Do the ZCajun nodes/waypoints still work?

[TDRR]

Or, more specifically, what do the CajunBodyNode and CajunTrace actors do currently? And more importantly, do they work as normal when spawned manually?

[InsanityBringer]

Both of them appear to be internal entities spawned by the bots while they're working. Nothing super interesting, it seems.

[TDRR]

Well, i made a DECORATE sort of mod that makes CajunBodyNode and CajunTrace visible, then spawned a bot to run around a map, but never did one of those actors appear.

After spawning CajunTrace manually, the bot stopped running into a nearby wall and instantly ran close to me, then moved to another wall, doing it again didn't do anything (besides just creating the actor with no effect on the bot at all).

And spawning a bunch of CajunBodyNodes around the map will cause the bot to run through them and stopping to grab items if needed, so apparently both still do something, so it might be of some use to put this on the net:

placeablewaypoints.wad (MEGA link)

All that wad file does is add two actors named "ZCajunTrace" with Editor number of 30002 and "ZCajunBodyNode" with editor number of 30001, so that you can place them on any map and see if their navigation gets any better, can you imagine them getting at the level of those rusty old ZDoomBots? That would be rad.

[TDRR]

I was completely wrong. Those actors don't do anything at all and running MAP01 in bot_observer mode gives the exact same results as with the waypoints.

I'm thinking they can't be placed as-is and back in the day when the ZCajun bots came to life the bot system did some runtime waypoint linking so the bots know what direction they should go after reaching a waypoint. I wonder if by passing some order-number as an argument would work.

Personally i think the current bot system is good enough, the only thing i would like to have improved would be the navigation, which could be fixed with simple waypoints.

[Graf Zahl]

The bots are totally broken. When they were new they could actively seek out powerups to grab and make a few other decisions. That all didn't work ever since the inventory system redesign from 2004/2005.

[TDRR]

The bots are totally broken. When they were new they could actively seek out powerups to grab and make a few other decisions. That all didn't work ever since the inventory system redesign from 2004/2005.

I can't say i didn't expect this answer, but thanks anyways!

I wonder, can't anything simple be done to fix this? Maybe just make them seek anything with some of the Powerup's sprites?
Whatever it is, even just something to stop them from running into walls and stay there, that would be good enough (maybe just make them turn perpendicular to the wall they are touching and run in that direction and eventually they will break free)

[Graf Zahl]

Sorry, but this is code I never really bothered about, it wasn't working right when I first started working on ZDoom's code in 2004/2005 and there never was general interest in getting it fixed.

[Nash]

Rachael has expressed interest at the idea of rewriting the bots from the ground-up using ZScript, though WHO'd end up actually completing such a task remains to be seen.

That linked project has a very disconnected/isolated development style IMO (why hasn't the author chosen to collab and commit on the GZDoom repo itself, I don't understand), which is a shame...