Bots For ETQW's Confirmed By PC Gamer

#21

Bots can’t ruin the game since they’ve been made basing on the game, not otherwise.

I wonder if that guy who made FritzBot is the one behind this… Heard it’d be him but I can’t be sure. At least he did some great work with FritzBot. The only problem concerning them is their low battle sense (no, not because of me) :smiley: I wonder if we can expect something new instead of “just” good bots? It’d be great if the bots understood basic objectives without scripting and stuff, also moving w/o waypoints would be great.

Surely bots can’t replace humans but this could be just fine when there are no humans. I look forward to testing the bots.

(McAfee) #22

I think bots are intended for support, not to win the match. Maybe bots can’t win a match on their own? Maybe bots are not available for all classes?

I think a medic bot is easy:
go to the general direction where everyone is
give priority to the fallen ones
if someone calls you (and actually needs health), he’s next
if you see someone low on health, then heal
otherwise be a rambo medic :smiley:

That’s actually better routine than what I’ve seen out there.

(kamikazee) #23

That is the reasoning logic, yeah. But you forget two trivial things there: navigating and dodging enemy fire. Whilst these are quite easy for a human, it takes quite some processing power for a bot to be aware of his surroundings.

#24

And being under fire, how’s the bot supposed to know what to do? Would it be a better idea to try to deal with the enemies first? Or would reviving teammates be better, providing support? Maybe the revivable guy isn’t the best possible fighter and would get killed again.

(BR1GAND) #25

same here, used to hate them in Q3! on the occasional times I’ve run into an ET server with bots I’ve left pretty sharply - negates the whole point of an online game imo.[/quote]

If you take a few seconds and notice a server full of players with 0 pings maybe your “whole reason for playing” wont be destroyed so easily.

Just because playing against real ppl is the main reason to play mp doesn’t mean that using bots online - negates anything.

Also It makes sense to populate a server with a minimal number of bots to begin with and set it so as real ppl join the bots leave. A server full of 20+ bots is not a good thing and would prob put a real strain on the server and make the game unplayable.

Congrats to Maleficus, on his work for Id Software/Splash Damage in helping to bring a much needed feature to a kick ass game!

(escapedturkey) #26

Aslong as bots leave when real players come in, they can get a server populated fairly quickly. Most players will not join an empty server, but will if they can practice with bots until real people join. Something to consider.

(Dima) #27

Has anyone scans of whole PCG interview?
Thanks for advance.

(Janolsen86) #28

Yes, bots!!! Great news! I wonder if they did like Battlefield 2… In Battlefield you can only play on limited maps with 16 bots… thats poor! Bot the AI is ok!

(grizzlybear) #29

get xfire
a ping of 0 means its either a bot or spectator
usually the bots mingle with ppl due to xp so you can see if the server has kicked the bots because it is busy enough
:slight_smile:

(Zarkow) #30

How can it not be fun to be 5 players against 30 bots, and you try to stop the massive waves while capturing controlpoints? =)
I’m talking about BF42/mods here now. And there wasn’t a problem searching out/filtering out bot-servers, since they where market as ‘coop’.

And bots have saved mod-developers countless of hours testing weapons…

(TinMan) #31

The new information about bots in the latest interviews seems pretty good and sounds like they’ll play well.
What confuses me is the bit about bots TKing during warmup and taunting and whatnot. I mean, what is the point of having bots emulate ‘out of role’ human behaviour. Why develop behaviour that breaks the suspension of disbelief as far as the experience that SD is trying to present? Especially for something like AI which is usually designed to do the opposite - reinforcing the game fiction by acting like they are actually inhabiting the game world.

To clarify: While how bots play and what they do is the most important thing to get right, how they ‘act’ is important too.

(urwathrtz365) #32

It will be great to have bots with some intelligence, the bots in some games I’ve played are dumber than a bag of hammers. “Where are you going the bad guys are over here!”

(ps1ho) #33

Personaly, i would love if bot can tell me, over teamspeak, NOOB! Now thet would bi fakin’ über :evil:

(BR1GAND) #34

I think the bots should go AFK or TK a lot, spam vsays, run over friendly mines, and if in a medic class immediately go to the enemy spawn and SK over and over refusing to heal or revive other team-mates.

Yeah that would be cool! :blah:

(madness) #35

i hate realism in games :expressionless:

(Lanz) #36

No bot in the forseable future will ever be smarter than a can of beens. Sure they can try to simulate som form of intelligence but they will still act stupid most of the time.

(organon) #37

The less options are available, and the better the goals and roles are defined, the better AI can be implemented.
The objectives and classes in QW seem to be pretty streamlined an well defined. So as long as the bots follow the objectives that are suggested to the players anyway, they are always in some area where they can contribute.
The objectives pretty much assure that they always try to do the right thing strategically.
In reflexes and aiming and awareness of the surrounding they are better than humans anyway, that’s trivial to implement, and actually has to be toned down with likelyhoods.
And the classes make it easier for them to make proper tactical decisions as each has it’s role. Even estimating lines of fire and taking cover is pretty straightforward, as this is done by the engine all the time anyway.
So the most blaring flaws AI usually shows I’m pretty confident they are dealt with properly.
Creative problem solving and coming up with new tactics … that is something hard to do, since all that can be done is implement things that people have been coming up with during game testing. And doing it independently of maps is even harder.

(Janolsen86) #38

Bots are great news!! The bots in Battlefield series suck, no doubt about that, but if they make bots like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament series have this would be great!! :slight_smile:

(ayatollah) #39

If they made bots like Quake 3 and Unreal tournament they would “suck”. You have to remember this is not just a deathmatch, the AI must do a hell of a lot more than just frag, the objectives make this game probably one of the hardest game to program bots for, ever. So settling for Q3 or UT bots will not suffice, as that level of AI would be useless and there would be no point in implementing the bots at all.

(Janolsen86) #40

If they made bots like Quake 3 and Unreal tournament they would “suck”. You have to remember this is not just a deathmatch, the AI must do a hell of a lot more than just frag, the objectives make this game probably one of the hardest game to program bots for, ever. So settling for Q3 or UT bots will not suffice, as that level of AI would be useless and there would be no point in implementing the bots at all.[/quote]

Well, in the interviews i read that they are trying to make the bots play just like real humans… i know thats impossible, but its possible to make them great. If they delay the game until 2008 because they want good bots, then i can live with that!