ZDoom

Also, they're not actually all that intelligent - their AI is exactly the same as normal monsters ( i.e. very angry pinballs ) but if they don't have a target, they'll bounce towards their friendplayer's general direction instead.

They aren't actually capable of navigating the map in any form, they just do a decent job in fooling you into thinking they can.

Friendly monsters do not use player structs or real weapons though, and that's important for a lot of things.

Also - for monsters, the actions follow the states, whereas for bots, the states follow the actions. Having friendly AI that is tied to states is a bit of a weakness.

Basically that's like selling snake oil.

Am I missing something here? Summoning a friendly seems to be a more intelligent AI than zcajun ever was. Also not only does [url]https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/combos/bia[/url] have good AI, it was described as being able to win a dozen cacowards if the author made the friendlies a bit weaker (they mow through even the biggest slaughter maps)

Gonna answer in PM.

Speaking of C/S, what's the status there? I haven't heard anything new in months.

What I'll do is create a branch with the zcajun code neutered and removed, and porting the bot spawning commands to special player handling files - something that will eventually have to be done with the move to C/S anyway, since we'll need a way to spawn players in as they join an open server. (The client will have to do this too, obviously, or it won't have player info to replicate as the server feeds it to them)

I'll then provide binaries for it, along with what variables get exported to check for a player's bot status, and you can do the zscript side implementation yourselves, and then we'll merge the whole thing as a single package.

Bring me a working concept and we may be in business. My interest in bots is on the low side, so I won't work on this myself.

I'm moving this to "on hold" for now, pending some results.

sounds like a fantastic approach

I wonder what Graf thinks about all of this

That would be quite possible. In fact, it's all just player data anyway, and the code can be moved out of the zcajun code and put into GZDoom proper somewhere.

Basically, if I were to do this, the only thing GZDoom.exe would do is spawn the bots and set the bot flag on them. ZScript would be responsible for handling the bot's actions and logic.

[quote="Nash"]If bots were ZScriptified, it'd be as "official" as it could get. It would be no more "unofficial" as the DoomImp ZScript definition, for example.[/quote]

ah, so you mean official, as in officially within the gzdoom.pk3? if so, that would certainly be official enough

though, I have one last question about this. is there any chance that we'll be able to still use a config that allows us to have our own bots in it? just something similarly to the ZCajun config without all the fancy stuff (aiming, perfection, reaction, isp), but allowing us to still use our own skins essentially

I really don't have a clue as to how far these ZScript bots would go in terms of small subsidiary features like that, because honestly, something like the AutoDoom bots should suffice already

it would be interesting to hear from you how advanced these ones would (or should) be without them becoming what would be considered too complicated

I like the idea of externalizing the bot code out to ZScript completely.

[quote="nazakomu"]if there was something universal (and more importantly, official)[/quote]

If bots were ZScriptified, it'd be as "official" as it could get. It would be no more "unofficial" as the DoomImp ZScript definition, for example.

I've seen AutoDoom's bots in action, and I can safely say they're nothing to scoff at

I honestly would love to see bots with at least some sort of pathfinding, even if they just follow players.

yeah, I've heard about a few people making ZScript ones, too. it's just that it'd probably be far more favorable if there was something universal (and more importantly, official) that didn't conflict with mods and all of that other good stuff

If someone wanted to do that, it's possible to export the player's bot boolean already, rip/disable the zcajun code out completely, and do precisely that. The bot player can then be coded using purely event handlers and input states.