Comments on: Left 4 Dead Left Behind

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:54:11 +0000

I wasn’t trying to be pedantic btw, I was just curious as I recall some quake bots being pretty advanced back in the day.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Sun, 25 May 2008 00:13:10 +0000

My wish: Team Fortress 2 bots, each one actually working with a class-appropriate personality, with more chatter added to make everything work.

AI smart enough to play a spy convincingly? Or support as a medic? Or defend as an engineer? Or ambush as a Pyro/Demo man? I think you've a long wait on that one tbh. AI is easy to spot after a while, and easy to outwit.

By: silvrstar

silvrstar — Sat, 24 May 2008 20:28:15 +0000

My bad, I meant the Half-Life ‘GoldSrc’ Classic TF.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:47:43 +0000

By original do you mean Quake?

By: silvrstar

silvrstar — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:27:09 +0000

Actually, the original, ‘Classic’ TF had some excellent unofficial bots. Classes worked and assisted each other pretty well, arguably better than their human counterparts. Even the spy and medic classes were skillfully implemented.

I can’t say the same for TF2 as I haven’t played that, but I’d assume that with it’s gameplay changes, it’d pass as a whole new game.

By: Y3k-Bug

Y3k-Bug — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:49:13 +0000

I *think* it was stated in the TF2 commentaries that they didn’t add bots because they couldn’t get them to facilitate the whole team play aspect of the game. The bots you see in a game like Counter-Strike are in a game that’s team deathmatch.

There’s a world of difference between team play and team deathmatch, which makes it that much harder to put a bot together for teamplay.

By: Dominic White

Dominic White — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:14:59 +0000

Something else to keep in mind: Valve have apparently been after Turtle Rock for some time, but TR only agreed to be bought up along with L4D.

One thing we can look forward to in future Valve projects is most likely vastly improved AI. Ever play CS:S with bots? They’re some of the best artificial teammates out there, full of useful battle chatter and even whoops and cheers when they win.

Given that the big gimmick of L4D is the AI (mappers just create the map itself, place a couple of checkpoints for players, and set beginning/end points, and the AI ‘director’ populates and scripts everything randomly and on the fly), it seems quite reasonable that we’re going to be seeing smarter characters in Source engine games in the future. Shouldn’t take too much effort to port AI code from one Source game to another, or so I’d assume.

My wish: Team Fortress 2 bots, each one actually working with a class-appropriate personality, with more chatter added to make everything work.

By: Bitkari

Bitkari — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:41:55 +0000

I’m very happy to leave TR/Valve up to their own devices on this one.

By: Optimaximal

Optimaximal — Sat, 24 May 2008 10:27:51 +0000

If only someone had told Crytek that.

They did… repeatedly…

By: macc

macc — Sat, 24 May 2008 09:59:35 +0000

Hi! A little off subject, but here's a new really good article from Doug Lombardi on PC gaming. Should be on the frontpage actually: Part 1 Part 2 of the interview is on L4D, Steamworks and future plans etc (but I don't read Ep3 anywhere, darn!): Part 2

By: RPS

RPS — Sat, 24 May 2008 09:21:17 +0000

Please don’t feed the troll, folks.

By: yutt

yutt — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:30:12 +0000

Doug Lombardi is an extremely slim man. Some people make the most nonsensical insults.

http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/doug-lombardi.jpg

Could Mario be IP banned forever so our eyes are no longer tainted by his vitriolic idiocy?