After several reports of people being just a little too good with the Railgun in Duel, I decided to look into the ZBot phenomenon.
So, what do these little monsters do? Basically as you run around, some client software keeps looking for nearby enemy and if they see someone, it fires at them. Yup, auto-aiming bot - a blatant form of cheating. You start up a DOS window and run the ZBot code specifying the IP address of the server you're going to play on. Then you run Quake and connect to your own PC - i.e. the ZBot client which then connects to the server you specified earlier. All information is routed through this client.
How can you tell if someone is using the bot? Well the ZBot software in its raw form puts the word [ZBot] in front of your name so that sort of gives it away, but I hear there are other versions around which don't do this. Another way of telling is by watching where the guy is firing from. Xtro mentioned that it looked like I was firing out the back of my head at times. This is because I had the bot's FOV set to 360 degrees. If I'd lowered it to 100 (my default) it would have looked a lot better, but I would have had to do more work to get kills. As it was, all I did was run around looking for ammo and health.
So really it isn't that easy to find someone using it. ZBot has a feature so that if someone types in NO BOTS PLEASE, it quits the game, but who'd have the balls to say it in a game? Imagine doing it against someone and they aren't using the bot!! You can also switch the bot off and on during the match, hiding it even more effectively. The actual effectiveness of the bot was interesting though. Using the railgun with a ping of 300 was useless. With a low ping, you'd absolutely hammer your opposition though because of the railguns instant hit capability. During my game with Xtro, the rocket launcher was the best, but not up close.
As I said earlier, it's just a lamer's way of cheating. If you're using an undetectable version of this bot, then you might win a few Duels but you'll never be a "known" player in the Perth Quake community, it's just too small. And if you're found out, well it wouldn't be pretty.
My use of the ZBot program was purely for research purposes. It will never be used on a public server unless all parties are notified, and the EvEm clan does not condone their use in any other forum.