Last updated 12/04/01
Site contents Copyright © 1999-2001 Mel Grubb II 
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Things I've learned about killing imaginary creatures |
11/20/98:
11/13/98
11/5/98:
Regarding Id's apparent quest to encrypt/obfuscate the Q3A network
traffic/Demo specs I say, expose everything, no encryption, leave it the hell alone.
Look, we've all been on servers where someone starts shooting rockets out of their ass,
and you KNOW they are using a bot.
What do you do?
Personally, I ditch the server and take my gaming elsewhere. The guy using the bot
eventually will get tired of it because it has zero, I repeat ZERO entertainment value.
There is no challenge when playing a bot, it gets very dull, very quick. If
the server admin is the type that likes to watch, he may notice, and ban the lamer.
What we might need is a way to log comments to the server admin. And possibly automate some server-side recording.
User notices lamer shooting rockets out of his ass
User logs a complaint to the server.
Server records lamer for a few minutes, and generates a log, possibly embedded in the recording. Maybe even generate an email to the server admin.
Server admin reads mail, plays recorded demo, sees guy shooting rockets from his ass.
Server admin bans lamer.
We all live happily ever after.
This also opens up the possibility for bot servers. A contest to see
who can write the best bot. Everyone writes their best killer bot and takes it to a
bot server, and lets them beat up on each other for dominance. This encourages AI
programming which can then be turned into artificial opponents like eraser.
Maybe there could even be organized "Hands-off" marathon tournaments. The
participants hook their bots up to the server, and let them run wild for perhaps two days
straight through a variety of maps, and see who "Wins" at the end of it all.
Basically I am saying that trying to STOP people from writing and using bots is
impossible, so why try. Just make it more possible to detect, report, and ban
lamers. This should be a server-admin choice, though. They should always be
able to turn it off to allow for "Cyborg" servers where the players are
ENCOURAGED to use their bots.
Disallowing bots is like NASCAR disallowing certain engine advances. Rather than
bringing UP the level of programming skill (Engine building) on the part of the players,
this would allow ONLY advances in PLAYING skill (Drivers).
Exposing the interface and not prosecuting people for building maps is part of what made
FPS games take off in the first place. Those who were REALLY
good eventually got hired by the companies that made the engines, and now they get to do
it for a living. I see the same thing happening for bot-makers. Someone writes
a REALLY good bot, and the next year they are writing for id, making the artificial
opponents for Q4.
The holy grail of all this programming would be to invent the bot that plays SO human,
that it never gets reported to the server admin, and therefore
never gets banned. Isn't this exactly the sort of AI id would WANT in their next
game? A "Monster" that takes some damage, runs, hides, snipes,
camps, and makes human-like decisions about where to go and when?
There, I'm done now.
True Scripting:
It looks like I get my wish on this one as John Carmack has announced that the scripting
language will in fact be ANSI C.
This is a good thing, although it may raise the minimum processor requirements.
Model and skin uploading:
What good is a custom skin if no-one can see it? I'd like to make my own skin, and when I
connect to a server, it would upload to a server-side "skin-cache" where it
would be downloaded by the other players. Then I could make my own t-shirts and such for
the game, and switch them from day to day depending on my mood.
Wraith's Q2 configs page
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Last updated 12/04/01
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