Easiest Way to Play Against Bots These days?

[Hipnotic Rogue]

I know it's a complete noob question but after watching Super Bunnyhop's video on bots it got me interested in playing with bots in Quake.

I'm completely ignorant and have really no idea what I'm doing. Would someone mind giving me a step by step guide on how to play multiplayer Quake against bots?

I am currently using Quakespasm as my single player engine. Can I just use that to play against bots or do I need something more dedicated (like Zandronum is to Zdoom)?

Sorry for my noobish ways!

[Baker]

Frog bots

[Mr.Burns]

Hi,

There are already a number of free public multiplayer servers out there which have either BOTs or monsters which you and your buddies can join, play and generally blast to bits . The NewDM server (connect newdm.servequake.com:26010) has a range of ID and custom maps on which you can add or remove bots (using the command addbot or removebot) and set their skill level (using botskill n) to suit your needs.
If you want to play against some beefed up monsters on ID and custom maps then try the RQuake Co-op servers in New York (connect newyork.servequake.com:26001) or Belgium (connect flanders.servequake.com:26001)

If you want to run the multiplayer server yourself then you will need to get your hands on a Bot mod and I would suggest that you get that running on single player first. I used to play offline using the Reaperbots mods which was a case of creating a subdirectory underneath quake called reaper, drop the bot mod files in to that directory, add -game reaper to your normal quake command line, fire it up and blast away

Hope this helps

Monty

[Johnny Law]

For a guide, see Steam Community :: Guide :: Deathmatch With Bots (on hundreds of maps)

[Baker]

For a guide, see Steam Community :: Guide :: Deathmatch With Bots (on hundreds of maps)

The Frogbot link I provided blows away Frikbot X 7 days a week and works with standard Quake (DarkPlaces, Quakespasm, ProQuake, etc.)

You don't have to install "yet another engine (ezQuake)" just to play bots, that Frogbots link I provided has all the same map support as ezQuake FBCA (hehe ).

Frikbots suck bad --- they don't present an interesting challenge and are aggravatingly dumb and not even fun to fight.

The only nice thing about Frikbots is that you easily plug them into another mod if you are a QuakeC coder. That was what Frikbots were designed to be useful for.

[Baker]

Actually ...

I have to retract that.

Frogbots work fine in FitzQuake 0.85, Mark V, ProQuake, WinQuake, GLQuake, etc.

But apparently they did something to Quakespasm that broke it (I remember one of the team had a fascination with fiddling with cvar behaviors a few years ago in a way that standard WinQuake/GLQuake did not do).

And it used to work in DarkPlaces back a few years ago, but it will not run in current DarkPlaces.

So nevermind.

[Hipnotic Rogue]

Thanks for the replies folks.

I tried using frogbots but after following the instructions in the readme no bots were spawned. I typed in ADDBOT to the console but it didn't work. The game said I didn't have admin privileges...

I also looked up reaper bots and found a page with the download and instructions. I got up to 3 bots running but after that it said I had to set up privileges again?

Also, not a deal breaker but hitting TAB during the match only shows my score. How do I see everyone's score?

Again, sorry for asking what to you lot must seem like inane questions.

EDIT: So, I just noticed the above post. That'll be the reason for frogbots not working then! Thanks anyway.

[Baker]

Also, not a deal breaker but hitting TAB during the match only shows my score. How do I see everyone's score?

If you are using a standard bots mod like Frogbot or Frikbot X, have maxplayers set to something > 1 (-listen 8 sets maxplayers to 8 )

[I have never used Reaperbots, couldn't attest to how those work.]

EDIT: So, I just noticed the above post. That'll be the reason for frogbots not working then! Thanks anyway.

As a purist --- someone who believes that any classic Quake engine should be completely compatible with the original Quake --- I do find it a little annoying that something in Quakespasm has been broken that causes it to not run Frogbots correctly.

One of the authors a few years ago, who knew very little about Quake and Quake mods, perpetually came up with ideas for little small tweaks without testing it against a wide body of work. Fortunately, he did not do many of them because other engine authors warned against such random tweaking.

But truth be told, the percent of people these days that even know how to install a mod themselves is pretty low.

[Hipnotic Rogue]

Yeah, it's a shame when compatibility is lost for no real gain. I used to use your build of Mark V Winquake but since QS got proper support for controllers and it seems to be today's go-to engine I thought I'd move over to that.

I think I'll give Mark V a blast with Frogbots and see how I get on.

It strikes me as a little strange that by now there isn't a sourceport that has built-in bots. Seems to me a quickstart botmatch option in the menu would be a great gateway drug into online multiplayer which is the community's bread and butter (sorry to mix metaphors!).

RE: People's mod installation skill (or lack thereof) - Sadly, I'm not far from that either these days. The problem for me at least is that I just don't have the time or interest to remember all the little quirky things that older games tend to have. I'll spend a few months tweaking an old game to run well with mods I like then I won't touch it for ages and I've forgotten everything that I did to get things working. Memory retention certainly isn't the same for my adled brain these days!

[Baker]

It strikes me as a little strange that by now there isn't a sourceport that has built-in bots. Seems to me a quickstart botmatch option in the menu would be a great gateway drug into online multiplayer which is the community's bread and butter (sorry to mix metaphors!).

The real problem is there is a built-in bot. It's called globot.

And it is about Frikbot X quality.

I'm not saying Frikbot X is "bad", but Frogbots are so superior that once you compare and contrast, you never want anything but the Frogbots.

Globot is similar to Frikbot in that it is a baseline bot.

So there could be built-in bots, everyone has known about globots for ages --- and anyone serious (ezQuake for instance) wants the good bots like Frogbot (FBCA). Hence, no engine uses the globots.

Playing Frikbots is like fighting random incompetent monkeys, they would have to find a lightning gun and get lucky to be any kind of threat to a player that isn't freshly spawned.

[klown]

Is there anyways to get bots working with a dedicated server ran on a raspberry pi3?