Blakhart, your server is extremely fun !!!
I just want to say thank you for keeping a server up so old guys can have some fun :)
I have been spending a lot of my free time on there, and the way you have the bots set up
is just perfect :)
I like to watch the bots & learn their weaknesses & habits. It's funny when a fast capper comes
in & grabs the flag & I snipe him at the same time..... The capper will quickly pivot to fire
a return laser shot at me & that drains his energy, making him easier prey for the flag defending bots.
I like how well they are able to fly & bomb as a team. Laggalot did great work on these bots :)
I set up mortar turrets on Titan & I had to change them back to AA because the mortar turrets
were just slaughtering the attacking bots in that setup.
I also really like the repair pack distance.... On Boss, I can switch the tower turret to a mortar & then
stay near the flag on the high walk & repair from there while guarding the flag.
Anyway, props to you & others who keep the servers up & going so we can have fun :)
If I am guessing right, you named some of the bots after better players.....? I tried to follow one
bot around thinking he was a real person LOL....
Comments
Hey glad you like it!
I've gone thru a few iterations of server hardware and think it's close to the final specs, now to concentrate on reducing code issues and increasing maps, as you may have noticed it sometimes crashes after map changes. I set the rep pack range to 400m on a whim and it works fine as you noticed, would like a sniper rifle version where you could hit say your capper who is at reduced health and bring him up to full instantly from 1600m away lol. Wish Roboto had used Tacos classic server as his base but it is what it is. Also asking for stats keeping while 38 bots are running around is a bit taxing on the cpu, wich as of this instant is a Xeon L5630 at 40w tdp, a lot less costly than what the server came with on the power bill. So, we can have a bit more lag in play with stats enabled, or we can have smoother play and no stats, I only ever looked at the stats because it took stats on maps and server glitches, could care less about the rest.
This is the hardware you're playing on in my server;
https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/en/R610-SpecSheet.pdf
Add another L5630 as it only has 1 right now, some more storage, and it'll eventually be hosting T1, T2, TV, CS1.6, CSS, and Q3.
Yeah Laggy did a great job on taking the t2 ai and making them a bit more rational, reading his commentaries on it is enlightening for anyone interested in dealing with the finite state machines in t2. Speaking of, Lagg comments all his code, I never comment anything and it always comes back and syntax errors my arse lol. T2 is such delicious spaghetti code!
If you've ever played t1 and done the training missions you know how sorry the ai was back then, night and day diff between t1 and t2 ai. Someone tried to enhance them a bit for t1 servers, think they're called Spoonbot or something but not much better than stock. One thing that hasn't changed in t1 or t2 ai over the decades is their aim can be quite accurate, expect disks in yo face lol. There was an effort to add personality to each named bot in Robotos mod so the bot mimicked the style of play of the person, but that is on hold, cappers would cap and ignore most everything else as they do irl, Zergon would mortar everyone in her base and then use the aiming laser to direct others to repair what Zergon destroyed, voices and skins would be as irl, etc. I asked The Sami to pair each named bot player with their skin and voice used irl and he came up with a lot of them but it crashes regardless of me checking for syntax errors, so there's that ongoing.
In my cs1.6 server we used the bots from LFD (called ZBot as I recall) and they are amazing, they also allow for weapon preferences, play style/personalities such as aggressive, defensive, timid, team or independence oriented. Needless to say more than once I had to tell players in the server that those are bots they were trying to talk to, that said you can talk to them and and they will respond and act on your comms depending on their personality of course. I named and set them to the irl personalities of the [BL] clan and it turned out sweet.
This all lead me into studying ai, especially neural nets and similar topics after finding out what finite and infinite state machines were, my Q3 server has a version of bots with a neural net where they actually improve play over time and with exposure to real players, something I'd like to see ported to T2, maybe someday. But until then it can be a fun diversion from servers with human players.
I tried 60 bots as there are some 140 odd names of old T2 players in the roster, many of whom haven't swung a storm hammer in decades by the way, suspecting that may be too many bots for the number of taskings for bots in T2, and it crashed at start, dunno why. Next tried 50 and it played ok but you would often see bots stop to think before carrying on, especially on flag events like drops making me suspect many ai taskings are flag event dependent. A bot drops a flag, all flag returners are now jobless, all capper escorts have to find something else to do, etc. There's often a cpu spike up a bit over 10 percent on flag events, otherwise it runs around 3 to 5 percent average with the server in use, and that is with or without stats.
Then I noted after about 34 bots in a ctf match they would load heavies into a transport and come raid your base, really liked that so settled on 38 bots to keep cpu time sane and the transports flying. I'll thionk of something that needs to be done or could be done to the server and someone will be in there banging away and I don't have the heart to drop the match just to edit some code, so I have to write down what I was going to do so it isn't forgotten. Some of you guys are in there for hours, and that makes it worth it.
Thats about it for now, and thanks so much for the kind words, also you're not the only one who has gone out of their way to thank me, all I can say is none of this would be worth it if there weren't you guys to enjoy it.
If you're able to see the memory addresses on unhandled exceptions for any crashes you're getting, please keep track of them and send them my way whenever possible
Will do, have one already but it's on the other machine lol.
Hey, any time I'm on there feel free to kick me off so that you can try out some things π...... I can always
go hang out on Vanilla 24/7 & try some new skii moves there lol.
You mentioned transports, I have never seen them do that flying yet (if it is still set at 38). I have seen them
get into the 3-person ground vehicle & mortar my base quite a bit, though.
I have noticed where sometimes I will see an enemy bot just standing there kinda confused, so I just light
a fire under his a55 with a blaster ping or a disc near him, & then he comes after me. It doesn't happen
quite that much; It seems more common on some maps.
That is a nice touch with the roster...... It does seem to have different named bots on it at times, & they
always seem to switch teams up a bit, which is great.
That is a nice server π......... If you ever decide to get out of the server business, I would love to try to keep
your version of the game going for as long as possible. I think I can get some of my friends interested in it
if I pester them enough. We are all old, though - Most of us are past 60 π..... I do have control over a classroom
of CAD PCs, however, and I think some of my students would have fun playing T2 during our breaks or lunches.
We all appreciate the server & your efforts...... Thanks so much !!!! πβΊοΈ
Blakhart, just posting here with a follow-up about the bots loading up a heavy transport
for an assault mission..... Ha! I saw them try it for the first time this weekend lol !!!
The only problem they had was that it took so long for them to get coordinated on who
was going to get in the transport that the transport got shot down before they could all
get loaded up etc etc..... This was on Circle of Stones, & if the bot piloting had moved the
transport to the back of the vehicle pad & behind the base, they could have all got on in time.
Which brings me to another question..... I have not had much time to play with it, but are
there ways to organize bots on your team into groups or give them assignments? I wonder
if anyone tried scripting something like that in the past..... It would be cool to be able to assign
a bot to patrol or repair a certain area for a length of time.
Lol yep seen them get shot down before they can go on their raid in the past, but also more often seen them make it over to the enemy base and watch as they all rain out of the transport and attack. I think timing is more crucial in getting transports filled without being attacked than the loading point but will look into moving their loading point.
As to command of the ai, yes. Their highest task weight is for human given commands. Just click c and bring up the command console and click a bot's name, you can give them many orders via the cc hud, such as escort x player, attack at location x as determined by you by a click on the map, cmd them to repair things such as mpb or turrets or gens or whatever, defend x location, and other commands you will have to look into for yourself. You can also watch via cc what any teammate is doing via the camera icon, click it and a player name and it'll show you a mini screen of what that player is doing.
The cc was going to be a much more elaborate part of the game, giving a commander greater and easier access to their forces than we ended up with, sadly.
Also one can give cmds by looking at a bot in game and hit vvh or whatever the combo is for help and the bot will escort and defend you. If that bot is killed, another will take its place until you're either killed or tasked them with something else. There are other voice cmds you can give them, just look them up. In obs you can obs a bot and the screen will show you what the current task is along with its weighting, the weightings are the hierarchy of tasks for the ai; what is most important weighted down to the least important. To find out what a bot is doing when playing just look at the bot and hit vcw, the bot will tell you what it is doing.
Watch Boston Dynamicsβ Atlas robot show off insane new moves - YouTube
Haha, I think you are spot on about the timing being more important..... It was on Katabatic last night & there
was a transport with one spot left so I jumped in it & the bot pilot perfectly flew it to the Storm base..... And we encountered
an incoming Storm transport loaded down on the way there hehehe :) Of course much drive-by shooting ensued & both
transports skillfully ejected over their target bases.... Too much fun & very cool π
By the way, that central tower in Massive is hellacious fun lol..... I now know why you had so much fun up there in
the crow's nest sniping away !!! π I stuck an Inv up there on the steps below & got back as a Heavy Offense with
an ammo pack & had way too much fun shooting discs at the general base area...... Just enough to damage some of
the enemy bots with hits to piss them off so they would come hunt me down. One time I turned around to check my
six & I saw three enemy bots kinda just standing there on the top outside looking towards our base..... So I just walked
over there & stuck my big blaster thru the port opening & plasma'd all 3 in rapid succession hahaha.... My wife could
hear me laughing π
Lol nice, I do like to pop in there and snipe them so they try to come after me, keep in mind if you snipe someone don't be surprised to get a disk or mortar in yo face even if 400m away and up several stories lol. I don't think they have a pathway to get from ground to the snipers nest, hence why they're outside if they do make it to the top. otherwise they'd eventually be right in the room with us lol.
The AI code is from here;
I've added some names to the bot roster as me and The Sami recalled several from back then that aren't included in the roster, The roster is from Goon Haven server days, Goon Haven was a awesome server several years ago, however most of the named players likely don't even think about T2 anymore. I've also edited weightings to suit my tastes on ai play. Other than that it's Robotos mod through and through. Also edited the base turrets to reach a good deal farther and at higher elevations of fire, kinda odd to have an aa turret that only elevates to 30 degrees and then stops firing as say a bomber flies right overhead, but didn't touch the timings for activation as I want players to have a chance. I want battle to begin at much greater ranges than before as far as turrets go. I added some security patches such as for fake voting and whatnot but its mostly stock classic other than the ai code.
I tried tacos classic server as the base upon wich robotos ai play, it wasn't pretty. There were more frequent crashes and other probs, to get it to work I took most of the ai code out of robotos mod and pasted it into tacos, but there are far more errors in console to deal with in a taco server plus robotos ai than if you just run robotos mod on stock classic. Also i think there was a map change issue, it wouldn't change maps on its own! Some people really like the evo end game stats screen however, wish roboto had used tacos server, but here we are. You can add dt's stats to robotos and they do work, but you have to click on a name to see their stats, there's no end of match stats screen. I do like this as it keeps stats on server issues, so may put it back in later. What we really need is more maps, the same 20 maps gets old. Probly gonna start with maps like rd, logans run, dx, etc. Gonna be heavy on the larger vehicle maps. I tried mapping in T1, wich is much more like bare cmd line than with the T2 editor lol, so I never really got the hang of it for either t1 or t2 so this will take me some time.
Wow........ You have definitely put the leg work in on setting your server up perfectly π I want to get a setup just
like yours, but it would only be for local private LAN use or for some in-home setup where me & my son can
play against the bots together. It's spring time here in TN now, & I will be outside a lot more often, so once I do
start setting mine up it is going to be a long time before I get it perfected. It's a good way to unwind in the
evenings, though, & I always like setting stuff up. I'll collate pages here & start catching up on the reading π
Blakhart, Thank you so much π I left you a /msg this morning π
Yesterday was unusual. It seemed like I would always lock up & crash around 34 minutes left
in the map. It happened about 4 times in a row. I went observer mode the last time I joined
& then joined a team with 32 minutes left in the map & everything worked ok after that.