Maniaplanet Forum

the concept sounds pretty promising. Seems like you can manage to create "serious" games (good old deathmatch) just as fun ones done with those power-ups and jumps etc. The graphic would be interesting though; to me it still seems to turn out like Battlefield: Heroes' comic style...a lousy screenshot by Gamestar would've been very helpful lol

It can't be that hard to get bots, what about Counter-Strike - you can build any map with the editor and when you start it and want to add bots, the game analyzes the map, and afterwards you can play against them.

I think I was being rather brash with my judgment.

I was thinking about this earlier: maybe what they meant was that there were no bots (as in AI controlled player entities), but there are NPCs (as in cannon fodder and grunts you can shoot that has some special AI abilities). If so. I completely change my mind on this and I apologize.

It can't be that hard to get bots, what about Counter-Strike

It would likely be harder than that as CSS doesn't take jump pads and the like into account. I don't think they should push themselves trying to add something if it is going to take too much time and money.

Haha, right...I'd much prefer they kick butt on this and get out a fully-polished multiplayer experience, then try to do some sort of singleplayer game and have other parts be less--finished. However, I'm sure there will be some sort of testing mode that you can at least make sure your map is functional. If it's going to be a shooter, you can be sure whatever map you make will be played in ways (possibly) unimagined by you, the map-maker. People will find cuts, new jumps, hideaways, etc., that you maybe didn't plan in...just like how some pro racers discover new cuts in maps now.

LOL I've already got some ideas for maps.

Haha, right...I'd much prefer they kick butt on this and get out a fully-polished multiplayer experience

I have to agree. If it is what they are aiming for, it is what they should do.

I originally had in mind other things for people to shoot at other than players. Which goes back to the NPCs topic. I'm sure zombie AI or antlion-like monster AI wouldn't be too hard to add, and would be great to put into objective-based maps if objects like 'spawners' and 'waypoints' existed.

wiidesire-2 wrote:

Unit2209 wrote: I am going to clear this up a bit.
Coding AI for ShootMania will not be as hard as you think. (If this game is like the older ones) Every map will be made of predefined blocks. A code can be made for each block for what the AI will do and how it will and act. The only down side is it will take TIME, so if they do this just expect it to take longer to do.

I dont think thats the problem to code runways for the bots on each block, but the problem is, the combination of blocks

when you have exactly 1 code for each block ( or many) and the next block is a wall, the bots have to know that there is a wall

that means every map must be coded in his own way, that means its not so easy

This can be fixed with a AI IF code. Like if Objects/blocks plain is over X amount of degrees the AI will aviod it.

Trackmaniack wrote:Haha, right...I'd much prefer they kick butt on this and get out a fully-polished multiplayer experience, then try to do some sort of singleplayer game and have other parts be less--finished. However, I'm sure there will be some sort of testing mode that you can at least make sure your map is functional. If it's going to be a shooter, you can be sure whatever map you make will be played in ways (possibly) unimagined by you, the map-maker. People will find cuts, new jumps, hideaways, etc., that you maybe didn't plan in...just like how some pro racers discover new cuts in maps now.

LOL I've already got some ideas for maps.

All we want is AI bots with a decent layout. Then we can make our own singleplayer. (And online co-op)

It's simple to code bots into premade maps, you can have premade behaviors. But what happens when you start introducing custom maps? And custom maps built in ways not envisioned by Nadeo? The system breaks.

Trackmaniack wrote:It's simple to code bots into premade maps, you can have premade behaviors. But what happens when you start introducing custom maps? And custom maps built in ways not envisioned by Nadeo? The system breaks.

Examples please. I just want to make shure you are not acting on a blind statement. (No Offense Really.)

The prime example that comes to mind is Halo. For many reasons. Primarily because of the immense problems they've had with trying to integrate bots with MP on the PC. (dunno how it's going on console as I don't own one) Two problems I'm gonna outline--one, the inability of bots to be properly coded for this game, and two, the weirdness of edited maps.
One of the features integrated into halo is aimbots...yes this is cheating, but bear with me. Even the best-programmed aimbots teamkill, jerk around, can't actually move on their own, and are basically more of a hindrance than a help. Strike #1 against bots.
Strike 2? The maps themselves. Often when you place a bot into a map it can't orient itself properly. And god forbid it should spawn someplace weird due to a glitch or not properly coding the bot in the first place...the whole match CTDs and everyone gets kicked from the server.

You say, But Trackmaniack, why are you even mentioning this? We wouldn't be programming the bots, Nadeo would. I say, this is true, to a degree. Yes, Nadeo would program the very basic behaviors of the bots in order to facilitate Maniascripting. But beyond that, you would have to program each individual response yourself, or risk having the bot respond in an unwanted manner to something that it couldn't predict. Or, if you go the other route, and have Nadeo analyze every possible permutation and situation the bot could run into, the game becomes delayed, unnecessarily complex, and generally disappoints fans. And, like has been said before, not everyone can Maniascript properly. So, what if you download a map for a new SP campaign that worked properly for the mapmaker, but he's not so good at coding and you do something different than he did when testing? The map breaks.