Bots and Botpathing in 1.5.1 CTF

[~viper~]

I have done a bit of research, if you will, with some offline CTF games with the bots to test weaponry, general bot movement, aim and usage of weapons, and other related areas.  Perhaps it is safe to say that almost nothing has changed between versions in regards to bots, and I have finally gathered the time to write about it and hopefully provoke some changes.

CTF, cap limit 4, time limit 9.
Alpha(6)  (the last 6 bots in the list, i think it was Roach -- Terminator)
Bravo(4)  Boogie Man, John, Ecsene, ~viper~ (me)
Ash, Nuubia, Voland, Steel, Division   for the maps

In Options...
 min respawn time 3sec, max 8sec, all bonuses removed.
 stationary gun and both miniguns removed from list; all other weapons allowed.  Friendly fire off, bullet time on.  Difficulty kept at Normal.

General Bot Problems during Gameplay:
  -- flag carriers (fc's) still do not shoot unless they see another flag carrier
  -- nades thrown only as a last resort (clip runs out or w/e) and at players directly, never to gain territory, and often hitting friendly players
  -- random proning/camping in stupid areas, no matter the weapon
  -- air camping due to bugs or trouble getting to some areas
  -- knife or law as a secondary weapon never chosen
  -- bot may still pick a weapon that is not available due to Server's options (shouldnt bot weapon choice be [preferred array] - [server array] ?) . It is then forced to socom til death to then make another random pick from a bad selection
  -- bunching of bots --> there may be 3 or more bots in one area, usually right after the spawn, bunched up and running at the same speed.  This is most annoying when the skins are also identical, as in some zombie servers, where it is sometimes impossible to tell how many bots are coming at you
 -- spamming til clip runs out, sometimes when there is no shot, and never manual reloading

CTF-Ash
 -- red bots tended to attack through the middle/spawn, and would get stuck at the small block between the spawn areas
 -- a few alphas would fall down and have difficulty entering the low passage, jumping up+down and generally air camping unless tempted/baited
 -- fc would rarely come back the high route, and often bug a bit before entering lower passage
 -- fc sometimes would not move at all, and stay in very corner next to flag spawn, often surrounded by teammates just camping
 -- relatively easy to win map

CTF-Nuubia
 -- bots almost exclusively would go low, or begin to go high, get distracted and drop down, rarely to deviate to other routes
 -- because of this, pretty easy to dominate with a few well placed nades after mostly high route travel

CTF-Voland
 -- excellent bot pathing
 -- bots mostly would go one of the three normal routes (low, middle, high) , would sometimes drop to low or mid, or persevere in the path chosen
 -- occasionally some would take the roof route
 -- really well done map, barely took it 4-3 in the one attempt

CTF-Steel
 -- it feels as if the bots are not stuck as much as in the previous soldat version, but I could be mistaken
 -- bots rarely took the high routes; mostly mindless wandering, following some target
 -- few problems to win

CTF-Division
 -- mostly low route, caused a  few problems when a group of alphas broke through and began to spawn, but the organization did not last/repeat after that
 -- shrug, a bit challenged...bot bunching helped me get away as fc

Conclusions
 -- I picked these old, unchanged maps, because, frankly, I disliked the redone (and NOT renamed) versions of 'new' maps, and the bots clearly also remain old and unchanged (fits perfectly i suppose...)
 -- gameplay > eyecandy : many of these maps need bot pathing to greatly enhance actual gameplay; changes to soldat versions should not just be eye candy (e.g. the huts with invisible walls in new Laos for example)

Perhaps someone from a zombie server may want to play a standard map from time to time, or a new mapper may want to get a map right for both online and offline.  A botpathing mod/system should be implemented, or else the bot algorithms modified.

thanks,
~viper~

[chutem]

Bots already work off of way points, so it really is up to the mapper as to how well the way points work.

It is easy to learn how to way point, there is at least one very good thread in these forums, maybe you want to get into improving the way, hell, I have shiploads of holidays coming up, I might see what I can do to make the way pointing better.

Of course, though, it isn't all down to way points. Even on the hardest difficulty (impossible?, I'm not sure) I can win with a 4-7 random team on (as far as I know) all default maps. This is because there are several easy ways to get past bots.

Firstly their aim sucks, they don't take into account how you are moving, so running fast perpendicular to their position will result in to damage taken, even with 10 angry bots spraying their miniguns at you, it even works against Barrett.

They don't think about where they are going. They nearly always end up taking one or two routes, so it is very easy to kill the one or two bots you might encounter going low or high, dodge bullets in open areas like between the low tunnel and flag in ash, get the flag and get your ass out of there.

Bots are scared of nades. Why wouldn't they be? The problem is how they deal with it, instead of continuing on with one little jump over a nade waiting on the ground, they turn around and leg it. This means you can stop a whole group of bots with a few nades spaced out over time, all the while you pummel them with your AK, and they can't do anything to stop you because with any more than 1 bot, they end up trying to punch each other out of the way to get a shot in. Nice.

As you mentioned, a flagger will only shoot a flagger. I see why, MM didn't want flaggers getting distracted by enemies they don't need to kill, but he could have made them shoot when in range, but not give chase. Also the flaggers are hopeless at holding onto the flag. They just jump around where their flag should be until it is returned, hoping the other team doesn't come and pick them off easily, because they don't shoot anyone but the flagger.

I have suggested before that some form of bot scripting was introduced, if a rewrite of the bot code wasn't feasible. There are many benefits to bot scripting. Rather than one person doing all the work, it could be done by lots of members of the community. One person might work on getting bots to react to way points better, while others work on a kick-ass aiming system. Also people could make zombie bots, which actually work like a zombie bot (although the current bots are close enough).

However anything that could be done would take time, so you really just have to hope that EnEsCe is persuaded by someone, or he comes up with the idea, likes it and adds it (which seems to be how the development works these days), or that he hands the job off to someone else, like MM gave EnEsCe the job of creating the script core.

[~viper~]

I mostly play multiplayer, with enough challenges from people in various ctf servers.  In this examination, I mainly tried to look for basic problems with the bots, assuming difficulty did not really matter, although I did give myself a 4v6 handicap.

From coop type of ctf servers, I've played on Elite Zombie and HackTank's ZRPG, where HT made some good efforts to completely change the gameplay and really showed me what the bots prioritized (kills over flags, in short).

While I embrace your suggestion for some heavy scripting, I'm afraid that this could disrupt some of the BattleEye functionality or cause the evil Access Violation errors, though apparently in 1.5.1 some time had been put into reducing these errors (TBD in practice).