bZDoom and various bots

[CoTeCiO]

I got curious and I wanted to try out every version of Doom that has bots in it and compare them, just to kill some time. So far I managed to get every port that I know of that has them, except for bZDoom.

 

I have been unable to find any link to it, archive.org was a dead end, this site, Google and idgames too, and the only person that I know has claimed to have it (or had it at one point) is @RestlessRodent, but apparently she left the community some time ago.

 

So anyone has it? Or has it fallen into the realm of long lost Doom stuff?

 

In case anyone is interested, these are the ports I have so far, so if you know of one that I don't have here, let me know!

• Zandronum (I don't think they have done any changes to the bots since the Skulltag days)
• GZDoom
• ZCajunBot
• CajunBot
• DoomBot
• OPNDoom (someone claimed this could be used to play in co-op but no luck getting that to work so far)
• Doom Legacy (supposedly there are some modified bots for it for older versions but I've been unable to find those either, the file name is acbot141.zip)
• AutoDoom (well, this one works in co-op, not DM, but still)
• Deathbot

 

I have ZDaemon as well but I don't think they have updated the bots in any way.

 

I thought of reporting my preferences and thoughts but I think it's pretty pointless considering development on bots stalled years ago and some of these ports are nearing 20 years since last updated (holy shit!)

[-TDRR-]

There's ZDoomBot and those things are real monsters to play with.

[ketmar]

my sourceport, k8vavoom, has bots too. but they aren't working in the current build (i already fixed that in git, but new build is not uploaded yet).

 

p.s.: they are dumb af, though. ;-) also, they don't know what coop is.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

I think there was a Marshmallow Doom or something like that that was supposed to have bots, too.

[-TDRR-]

Which one of these is the best?

Also, could you provide some download links?

[CoTeCiO]

 

5 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I think there was a Marshmallow Doom or something like that that was supposed to have bots, too.

Ah yeah, I was reading about it and does indeed mention bots. I'll add it to the list.

 

3 hours ago, -TDRR- said:

Which one of these is the best?

Also, could you provide some download links?

I still don't try every port (I still need to try OPNDoom, Legacy, DeathBot and Marshmallow), but so far I'd say maybe ZCajunBot/CajunBot or DoomBot/ZDoomBot. They are pretty challenging, but bear in mind that both ports are from the early 2000's and don't like modern systems very much and tend to crash, particularly ZCajunBot.

 

Also, if you're interested in customizing your bots, you're out of luck with ZDoomBot, OPNDoom, Doom Legacy, AutoDoom and DeathBot, unless you pick up a hex editor and look for the names in the middle of the exe files. With ZDoomBot and OPNDoom you can edit their names and their colors to a certain extent, with Legacy you can edit their names, their colors are there somewhere and if you find them you could potentially change them but I haven't found them yet. I've read that the Legacy bots really shine when you play in Nightmare, otherwise they're nothing special.

 

Zandronum, GZDoom, AutoDoom, Doom Legacy, ZDaemon and Marshmallow Doom are active ports, and a search in Google will lead you right to their homepages with download links, as for the rest, ZCajunBot, CajunBot, ZDoomBot, OPNDoom and DeathBot are there. Some ZDoom-based ports might ask you for ptc.dll and hermes.dll, those files are contained in ZDoom 1.22. For DeathBot you need to copy the files over a copy of DOSDoom.