Bot AI

[Cpt-Praxius]

Originally Posted by omniconsumer

Jebus, if RO2 bots are leaps and bounds above the RO bots then I am glad I never played any bots in that game. Thankfully, there were always plenty of servers and players when that game was popular and beginning.

Indeed the bots in Red Orchestra Combined Arms and Red Orchestra Ostfront were absolutely horrible and were more for target practice. The devs mentioned many times in the past that they never put much work into the bots in those games because RO was geared towards being a multiplayer game, not single player..... but that in turn made the game difficult for players to get into as the practice/SP mode didn't give new players much to work with in regards to how the game actually played..... and when you popped online for the first time, you just continually got skool'd.

They would follow most orders, but they didn't use many tactics, if any at all, and all just walked in a straight line to objectives like lemmings, making them very predictable. They never ran, they just walked.... they rarely used iron sights and just hip shot the entire time, they couldn't use MG's, grenades or anti-tank rifles/Panzerfausts very well, if at all. If they saw an enemy, they didn't care who else was in front the of them & just unloaded their weapons in that direction, killing friend and foe, bot or human.

They could use the vehicles pretty well, but again, they didn't care who was in their way and just rolled over anything in their path, friend or foe.

Their accuracy was kind of similar to what's currently in RO2 depending on their difficulty setting however.

If you were in a tank and trying to target the enemy, usually a bot would hope into your tank and start to drive off to some random location, screwing up your aiming ability and usually leaving you as an easy kill.

You could order them to get out of the tank, and they would, but then a few seconds later, they'd hop back in and drive off again.

If the bots were even half *** good as the ones in, let's say, Ghost Recon, then I would be happy. I can't imagine having fun playing single player ro2 with those dumb bots.

I don't really make a stink about it because AI in itself is very complicated, but I would like to have fun playing against the computer which I can not in their current state.

Well I certainly don't mind them and play often against them when I can't get online or find a populated server.... but since my SP Campaign & Offline Matches are screwed up since the last patch (stuttering movement) that area of the game is not available for me cuz it's too annoying to try and play with a jittery moving character.

[Frostedfire]

the best part of those bots was their crazy accuracy with the mgs in hedgehog/farm, drive around in a halftrak and watch a bot gunner get crazy kills

on improving the bot ai, I've thought about this and the main improvements would be
--> a "field of vision" that it can try to identify shootable targets in, so I don't get the ai slinging headshots over its shoulder to me at the top of the grain elevator
--> a cone of fire, at least so that it can 'miss' me at 3m (before the inevitable shuffle-shuffle-stab ), but the shot doesn't go 45 degrees out of the barrel as a result :\
--> a decent movement system, so they do something when shot at besides running back and forth. Even if it's just using the sprint every now and then, or hitting the deck in an attempt to avoid bullets so they appear to actually react to the environment rather than droning on toward the point

[Ducky]

Originally Posted by Cpt-Praxius

---SNIP---
There's only really four major issues with the bots:

• Snap head shots when they're not even facing you.
• Ninja Melee Attacks that pretty well kill you in one hit every time & very difficult to avoid or counter due to their reflexes.
• Getting stuck in certain areas of maps.
• Not following Attack/Defend orders very well except for "Follow Me" and "Go Here" orders, which they respond to pretty well.

One more:

• Bots should throw grenades too

[Cpt-Praxius]

Originally Posted by Ducky

One more:

• Bots should throw grenades too

I think they always had problems with grenades.... if my memory is correct, right around one of the very first releases of the UT2k4 mod, they did use grenades, but too many people complained that they were killing everybody around them, so they then patched them so that they never had them in their inventory.

It's pretty difficult to properly code a bot to throw grenades accurately, rather than a straight lined sight of aim.... ie: someone is in the window above you, so you need to aim upwards and slightly above the target for distance.....

I know the bots/ai in other games can use grenades, though how they use them is the question.

[Ducky]

Originally Posted by Cpt-Praxius

I think they always had problems with grenades.... if my memory is correct, right around one of the very first releases of the UT2k4 mod, they did use grenades, but too many people complained that they were killing everybody around them, so they then patched them so that they never had them in their inventory.

It's pretty difficult to properly code a bot to throw grenades accurately, rather than a straight lined sight of aim.... ie: someone is in the window above you, so you need to aim upwards and slightly above the target for distance.....

I know the bots/ai in other games can use grenades, though how they use them is the question.

Correct. One time I started with a small mutator that made the bots use nades too, but they seem not to be aware of their team-mates and the radius of the damage. They would throw a nade at an enemy even if a friendly was standing next to him.

I gave up on that mutator, but still should bots be able to throw nades, because it would make them a bit more realistic.

[Major_Day]

Originally Posted by Cpt-Praxius

I think they always had problems with grenades.... if my memory is correct, right around one of the very first releases of the UT2k4 mod, they did use grenades, but too many people complained that they were killing everybody around them, so they then patched them so that they never had them in their inventory.

It's pretty difficult to properly code a bot to throw grenades accurately, rather than a straight lined sight of aim.... ie: someone is in the window above you, so you need to aim upwards and slightly above the target for distance.....

I know the bots/ai in other games can use grenades, though how they use them is the question.

Don't forget about the suicidal satchel throwers in RO,where they would throw the satchel straight up in the air and blow themselves to pieces,hilarious,unless you happened to be strolling by at the time..........lol

[Cpt-Praxius]

Originally Posted by Ducky

Correct. One time I started with a small mutator that made the bots use nades too, but they seem not to be aware of their team-mates and the radius of the damage. They would throw a nade at an enemy even if a friendly was standing next to him.

I gave up on that mutator, but still should bots be able to throw nades, because it would make them a bit more realistic.

If you could program them so that they could throw them at certain times during certain situations (rather than try for every situation) that might work.

For example, when they usually take cover behind a wall and shoot, they could blind-fire grenades down the hallway or over sandbags..... still could end up ticking some real players off when a bot tosses a grenade as they run down a hall, only to have it roll by their feet and kill them.... but TW seemed to have fixed the issue of them shooting at enemies while you are in their line of fire, so perhaps something similar could be done.

[AtheistIII]

If you were in a tank and trying to target the enemy, usually a bot would hope into your tank and start to drive off to some random location, screwing up your aiming ability and usually leaving you as an easy kill.

You could order them to get out of the tank, and they would, but then a few seconds later, they'd hop back in and drive off again.

Can't say any more on this topic than this guy...
Gernot Hassknecht - 1 Jahr Schwarz-Gelb - YouTube
Don't know how often the single Bot in my team killed me by driving me away...



btt:
Bots using nades (and maybe smoke) properly would be awesome, but if that goes wrong it would be plain horrible :-P

but TW seemed to have fixed the issue of them shooting at enemies while you are in their line of fire, so perhaps something similar could be done.

In this case the wallhacking abilitys of the bots could be used in a more descrete way maybe by detecting near friendlys instead of enemys