Not sure where else to post this so if you have to move it, at least send me a PM to tell me where.

A while ago, amongst the zillions projects I have in mind, I downloaded the RCBOT 1.31 code source. I was curious to see how it was made and hoping to improve it. I was disapointed in bot's capabilities found on NS servers (no matter what Bot program). Unfortunetly, as it happens so many times, I didn't not have enough free time to go further.

But I did see something that made me wonder about something. Are all the bot programs out there used in NS games, coded to run on ANY HL1 MOD ? I mean, I saw codes in RCBOT that were there for non NS MODs. That made me wonder, having all this non NS coding limits the capabilities of NS bots on what they can do to REALY simulate NS players. Also, the fact that this wasn't entirely made for NS, but rather patched for NS, increases the chances of bugs. Most NS MODs out there using these bot codes don't have the same kind of gameplay as NS. What other MOD enables you to wall on ceilling, leap, stump in order to devour, ... ?

If one of those Bot program was re-worked from ground up to be entirely made for NS only, then you are opening the door to a closer NS player being simulated. Plus you could add so much more functions. I had ideas of map entities specialy made for an NS Bot program. These entities could be like strategic entity placements, prefered traveling path, prefered hiding places, special bot clips (every seen a bot geting stuck in a stupid place, or just runing in circle for no reasons ?). I was even thinking about special bot classes where you would have specialized bots for specific tasks that the admin could choose to add or not (the builder, the scout, one that saves for a hive, infiltrator, the strategic parasiter, the cloacker, the Xmenu lover, ...).

I usualy stay away from bot servers because they are either extreamly dumb and too easy to shoot (therefore extreamly boring) or their attack accuray is like %500 better then you (which discourage new players from playing since they get killed all the time). I have also seen so many times, bots that didn't drop any res or hives and as soon as they hit 75 res, would go onos.

Having such a custom made NS Bot program would be so much fun to play on Bot servers. Maybe something like this could be made for NS2 ? It would be closer to playing a real game and therefore train new players better.

How about starting a special thread about building a better NS Bot program where people could share ideas and codes ?

in my oppinion its not worth the work...

the bot-servers i see online are the ones without real players...
who playes with bots anyways...

if you want to do that to improve your coding and work on a real project, THATS a reasonable goal, but bots for ns are not needed imho

There are currently two bots made for NS. RCBot, and Whichbot.

RCBot is coded by a guy named Cheeseh, who originally coded the bot to play Rocket Crowbar (hence RCBot), and then adapted and expanded it to play different Half-Life mods as he got interested in them. Cheeseh keeps the bot updated so that it still works with the current NS, but he isn't adding any more NS-specific features. I haven't looked at it in a while, but I'm pretty sure all the recent feature additions pertain to Sven Co-op.

Whichbot is an alien-only bot coded for NS and NS only by a guy named Clamatius. Clamatius went on hiatus for about a year after the birth of his second child, but now a guy by the name of Masked Carrot is starting to pick up the slack and code for it. Whichbot is by far the better option for playing aliens, though RCBot is your only choice for marine bots.

Still, I think you're trivializing the amount of effort it takes to build a solid bot, especially in such a strategy-oriented game as NS. There are a huge number of very difficult problems to solve when trying to get the bots to navigate the map effectively, much less take in input about their conditions and surroundings and trying to formulate a strategy from that. Still, AFAIK both of those bots are open source, and you can use them concurrently, so I totally support you if you want to take either of those bots and bend them to specific tasks