Frikbot Item desirability

[Dr. Shadowborg]

Got it, integrated it into what I'm working with right now.

Status update:

Currently reading frik_obstacles right now. Brilliant! Madness! Insanity! Madness Wrapped with Insanity on a bun of Brilliance! Topped with more madness!

I haven't found what's going wrong just yet, but I can almost certainly say that AI_BLIND for anything other than tricky jumps is a big no-no though. Still working on it. May also lead to (but unrelated to) fixing the "fall off ledge, get stuck trying to get back up directly, when it's supposed to find a route back up instead" bug.

As a side note, I've found what I believe to be a bug in regards to AI_BLIND, but it may only be pertinent to teamplay / coop.

Now, I just hope they don't haul me off to the asylum, or invisible demons come to tear me apart or something.

[Lightning Hunter]

I certainly admire your patience for looking through that code. I have never been much of a coder, so I can barely make sense of any of the Frikbot code, much less rewrite it. It took me several days just to change the item desirability code.

Edit: Btw, I'm guessing the AI_Blind code you refer to has nothing to do with the blind flag? The blind flag is used by about 25-30% of the waypoints in my pack, so it's an important flag to keep. It prevents the bots from jumping over cracks on the floor or down steps when they should just be walking. I use the flag for all sorts of situations.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Lightning Hunter]

Seriously, even I know what that code does by eyeballing it, and I'm a noob coder! Why didn't anyone notice it?

Anyway, I just now monitored the bots in Coagula2 for a while, and they did indeed fall significantly less. In fact, all the bots had positive scores, rather than -20 after 5 minutes. The bots could actually beat a player on skill 3 in Coagula2 now. I noticed the bots shoot down at other bots/players now, rather than charging off a cliff to attack.

The primary reason they die now is if they get pushed off a ledge, and try to get back up to the waypoint they were previously at. I'm guessing the issue with the bots trying to walk back up a cliff is mostly solved by them not jumping off the cliff in the first place, however.

I will continue to monitor the bots and see how this affects their behavior. My only complaint is that the bots kind of stand in place when they shoot at other players from the top of a cliff. It would be nice if they jumped or moved around a bit, but this might complicate things and cause them to suicide. I prefer the bots suicide less. The dodge code might be best left untouched for this reason.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Lightning Hunter]

I couldn't remember which maps had this bug, so I modified Ztnbase to have 4 grenade launchers around a button opening a door to red armor. I removed all other important items, so the bots always go straight for the armor. I can confirm with the old code that the bots almost always shoot at the button with the grenade launcher. The new code does indeed prevent this, but it also seems to prevent the bots from ever switching to the grenade launcher again. They might use grenades for a second after they initially pick it up to attack another bot, but don't ever use it once they switch to a new weapon.

If you need to test this for yourself, I uploaded the test version of Ztnbase.bsp here, along with the waypoints:
http://fbe.am/u1n

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Lightning Hunter]

That's much better. Thanks again for doing these updates. Did you manage to figure out how to set a distance limit on the grenade launcher, so the bots don't try to shoot another player/bot that is out of range?

Also, there are a few other problems that I forgot to mention in my earlier list:

-This may already be fixed, but the bots sometimes shoot secret doors with the Rocket Launcher, hurting themselves in the process.

-Precise mode sometimes stays on for bots, even after they have finished passing through the waypoints with the precise flag turned on. They also sometimes ignore the flag altogether and run through a waypoint with precise at full speed... No idea why this happens. I'm not sure if you can fix this or not, but it is hilarious watching the bot sometimes walk around in slow motion because they failed to turn off precision mode.

-Teleporters are sometimes buggy with bots, but I'm not sure if this would be impossible to fix or not (I would put this last on your list of priorities). Sometimes, bots will enter a teleporter, and somehow be on the wrong path and go back toward a waypoint they can't reach. It's hard to explain exactly what is happening, but they just don't seem to always register that they passed through a teleporter. This can be helped somewhat with the precision flag, but not always. There is a map I just waypointed recently that had a troublesome teleporter. The bots would pass through the teleporter, then run toward a waypoint on the other side of the map - colliding in to random walls along the way. I can upload that map if you want to look at this issue.

[gnounc]

awesome work gentlemen. i'm watching this thread with interest.

The teleporter code sounds like an interesting problem to solve. how do you waypoint a bot to use teleporters currently?

Sounds like (if there isnt already) there should be a function call to recheck waypoints immediately after a bot is spit out of the teleporter.

Do bots currently take into account how far one path is vs another path?
And do they take into account the distance saved by using a teleporter?
if not that sounds like fun to fix.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Lightning Hunter]

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Lightning Hunter]

Argh, how did I miss that? Now it should be there:
http://fbe.am/u2D

By the way, are there any differences that you've seen yet between Revisions B & C vs. fbx+ for the Frikbots? Or have you had a chance to look at that yet?

[r00k]

[Dr. Shadowborg]