15/7/98
Moving this page off the regular feature list. Email me if you have anything to contribute, but I'm really pissed off with the instability of the bot launchers I've used.22/6/98
Eraser has a new version - 0.992. Evidently the last point release before V1. Get it here or here.
Have basically dumped all the bot launchers except for EBL. QuickStart suffers from too much code bloat and craps on my bot configs all the time, EFE goes screwy and won't run and I can't be stuffed downloading any others!
17/5/98
Ok, I've been checking out the bots like I said earlier, and decided that it was time to report back. Please let me know if you have had experiences different to what I report here, they're only my (possibly wrong) observations.
CRBot
I've used CRBot in the past and found it to be a really cool DM bot, but the same can't be said for CTF. The bots weren't particularly challenging and didn't like to grab the enemy's flag, let alone actually make a capture. CRBot seems to be better on memory than Eraser so the game seemed to flow nicely. Oh yeah, VERY cool team control commands to tell your bots what to do.
Eraser
Probably the best bot available right now. Very cool AI, especially in CTF where I guess you'd need it the most in a bot. Sometime the bots gang up and rush the base they're attacking! Interestingly they weren't much chop in McKinley, however when I downloaded starctf2 and the associated routes for the bots, they were kicking ass! The downsides for Eraser seem to be more memory per bot, terrible user interface and not much control over what your bots do.
DroneBot
I gave DroneBot a try because a local player - ReKTeK seems to be sponsoring it in Australia. It's relatively early in the bot's development cycle, however I couldn't get it to work properly. The bots would just stand where they appeared and only come after me when I came into their FOV. To tell you the truth, I didn't really give it a good tryout so maybe it was just me.
Bot Launchers
Eraser Bot being such a prick to configure, has given rise to a bunch of launcher programs. There's quite a few to choose from so it took a while of reading around before I decided which one to look at. The official launcher for Eraser is being decided by an online voting system but it finishes today so I won't link to it :-P
Initially I chose Eraser Front End (EFE) because it was the smallest download size of the better launchers. I installed it which was simple, and ran it unsuccessfully for the first time. For some reason it didn't launch Quake properly and I got no bots. My second attempt also failed because it kept giving me screwy programming related error messages until I deleted all its registry entries!! Yup, you guessed it, I dumped it soon after that!
QuickStart seems to be the flashiest launcher of them all and it's the one I'm onto now. 3.5Mb download is daunting, however when you see the graphics and the "view model" option, you should be impressed. In fact the model viewer (to look at 3d rotating, running, jumping etc.) is worth it on its own. There are heaps of options to configure, including a bot editer and all the usual Quake flags. It's even a pretty cool tool to set up a standalone server with. You can save profiles off for calling up later on or use the built in wizard which takes you step by step through all the stuff. I think I'll stick with this one until I find one which is smaller and faster. Only problem I have right now is that the bot editor keeps screwing up and losing all my bots...
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12/5/98
Yeah, yeah, ok so it's not like the real thing, but I need the practise! I'm playing with Eraser Bot 0.99 and quite like it. I tried Madman's suggestion of CRBot but found that they lacked the AI that Eraser has. I usually play 3 on 3 in McKinley and haven't found a balance in the bot settings where my team doesn't completely whip the opposition! So, let me know if you've got any ideas or cool settings and I'll put them up on this page.