Bots, the pros and cons, what are they for you?

[Lightning Hunter]

[qbism]

[daemonicky]

[leileilol]

bots are great, because they let you have a chance on playing any deathmatch that isn't dm3

[FrikaC]

Well since you resurrected this thread I'd like to respond to what Lightning Hunter said, since it bothered me a bit: I'm sorry you regret making the waypoints It really made my week when you released those.

FrikBot doesn't just fight to the death no matter the weapon, there's some more subtle stuff going on. If they think they're going to lose the fight they will resume their normal navigation behavior, the idea being they should be led out of the area of the fight (they don't explicitly flee, because computing a new path would take time). But at any rate, I had always intended for FrikBot to be a platform for modders to make bots that play their games, as such I didn't go deep into the gameplay specific behaviors in case they became irrelevant or conflicting with other mod's gameplay, rather I went after the things that would be needed for a bot library: physics emulation, pluginability and navigation.

Everyone complains about FrikBot being too accurate with the shotgun. Apart from Skill 3 which is intended to be silly and aimbotish (for the people that, for some reason, liked "super difficult" Cronos Bot), I don't really agree. Yes they get lucky with the shotgun from time to time (particularly on skill 2), but then so do real players. Real players don't really try to duke it out with the shotgun, ever, and that is maybe the disconnect. On skills 0 and 1 they are rubbish at aiming.

[Lightning Hunter]

Sorry it took so long to notice your post, FrikaC. I was partially joking when I talked about being able to go back and replace the time spent creating waypoints with something else. I had a lot of fun creating the waypoints, so don't get me wrong. I was only disappointed, because nobody commented on version 2 of the waypoint pack I created (the thread has 0 responses on this forum, and just a few over at Quakeone). I think the only person that took any notice or interest was Monster. This made me feel that nobody cared, which was a shame after all the work I put into the pack.

You really did create the best bot for Quake, so you have nothing to be ashamed of. I just wish someone would take the game play even further with the Frikbots. With some small improvements, I think the Firkbots could even beat the Unreal Tournament bots - which I still feel are the best ever created. I guess after observing the Frikbots in spectator mode in 500 maps, I started to see their flaws in the game play department. They are still better than all the other Quake bots, and I consider them to be the second best bots after the UT bots. I just think they could have been #1 with some fixes and tweaks!

Oh, and about the shotgun accuracy, I think the issue is with the skill level balance in general. For me, skill 2 is just too easy. That only leaves skill 3 for a challenge. However, skill 3 is not very fun when the bots get most of their kills with the shotgun. In fact, I'd rather face a skill 3 bot wielding any weapon but the shotgun, minus the thunderbolt gun. They can kill you in a matter of seconds with the shotgun. At least when they have an RL, you get a chance to avoid the rockets.