Bots, scripting/scenario, exporting real-time data

[Thomas]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, but I believe this game may be a great fit for my current project.  Below is a brief outline of what I'm doing as well as a few questions.  Thanks for any help or advice you can offer.

I work in a virtual reality research lab, and we are looking into interfacing an open source fps with an existing VR application.  The ultimate goal of the project will be to have users play the game against a scripted opponent (ie, bots which go to place A at time X, then place B at time Y etc) while a "commander" or "leader" uses our existing VR application to pipe information (maps, instructions, video) to the players.  It should be a pretty exciting project and hopefully will lead to published academic papers.

I have not yet used the mapping editor, but at a brief read-through of the wiki and forums it looks like we should be able to create a map to our needs.  Please let me know if the map editor has issues of which I am not aware.

The bots at this time appear to have no ability to pursue objectives (flags, bases, etc).  As long as the source for the bots is available, I think we should be able to implement the AI needed for our project.  I thought I read somewhere in the forums the bots were closed source?  Is this correct?  Or are there other options for adding bots to the game which will meet our needs?

Finally, we will need to send information about the game (map, location of entities, etc) over the network to a separate application.  Where should I begin looking to get an idea of how to implement this?  (I have the source downloaded but haven't found much documentation)

Thanks,
Thomas

[Playah]

Hello Thomas. You should wait for a response by jitspoe who´s developing this game. If this is serious, this would be nice to have in this game.

[Eiii]

Sounds very interesting. While the bots aren't open source, I'm sure jits wouldn't have any problem with giving you the code. Currently the bots just try to avoid walls and shoot, so improving them will be a welcome change.

I work in a virtual reality research lab, and we are looking into interfacing an open source fps with an existing VR application.  The ultimate goal of the project will be to have users play the game against a scripted opponent (ie, bots which go to place A at time X, then place B at time Y etc) while a "commander" or "leader" uses our existing VR application to pipe information (maps, instructions, video) to the players.  It should be a pretty exciting project and hopefully will lead to published academic papers.

I don't understand quite what you mean here. You seem to be saying that the AI would be completely scripted movement-wise, but I don't quite understand what information the commander would communicate to the players. Could you explain this more?

[TinMan]

You also might want to look into some other Quake II bots that may be portable to dpball.

[Smokey]

awsome. Now playing bots should be fun!

[TinMan]

awsome. Now playing bots should be fun!

LOL! I request that any new bots have a communication feature, that they say something that Vinne or DragonNet would say after killing, capping, or getting killed. Also have them say_team very useless information as recon.

[Smokey]

rofl
Y DO U KILL ME AND HOW DO I INSERT A GUN??

[bitmate]

HOW DU U JUMP SOOOOO HIGH???

[Thomas]

I don't understand quite what you mean here. You seem to be saying that the AI would be completely scripted movement-wise, but I don't quite understand what information the commander would communicate to the players. Could you explain this more?

There will be two teams.  One of players and one of bots.  The bots will represent attackers/terrorists/whatever and will move in a scripted scenario (going from building A to B, wait 30 seconds, then go to C, etc).

The second team will be of players.  All but one player will be in the fps trying to kill the bots.  The one remaining player will instead be in our VR application, and will be sending information to the players in the fps.

[Eiii]

What exactly does the VR application do, and how will s/he communicate the information back to the players? This sounds interesting, but if it's all you're going for, I don't see much playable AI here.

[Thomas]

The VR app gives a "God's eye view" to a conflict area.  The user will be able to move throughout a 3d representation of the map.  Their role will be one of information processing.  They will need to determine what information is relevant to which teammate.

As for the "how", this is where a significant portion of the programming work will be.  Each player will have one additional "gun", which will actually be a PDA-like device which will display the maps, videos, warnings, or messages from the leader.  The artwork and APIs for this will be started as soon as we definitively know which game we are going to use.

[Eiii]

That could work for this game, but not with any of the existing maps. You'd have to make them yourself (or get someone else to make them), as all of the current maps are far too small/'open' for what you want to do.

[blaa]

You can already make bots like u want em too in warsow. You can already see(read actually) where players are in warsow. Originality rocks!

[Eiii]

I don't think you know what he's talking about. You seem to have just read 'bots' and 'where'.

[jitspoe]

To be honest, I don't think Paintball2 will help you much in your project.  The bots are extremely primitive.  The Quake2 BSP format doesn't lend itself well to a top-down "god's eye" view.  The game is also too fast-paced for having a 3rd party information relay.

You might check out warsow as blaa suggested.  It has more advanced bot AI, I think, and supports Quake3 formats, which might work better for a top-down view.  Another one that might be good is the AQ2: LTKTBM edition: http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/ltktbm.shtml .  mSparks has done a lot with the bot AI there.  The movement is still fast-paced, but I think they'll give you a better starting point.

[SkateR]

The bots in warsow are amazing.

[Smokey]

better than you, easily.