| Software > ICE Bot
Another look at another bot. This one has a few nice features, particularly in the CTF field, which gives it a distinct advangtage over other bots, such as the Eraser.
These days I only use bots to play CTF, as it's about the only time I can count on NOT being hammered by quad chainguns every 2 minutes. Although the eraser bot is capable of CTF, it is far from perfect. The only defence it seems to understand is one guy standing at the entrance of the base with whatever weapon it picked up on the way or was conveniently close, and the rest on "attack" basically run around killing each other and occasionally thinking "oh crap, theres the enemy flag, woohoo!" when it finds itself in the enemy base.
So whats the big deal about the ICE bot? Take a look at the pic below and you'll get a small hint.
 Take a look in the lower left corner. What the hell is that I hear you ask? Unfortunately this is not such a good pic to show it, that list represents every bot on your team. Next to the name of each bot is his/her portrait and a big letter, either G,R or A. G means the current role for this bot is base guard, R means the bot is a Roamer (just runs around killing targets of oppurtunity) and A is for attack. Under the bot name is what the bot is thinking. In this picture, the guard is thinking "in position", and the others aren't thinking anything because they all probably just got fragged. Other messages displayed are "grouping with emmie" or "chasing flag" or "finding weapon" etc.
The cool thing about this is that you can change the role of any bot at any time. If your base is getting hammered you can put the roamer on guard, etc.
You can also issue commands such as "attack", in which all available bots (except for guards, who need to be addressed specifically) will attack the enemy base. A very nice touch is the "group" command, in which all available bots (except guards as before) will find you. It's neat as the bots will run up to you and salute saying "reporting." This is a great command, as you lead your group to the enemy base and issue the attack command, they pretty much over run the enemy base. The availability of a bot for such commands depends, for example if a bot is currently carrying the flag he isn't going to want to attack the base again, and if a bot is already in a fire fight he probably won't respond, unless specifically addressed.
 Other bots will also create groups, and you will find that bots will actually attack in numbers. Playing on Mckinely with a lot of bots can be hectic, as one minute the place is clear and the next they are EVERYWHERE. It actually took me 5 minutes to cap the flag once; I'd die, run out and grab it again, get fragged again, run out and grab it again, etc. The other thing is bodies never gib, so there are always tons of them laying around sort of like carpet. They do however "spontaneously gib" every now and again to not bog you down with extra bodies.
This bot is only at version 0.2, so it is buggy as hell. Although railing accuracy has been fixed (ie. they never miss) my pet peeve so far has to be their accuracy with the chaingun/machine gun - no matter how much you jump, strafe or move around, that crosshair is ALWAYS dead on your forehead.
Other interesting bugs include the token getting stuck in the walls, floating in the corners, the good old "intimacy gone to far" (getting stuck in each other) and the best one I've seen to date is in Mckinley Revival, out by the quad, I saw an enemy bot actually grapple THROUGH the ceiling and into my base. Now theres a new technique.
Anyway, a bot that is shaping up quite nicely. I don't know about it's DM capabilities, but if a bot at v0.2 can play a decent game of CTF it must have something going for it in the way of AI, and says good things about it's programmer. The ice bot page is available here
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Author:
[EvEm]_Omen
Created:
November 25, 1998
Modified:
November 25, 1998 - 10:30:35 PM
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