troubleshooting bots in zdoom

zdoom 2.3.1 is telling me no more bots left in bots.cfg. I don't even have a bots file in my zdoom folder. Need help installing zdoom bots. Captain Mellow's page seems to be defunct. Thanks! I'm using zdoom 2.3.1 Any help getting bots to work so i can playtest a dm map is much appreciated.

Try setting the bots to a lower skill level. Then, shooting bots should hopefully give you less trouble.

To get the bots to work in the first place, you will obviously need a Bots.CFG - if you go download ZDoom 1.22 (which, inexplicably, is still available on the ZDoom website) you can copy the ZCajun folder into your current ZDoom directory. Then you can Addbot them from the console.

However, ZDoom's bots are really, really, horribly broken at the moment, so any reported issues with them will likely be ignored. (Why the bots haven't been removed yet is beyond me.)

WildWeasel said:

To get the bots to work in the first place, you will obviously need a Bots.CFG - if you go download ZDoom 1.22 (which, inexplicably, is still available on the ZDoom website) you can copy the ZCajun folder into your current ZDoom directory. Then you can Addbot them from the console.

However, ZDoom's bots are really, really, horribly broken at the moment, so any reported issues with them will likely be ignored. (Why the bots haven't been removed yet is beyond me.)

There aren't other bots I can use? thanks for the help tho

Hellbent said:

There aren't other bots I can use? thanks for the help tho

Skulltag has working bot support. They're a bit smarter and more customizable than ZDoom's bots too.

Hellbent said:

Captain Mellow's page seems to be defunct.

Seek, and ye shall find

WildWeasel said:

(Why the bots haven't been removed yet is beyond me.)

For the simple reason that there's still enough people who don't want them removed. They actually have one use: To simulate a multiplayer game without setting up a netgame.

I really wish skulltag's bots weren't utter crap. Legacy's is the only bot set I've ever enjoyed, which is a problem for obvious reasons.

Mike.Reiner said:

I really wish skulltag's bots weren't utter crap.

Skulltag's bots are scriptable. So you can make them better yourself if you wish.

WildWeasel said:

ZDoom 1.22 (which, inexplicably, is still available on the ZDoom website)

Why shouldn't it? Keeping old versions available doesn't take up a lot of webspace, and is the only way to play demos recorded with said old versions.

WildWeasel said:

(Why the bots haven't been removed yet is beyond me.)

As always, the wiki knows all. :p

kristus said:

Skulltag's bots are scriptable. So you can make them better yourself if you wish.

I just might have to look into that.

I'm just not pleased with bots that feel like they need to completely stop moving every 10 seconds so they can spew some pointless line.

I shouldn't be able to win on the hardest difficulty.

WildWeasel said:

However, ZDoom's bots are really, really, horribly broken at the moment

They don't strike me as any more broken than they have been for the last n years. They still do what I use them for as well as they ever did.

Oh, and once even Randy said he found them useful for testing stuff.

[edit] Just to check, I just had an 8 player deathmatch game in map01 that was reasonably good fun. OK, so I had 50 kills and the bot nearest me only had 8 so it wasn't a close match but the bots were doing what they were supposed to. [/edit]

GreyGhost said:

Seek, and ye shall find

There are mentions of nodes in that article, and from the looks of it, bots could once reliably navigate through maps using nodes.

This sounds really interesting, and it would be really cool if dynamic nodes could be used in the enemy AI. After you duck behind a corner, the last spot you were seen or heard becomes a node that the enemy advances toward, instead of just walking straight into the wall when you come up a side passage.