MBF Dehacked Bot

[Btyb88]

Hi all!

 

I recently made a dehacked "Computer Player" for MBF in what I believe is a novel way which allows the Bot to move and attack with accurate sprites. Instead of using a single defined 'Walk' and 'Attack' state, I set up multiple undefined states that rely on 'SpidRefire' (or any Refire really) and 'RandomJump' to check whether or not the bot can see the Player as well as when to attack and which attack to use. The end result is a pretty convincing Bot when you consider it's all dehacked. I've searched around to see if anyone has done this before, but if not the same method could be used to make other types of move-attack monsters or monsters that have different behavior based on if they see the player or not. I've also tested a vanilla Doom version which works, albeit with a single constant attack because of the lack of 'RandomJump'. Here is the .bex as well as a test map.

 

MBFCompPlayerFix.rar

 

Edit:

Credit for the attacking marine sprites goes to Mark Quinn and Anthony Cole???

Edited January 2, 2020 by Btyb88

[Edward850]

38 minutes ago, Btyb88 said:

Credit for the attacking marine sprites goes to Sergeant_Mark_IV from Brutal Doom.

I am 99% confident that Sgt Mark did not make those sprites. Though good luck finding out who did given his complete lack of interest in properly crediting anybody.

[Gez]

Possibly from @Ghastly who IIRC did a lot of marine sprite edits with various weapons way back then, or alternatively from there: https://realm667.com/index.php/en/beastiary-mainmenu-136-69621/doom-style-mainmenu-105-73113/1937-allied-marines-pack#credits

[NiGHTMARE]

IIRC Mark Quinn and Anthony Cole did the earliest ones, which you can find in the Marine Skins Pack here: http://www.doomlegends.com/emporium/skinpacks.html. It's the basis for the Realm667 pack, and I suspect at least some of Ghastly's are based on them.

[Btyb88]

14 hours ago, Edward850 said:

I am 99% confident that Sgt Mark did not make those sprites. Though good luck finding out who did given his complete lack of interest in properly crediting anybody.

I had never seen those sprites outside of Brutal Doom so I kind of just assumed. Edited the OP to credit Mark Quinn and Anthony Cole.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Btyb88 said:

I had never seen those sprites outside of Brutal Doom so I kind of just assumed. Edited the OP to credit Mark Quinn and Anthony Cole.

And here is the exact reason why Mark should have credited the proper authors in the first place. Its literally just a few lines in the bottom of a text file, not rocket science.

 

But alas, if you do not care about that, then yeah. Its partially why its difficult to seperate his body of work with his actual character. I can respect the former for popularizing a new niche in Doom, but i have troubles with the latter, and failing to credit authors is one of the lesser evils really.

[Revenant100]

What port did you test this in? This DeHackEd patch will actually crash MBF and most MBF-compatible ports immediately upon map load because the bot's initial Spawn state is set to "Chase" before it's acquired any target. GZDoom seems to be the only port that permits such an error. However, this issue can be very trivially fixed by adding even just a single-frame looping "Look" state as its Spawn state, basically like a normal monster. It can't chase anything without a target anyway, so I can't conceive of any functionality difference by doing this.

 

Otherwise, the effect works great. With the above suggested fix, I can confirm it even works in the original DOS version of MBF.

[Btyb88]

9 minutes ago, Revenant100 said:

What port did you test this in? This DeHackEd patch will actually crash MBF and most MBF-compatible ports immediately upon map load because the bot's initial Spawn state is set to "Chase" before it's acquired any target. GZDoom seems to be the only port that permits such an error. However, this issue can be very trivially fixed by adding even just a single-frame looping "Look" state as its Spawn state, basically like a normal monster. It can't chase anything without a target anyway, so I can't conceive of any functionality difference by doing this.

 

Otherwise, the effect works great. With the above suggested fix, I can confirm it even works in the original DOS version of MBF.

I was afraid of that. I had originally tested with the Look frames in PrBoom but didn't think to do that this time as this is a cleaned up version. Thanks for the test! Will upload a fixed version soon.

[Btyb88]

Ok, uploaded a fixed version tested in Prboom. It should be all good now.