Briefly (and I already told you these RA, but you wanted me to post here, so here goes!), these things need to be done for the TAB Bots.


1) Bot orders need to ONLY be givable to bots on your team. Currently I can give orders to bots even if I'm in spectator mode or to bots on other teams. Not good!

2) Bots reply to orders, which is good, but they need to reply in private cheat (say_team ideally) so people know what's going on, but it's not broadcast to the world.

3) Bot orders thus have no place in non-team games. CTF, Team FFA, Siege and Power Duel (for the "doubles" blue team) are necessary.

Perhaps (for those offline players) bot orders might be usable in "Solo Game" but they just don't make sense outside a team context.

4) Obviously other orders need to be implemented, such as Cover Me, Defend this Position, Follow Me, Attack their Base (for CTF & Siege), etc.

5) Perhaps something in addition to "high scorer priorities" needs to be implemented. What I mean is that having one person on a team designated "team leader" (like the "I am the leader" command in Q3) should be possible. Without it, by default the high score rule should apply. But it should be possible to vote someone the leader, or perhaps the highest scorer has the option to make themselves leader. The leader then gets exclusive rights to give bots orders, unless he designates a new leader.

This would help prevent conflicts of orders and it's the Quake3 model.

UT on the other hand lets anybody on the team give orders to bots. But again, in the wrong hands it could lead to problems. If bot orders are intended primarily for the "offline player" though, having a team leader seems most natural. In Q3 a bot could be made team leader and they would then issue orders as they saw fit, but that's probably more work down the line and not something you want to worry about right now.

6) In addition to giving bots orders by name, there should also be an "all" option. Meaning "all" bots on your team do something (attack, defend, etc). This saves having to type out every bot name or to have to bind keys to every bot name imaginable.

Also. To make the bot experience better I propose we give the force levels different characteristics.

Give them a little personality.

Padawans should act like your typical noob. Taunting and spamming kata's at inappropriate times. Also they should should you the force similar to how the old bots used it. Maybe insert random letters into their chat comments. :)

This should change as you go up.

Until you get to jedi Master.

The Jedi Master should never taunt. He doesn't spam popular moves. He should duck head shots/swings and hop low shots/swings. This bot should be a challenge for the better people playing.

And support for the new saber sytem would be nice as well :). I mean come on what would be cooler than being faked out by a bot?

I'm all for using an "hon0rz" bot, but there should also be a bot that's just plain GOOD, none of the "honor" stuff like a dislike for spamming, excessive taunting, bowing and refusal to use anything but saber, etc.

just plain GOOD

Jedi Master Bot

I was discussing adding super human reactions to these guys with razor. Like manually dodging certain saber and gun shots/swings. And just generally being godlike. without cheating of course :)

So I probably phrased it wrong.

Honor bots would probably fall between noobs and Masters. ;)

I'd probably just make all of that stuff be part of the botfiles so you can customize the bots @ your leasure.

That way you can mix and match the characteristics, like having Kyle be a jedi master but with a flare for taunting.

I just want to add that I'm all for the philosophy that Bots shouldn't be able to do anything that a human couldn't do.

Of course, if you want to make a bot play like the world's greatest JA player would play, that's perfectly fine.

But the bot shouldn't be able to "cheat" as you put it (barring necessary program shortcuts to simulate real behavior).

About the only thing that I've seen that feels a little off here is the "bot runs backwards while aiming perfectly."

But I guess concievably there might be a human player out there that is just THAT GOOD.

As far as aim is concerned I've had people snipe me all sorts of ways, proving incredible shots ARE possible, and they can't all have been using aimbots... ; )

Agreed. yeah, I'm going to do something about the running backwards while attacking stuff. Probably make the offset ability be based on the skill of the bot...except for the saber.

I think it looks bad ass when they move backwards while fighting with the saber and I don't think you really lose anything by doing that.