Bot positioning
 

I want to suggest some ways to improve the bots, mostly to do with how they path and position. In general, the bots don't seem to know or care about positioning. If you have multiple bots and send them to attack something, they all just stack onto eachother in the same space and attack. Obviously, this looks funny. I suggest, if possible, giving the bots some awareness of eachothers' space so that they spread out and maybe encircle a mob when attacking, if possible. This is probably a little easier said than done since the bots will have to consider walls and cliffs, but it seems like it would make them more fun to use.

A similar thing happens when you spawn the bots. They default all to the same following distance, so you end up being followed by this freaky mutant composite of x number of bots all occupying the same space. I have macros set up so when they spawn they each take up a different follow distances, but it might also be cool to allow them to take formations when possible, like cluster behind you, line up behind you, form a v, or even try to walk in front of you when possible.

I don't think we need to concern the bot developer(s) with aesthetic concerns. Yeah it would be cool if the bots made a cute circle but what function does it serve? There are many ways to functionally improve the bots and such improvements are a much better way of spending the developer(s)' time.

I guess I can agree with that.

I did that when spawning bots and it looked very nice, but because it has to find the best z value for each bot, it becomes very expensive for what it was worth, especially when spawning a full raid. If I saved the code I could post it for others, but I don't think it will get put into the svn.

I didn't really think about it for Raids. I could see how that would be a disaster for smooth gameplay if 70 something bots were trying to keep eachother's positions in mind.

But what about just including it for a small group or two?

Maybe you could check for the number of bots already spawned and only do it for the first 5 or whatever bots. After that though, you'd just have the congealed mass o' bots we currently have.

I'm sure it would run better on an actual server and not my patchwork 8 year old used to be desktop acting as a server. But if you have a few characters with a few bots each, it would add up fast. Especially it they tried to keep their space at all times.

Bad Captain I would like to see those changes, maybe for just my server. We are limited to 5 bots so it would really not be expensive for us on resources, plus we are low population.

And while I am here, thanks for everything. We are enjoying all of your recent changes.

I think I also didn't consider that in a public server, potentially every logged in account could have a number of bots. That could also get bad.

I run my own server just by myself, so unless I ran a bot raid, I wouldn't really ever have more than 5 or so bots. That might be of too limited applicability to warrant changing the code, but I thought it would be pretty cool. Maybe it could be something you could enable or disable based on your server settings.

It is not a big deal either way. I think all of us have a practical approach to EQ. We are used to mobs dropping from the sky, killing something and the body falling below the terrain. You just get used to the quirkiness of it. EQ is not perfect and does not claim to be.

I'll see if I can find the code and add a rule (default to off). Even if I can't find the code, it shouldn't be too hard to duplicate.

But what I did was for spawning only, mostly so I could view and mouse select any bot I wanted. It would need to be updated for movement, as after they moved, they would be clumped up again.

Regardless, I'll see what I can do.

provocating, I'm probably just getting greedy then. I do like to try and appreciate the impressive work that's already been done when I can.

Sourdough35,

I know this is a old post but I was wandering what command you used to set the follow distance for your bots.

Thx

#bot setfollowdistance xxxx

xxxx being the number you want to set, i find that increments of 1000 work ok for me, adjust as you see fit. make sure you target the bot first

Werebat thanks for the reply :)