs. For now the only thing this utility does is capture packets in a
nice readable format (if you like reading hexidecimal numbers!) :)
I've been playing around with a method of loading
other MODs by creating a DLL file that can load a Half-Life MOD DLL file.
I've taken what I have done so far and made an Add-On (not a MOD) for Half-Life
(and a few MODs) that will allow you to strip out weapons, ammo, and other
items from maps while playing them. The stripping out of items does NOT
modify the map file in any way and is only temporary. Take a look at the
Stripper
Add-On for Half-Life if you are interested in this sort of thing.
Well, I hope everyone survived Y2K with little
or no problems. I have released another version of my bot. Bot
Number 8 which has an enhancement to the roaming code to detect doorways
and intersections in hallways. This helps to keep the bot from getting
stuck in rooms where it can't find the door. I've added a new console command,
"botcam", which will allow you to create a 3rd person point-of-view camera
behind any of the bots in the game. You can follow the bot around as it
battles against other bots or other players.
My web site has been added to the planethalflife.com
family! I'd like to thank the Gamespy Network for hosting this site and
hope everyone who visits this site will tell all of their friends about
it (as well as visit all of the other fine planethalflife.com web sites).
I've added 007 - Bot, James
Bot. The bot will now respawn after a round ends due to a frag limit
or time limit. The bots now run at the correct speed (thanks to TheFatal
and his Advanced Bot Framework). The bot now uses ladders more frequently.
When playing in teamplay mode, you can "use" a bot on your team to have
it follow you around and provide cover fire. Some minor bugs were also
fixed.
I've added Bot Number 6.
This bot has better roaming AI so it doesn't scrape against the walls.
Secondary fire was added to many of the weapons (thanks BigGuy!). The bot
knows how to use Snarks and Hand Grenades (thanks again BigGuy!). The bot
tries to keep from drowning when in water and tries to jump out of the
water when it sees an area where it can do so. The problem with the bots
running too fast has been fixed. Bots can automatically be spawned when
the player starts a game using a "bot.cfg" file. Team play is now supported
and bots won't shoot their teammates. Several minor bugs were also fixed.
I've added The Cinco Bot.
This bot knows how to use Health and HEV wall stations. The bot knows how
to jump onto or duck under things blocking its path. The bot knows how
to detonate armed tripmines and will avoid armed tripmines if the bot is
too close to shoot the tripmine without getting hurt. The bot knows how
to use lifts (elevators) and the bot knows which weapons work under water.
I finished modifications to the 4th bot available
on this web site. Since I couldn't think of any clever name for this bot
I just decided to call it "Bot Number 4". This
bot uses weapons more intelligently. You can specify the model, player
name, and skill level of the bot when they are created. Some player models
will occasionally speak back at you when you shoot at them.
I've been spending several days trying to build
the Valve SDK without using Microsoft Visual C++ with MUCH success! I downloaded
the MingW32 C++ compiler and was able to modify the SDK files to compile
without errors (although you get LOTS of warnings about float to int conversions).
I was finally able to build the DLL without the engine refusing to load
it or crashing after loading it. The performance of the compiled MingW32
code is not as good as that produced by the Microsoft compiler, but the
MingW32 compiler is FREE and worth EVERY PENNY! Check out Building
the DLL without Microsoft Visual C++ for details.
I've added The PGBot
(see below). The PGBot now will only see things (enemies, weapons, ammo,
etc.) that are in its field of view. The PGBot knows how to navigate ladders
and will pick up any items that it sees (that it needs and that it can
get to). The PGBot will also pause briefly as it is running around to give
you a chance to use the zoomed in crossbow or 357 (but you gotta be quick).
I also shuffled some things around on the web site to make things a little
less cluttered.
I created this web site and put up The
Fodder Bot and The Gump Bot. Both of these
bots are very simplistic in their behavior. Over the next few months, I
will provide more sophisticated bots as well as providing documentation
on the objects, methods (functions) and attributes (variables) that are
in the Half-Life SDK. My intent is not to make "the best bot". I don't
feel that you can make one bot that everyone thinks is the best. Some people
like bots that are very difficult to play against and others like bots
that are easy to slaughter.