June 2004

As I get emails asking me where far are the RACC, I believe a little news update is needed (thanks to Jean Ibarz for reminding me so!) Visible progress are available here. Among others, I will quote the AI console that allows me to debug the bot much more easily by displaying, in a certain manner, "what it thinks". The bots learn the map relatively easily, but the navigation proves itself to be not as accurate as what I expected. I made a mistake in overestimating the continuous evaluation capabilities of the bot. I thought it would be able to decide itself, at the right time, when to issue such or such jump or make whatever complicated movement else.
It is not only false but moreover very logical that it be so. Even the human perception is inaccurate and insufficient to guarantee the overcoming at 100% of any new obstacle. What does the rest is simply the memory. For my punishment, I shall dive again into AI Game Programming Wisdom, section 4, chapter 5: Annotating the Nodemap.
Apart that, Bots United is now at cruising speed. Many bots have joined us and we have started discussions over a common project: the United Bot (ha!)
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January 2004

Looks like Bots United is taking a pretty good start! I'm currently working my ass off to have something playable to release soon. The navigation of the bots is going better and better, and they know now a bit of their duties. I've been dividing the cognitive part of the AI on goals, tasks, desires and duties ; it works quite well so far. Oh and also I've updated that good 'ole HPB_bot from botman, to make it support Steam and shooting monsters. It's now officially a metamod plugin. You can get it here.
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December 2003

We're at the end of the year... I haven't done much of coding these days due to the work that needed to be done at Bots United for the opening of the forums. The site is ready to open and rock the house! Meet there on january 1st ;) In the meantime... merry Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
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November 2003

I've released a new version of my bleeding plugin (version 2.0) for metamod. This version adds a really cool effect for big headshots. You can't miss it! :) There's also a new plugin on the list: nextmap, which adds the "nextmap" server command to any MOD, so that you can switch immediately to the next map in the map cycle file. Also, don't miss out the opening of Bots United, the future #1 reference site for the FPS bot community!
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October 2003

Good news for coders! Don't miss out this navmesh tutorial that will show you how to implement easily an efficient navmesh in your FPS bot. A navmesh is an accurate representation of the world for bots, that enable them to play on any map as they learn it in a similar way humans do. E-mail me whenever you have a question, I'll be glad to help :)
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September 2003

The project goals and methods have been lowered a bit. I decided to temporarily give up the engine abstraction method that was causing unacceptable lag, and the work on the cognitive AI have gone nowhere much further than conceptual tests. Although all the tests were conclusive, this work is demanding too much time and is too much reliant on the rest of the project that everything has to be ironed out first. Currently problems still remain with the navigation, but chances are that they will be solved soon. The sensitive, motile and memory parts of the AI are nevertheless terminated (and it works terrificly well). I have released an updated version of the playable preview, in which I merged most of the contents of the template, for coders to have something playable to start with, and gamers to have an improved version of the still best waypointless bots. They have anyway so far nothing really comparable to what the real RACC will be. As usual, THIS VERSION IS NOT AN OFFICIAL RELEASE. It is far from being perfect, but hopefully interesting enough for everybody.
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