Completed Dodgeball bot idea (1 Viewer)

[Dom44]

Dodgeball bot idea:

I was thinking about including a bot when you are alone and no one is on the server?
I thought of it this morning while I'll was the only waiting for people to join, I have seen it on other servers before and found it fun while I waited for friends to join.

Have a think about it, like if you think its a good idea,

Thx Dom

 

[TBotV63]

Related: https://www.panda-community.com/threads/bot-for-ny-dodgeball.9770/

That discussion was never concluded. It appears as tho most people were in favor of it however.

My 2 cents:

I like the idea, but many players prefer to play against real players, which is imo the primary focus of dodgeball. So having a bot while there is only one person online I can understand. However people voting for the bot (often just out of frustration with their performance, don't ask me why, but that seems to happen a lot) can detract from other players' experience. So I'd either not allow voting and only have the bot on the server if there is only one player or set the vote margin required to enable it very high and the margin to disable it rather low. Because let's face it, I (and many others) come to panda to play against people. I have my own local server to play against a bot.

 

[Cryptic]

@TBotV63, I'm typically against bots, when there's a lot of players on the server; however, I believe in majority vote. If the majority of the server calls for a bot, so be it. Also, the entire high enable and low disable is flawed. It should be up to the majority to control, not minority. If you believe the majority of Panda come to play against other players, you shouldn't worry about it having to be high enable.

Also, how about juggernaut

 

[TBotV63]

@TBotV63, I'm typically against bots

Racist. I'm offended.

If you believe the majority of Panda come to play against other players

Let me rephrase then:

I never mentioned the majority. What I said is that the entire point of a multiplayer server is to play against others and not against a bot. I've played on servers that have bots. A lot. It typically just ends that frustrated (often newer players) vote to play against the bot. So, the bot joins the server as intended.

What ensues is a messy switchfest where the best players build up the rocket to high speeds (probably not as insane as I remembered them from where I played, but still) and the bot ends up switching to some other player due to the rocket's angle. The more players, the worse this gets. It becomes extremely frustrating for beginners and even intermediates to be slammed in the face by some random 200+ mph rocket over and over again.

These people then just end up watching others play against a bot. The only times I've ever seen a PvB work out for everyone was when everyone was equally skilled, and even then it only worked out up to 4 players.

So while I'm not 100% opposed to the idea of a bot, I feel it could harm the server by alienating players who don't like that style of game.

And even tho I can cope I personally don't enjoy it either, but thats another matter.

Also, how about juggernaut

Yes pls ty.

 

[Cryptic]

The reason why I said majority is because you said, "I (and many others) come to panda to play against people", which I agree with.

I also agree that there's always that one asshole, who switches the direction of the rockets, or steals/upspikes rockets going 200+. Nevertheless, that still occurs when playing against players.

I have two concerns about having the bot be disabled, when another player joins:

1. If a player wants an opportunity to practice with a bot, they'll have to play early mornings or late nights.
2. Some players, including myself, enjoy playing against a bot with friends.

If you're concerned about players, who switch or steal, I would suggest adding the option to vote for yourself to play last. ES, another dodgeball server, has this voting option. You can choose to enable it, before the round starts. Then when everyone on your team dies, players, who voted to enable last player, will be spawned one at a time.

 

[TBotV63]

The reason why I said majority is because you said, "I (and many others) come to panda to play against people", which I agree with.

I also agree that there's always that one asshole, who switches the direction of the rockets, or steals/upspikes rockets going 200+. Nevertheless, that still occurs when playing against players.

Many people get the rocket to a certain point and then cant control it anymore / someone moved in an unfortunate way and whoever had the rocket beforehand doesn't even have fault, etc... And there's often several people who end up in that unfortunate position before that one guy dies.

I would suggest adding the option to vote for yourself to play last.

While I like the general concept, that would probably make for pretty long roundtimes as, from experience, everyone wants to be last. But it certainly is an interesting option.

I have two concerns about having the bot be disabled, when another player joins:

Okay, to slap a name on it, I used to play a whole lot on AKOD (R.I.P ). There when you joined as a single player the bot would be automatically enabled and it would automatically be disabled once another player joined.

If the bot was present because players voted for it it would stay.

If a player wants an opportunity to practice with a bot, they'll have to play early mornings or late nights.

I can see that happening, and I know the feeling. However with a well-visited server such as panda it would be hard to actually practice anyway. (And playing against real players usually makes for better practice). That single player would be best off playing on a server of their own if they wanted that kind of practice. (That was my solution to the aforementioned problem anyway)

Some players, including myself, enjoy playing against a bot with friends.

I can see how that is fun. All I was proposing was a bias against the bot in votes. That way there actually needs to be a strong (relative...) majority that actually wants the bot and if the bot is to be disabled there needs to be a strong majority that is enjoying playing against the bot to be able to keep it. If your group can form a majority that is ok, if there are 3 people playing a game and you join with a group of four and turn on the bot, most would consider that rude. (Again, just my experience. You muricans are weird about how you play db anyway )

One way I've seen this issue solved by other communities was just to make a 24/7 bot server with the same physics as the main server.

 

[Dom44]

So is this a no go or thinking on it or is it a good idea personally reading some of your replies I think it could be voted? Or when it is you alone and if you want to practise against a bot I think another suggestion was made earlier about a whole other server based on a bot? Please reply and share ideas

 

[Cryptic]

One way I've seen this issue solved by other communities was just to make a 24/7 bot server with the same physics as the main server.

Why don't you just @GSN

Nah, I don't think another dodgeball server that's solely based on PvB is necessary. If another dodgeball server is added, I vote for it being a FFA server. Now that would be fun. I'm all for replacing the NY dodgeball server into a FFA dodgeball server

 

[TBotV63]

Why don't you just @GSN

Nah, I don't think another dodgeball server that's solely based on PvB is necessary. If another dodgeball server is added, I vote for it being a FFA server. Now that would be fun. I'm all for replacing the NY dodgeball server into a FFA dodgeball server

More scrubs to kill hmmm?

 

[Madact]

Though it's a nice idea I don't see why it's not a problem to just wait?
Tbh I'd rather wait then play with an OP bot and get dominated o.o

I've added a poll for now. Not sure how this will go anywhere as I don't think this is exactly necessary to add one. Plus I hope it's easy to add an airblasting bot? Do we have to do something special to the server for it? Is there much to it?

 

[TBotV63]

Adding a bot would be fairly easy. Nanobot is a reasonably solid solution that should work well with a few minor config tweaks.

 

[Baka]

Playing with a bot is generally a good idea to sharpen your skills, but it doesn't seem to do much since majority of the players actually move whereas the bot literally just stands still. If we can somehow make a decent .nav file for the pyro bot, then it might be a bit more challenging.

 

[TBotV63]

The bot moving randomly (if at all) is probably as good as it's going to get then tho (unless someone here finds the time and motivation to write a proper ai for the bot). And if it's just going to randomly tapdance around the map it might aswell just stand in one place.

What really makes the bot "easy" and predictable is the fact that it just airblasts rockets at the angle they came in for the most part. So if you'd actually want to make the bot hard it'd have to do stuff with the rocket, at which point I really question its usefulness for training if It's going to move around with 0 reproducability.

 

[YourBiggestFan]

Why is this thread necessary we already have a bot @TBotV63?

 

[Madact]

Right I'll ask for it to be looked into. Don't expect miracles.

Closed.

 

[Kevin]

has been added, active on all db servers.