Bot Psychology

[sektor2111]

I've seen bots do some crazy things that would make you scratch your head and wonder...but at the same time I've seen some real stupid repetitive stuff.

That's the same bot code which is not different if it's the same and mappers are doing STATIC paths - the same wrong paths. As result all effects are the same especially when a path has a wrong angle to ledges heading into a wall or some column - it's always the same as long as no mapper bothers to add a kicker or ADMIN/USER itself doesn't do anything expecting a sudden change which won't occur just like that.

If you don't like Bots replace them.

[Gustavo6046]

This was actually pretty deep.

Pff. Don't flatter me (or accuse me of overthinking or something, I guess). I went too much into details, but I noticed that and put the important stuff in the beginning of each paragraph, in bold. I did that so it could be clearer, and was aware enough to make sure I didn't miss any fundamental bits in the bold part, whilst still making the details interesting. I guess I went into tangents too much, but that's-a me! Couldn't help myself, tee-hee. Apologies! Gee! Apogee!.... *ahem*.

Or maybe you mean something else, like maybe you think it is rich in information and says a lot about bots? (It doesn't say that much, really. Mostly explains concepts that would be somewhat basic to more technical people in this field and whatnot.)

Heck, tell me if I sound condescending. I do sometimes -- I am not the best at communication and putting my point across -- and this sounds like the kind of reply that would come across as highly condescending and r/iamverysmart material. My bad!

That's the same bot code [...]

Exactly. Bad bot behaviour is the mapper's fault, 90% of the time. Although bots can exhibit quirky behaviour at times, and I wish Polge didn't just do a ReaperBot in UnrealScript and really just let his ideas flow into the whiteboard. Imagine very simple machine learning routines, that were super straightforward on their own but together made bots formidable opponents... a system for learning good camping places, another for prioritizing certain movement properties (jumpiness/strafiness/run-walk-crouch) near certain NavigationPoints... Eh, 90s software design, what can I say!

Mostly unrelated note on Quake bots. Nowadays you'd try the FrikBot instead. It's pretty cool, and even has a node editor ingame! Unreal didn't have that! Well, I guess it did at one point. I vaguely remember someone talking about an ingame node plopping mutator type thingy at the (now half-functional) BeyondUnreal Unreal Wiki. Anyways.

[papercoffee]

Or maybe you mean something else

I mean your approach to differentiate a mind from an algorithm. And the summarising of the fragile but also nearly indestructible network we call a mind.

Concluding, Psychology is trying to untangle the fabric of our minds, yet it's the most knotted and twisted cloth we have ever met. Pretty much the opposite of how Bots operate - no psychology goes into search, seek, kill.

[Gustavo6046]

Ah. I wasn't talking about the toughness. A brain is an enormous pattern, but at the end of the day this pattern is just the brain cell copy-pasted billions or trillions of times. This pattern isn't just any random one, though; it's learned to become just the right one to form our mind, capable to make decisions and store memories and perform logic and lots of other cool things. The difference between this and an algorithm is that an algorithm is predetermined, clear-cut; it is not the result of learning, that is, of starting from a clean slate and improving itself. It was strictly made by someone else. We are the gods of bots, we made them exist, we made their consciousness. Or perhaps only Steve Polge is. Go figure.

Now whether the consciousness resides solely in the brain itself is a rabbit hole in and of itself, so uh, I think I'll pass on that one. If that interests you, this video will be fun.

[MEAT]

Bots/bot pathing, in most if not all maps, is very preditable.
But I love playing cat and mouse with them...where you tease them into following
you into uncharted parts of a map. And at times they really look like or act like they are out of
their comfort zone. They want to retreat back to their orginal bot pathing or at times they
just stop and seem confused.
(you can tell I have a lot of time on my hands)
But if you can figure out bots it makes for an easy kill or win.

[sektor2111]

Predictable because nobody cares about toggling paths using a "StochasticTrigger" or something similar. Such a toggling class was in that "Texture" called "Chronoshift" if I well recall, a dumb sharing, made it as UTX but it's not a Texture in any way. Functions don't need to be simulated, a client don't need anything from A.I. tasks... A good and small MyLevel has great effects but I don't see too much interest at all. All is "awesome" and "good looking"...
Usually if a map claims as being better at paths you need a few games for figuring "desired" routes and then... it goes easy...

When paths are toggled and something from map is engaging pruning/translocations all goes different... less predictable

These days I was thinking at a storing strategy for several reserved reachspecs somewhere in map and dropping them randomly over the same nodes making things to be different from a game to another but... I'm not sure how well I can manage this randomization and it's time consuming... Map would need an INI... and some smarter admins, etc. There are solutions, probably I'm not very good at creativity chapter here... I can go for TWO navigation networks and choosing one of them based on certain condition... I think options are way more than I can imagine... and these doable for plain UT436 - of course it will be more manual work to do, automated devs won't do such jobs, at least... not today.