[BOTS] Error: weapon number out of range

[Punky Ocks]

So...  As a Quake III Arena player and pretty intelligent editor-type-person, I noticed that if ya import Quake III bots right into OpenArena, lots of interesting things happen if you use them in skirmishes and online.

- Every time they fire their weapon, "Error: weapon number out of range" is broadcast to everyone in the chat window and console.
- The bots tend not to move much, if at all, usually only moving when someone's within shooting range and/or their line of sight.
- Bots don't use any other weapon besides the map default. (Usually the machine gun.)

A friend of mine and I looked into this recently, but my friend came to an obvious conclusion, to which he states:
"It looks like that file's trying to define the bot's weapon preferences.  However, the constants it's trying to define are different than what OpenArena's expecting.  It's a wonder he's inserted into the arena as a bot at all, as it looks like part of that should throw an error as it shouldn't find one of the files.  The same thing happens with the i file, but that's item weights.  Of course, if it has problems reading THOSE, that could be a good reason why the bots appear to be standing still and/or barely moving when you were playing them: They just didn't know what to do."

While I can't give you folks a solution to this problem (as I don't know what vairables and definitions you guys use instead of the Quake III ones), I can definately give you folks this information about it.  I know that OpenArena isn't Quake III Arena, but either a little more compatability between the two or absolutely no compatability would solve a lot of problems like this.  I'm sure there are Quake III maps that have problems like this, too...

Just something to think about! 

Oh!  Alternately, if there's a way to disable "debug" messages like that, feel free to tell me!  It's not quite a perfect solution, but it's a good temporary fix for those of us who just hate seeing our consoles flooded.  XD

[dmn_clown]

It's not so much a compatibility issue, as it is an issue with people giving bots a zero value to the gauntlet.  I wrote the fuzzy logic in a way that would force the bots to switch weapons when their target was out of range namely because it's fairly dumb (for lack of a better word) for a bot to empty a shotgun magazine at a target that is well out of the effective range of the shotgun something that id's bots do quite often.

[Punky Ocks]

I'm not exactly sure how or if that answers my question...but lemme give you an example of what I'm talking about.

- I start a Single Player game.
- I select Skirmish.
- I select the map "Kaos2".
- I remove the default bots by clicking the "Bot" rows until they turn to "....".
- I change the first "...." back to "Bot".
- I click the name area.
- I select "Homie", a custom bot made for Quake III Arena.
- I click "Fight".
- If I'm near him (but not within viewing distance), I hear him taunt.
- If I get within his line of sight (in front or to the side, but not behind him), he starts attacking.
- If I leave his sight, he stops moving.
- Every single time his machine gun fires a bullet, I get the aforementioned error message.
- If I kill him, he respawns but again, doesn't move.
- He also doesn't even try to chase after weapons, power-ups, or otherwise if I'm within his line of sight, though he will bob and weave.

His "gauntlet" value isn't set to zero, if you look at his bot file, so that can't be it. (I can't even see why people would do that.  Bots sometimes live that long and run dry on ammo!)  Even that still wouldn't explain why the error is "weapon number out of range"...unless you don't use 0-10 for your values in OpenArena, which could be the cause of incompatability.  I dunno...

On another note, he (and other Quake III bots) actually do go flag-hunting in OpenArena, but as with deathmatch modes, they never grab power-ups, health-ups, or anything unless it's entirely accidental.  The only thing they'll actively seek is the flag, and that's only if they're assigned to do so and someone else hasn't already grabbed it.  If they somehow die while carrying the flag, they simply won't grab it again, even if it's right next to them.

[RudyRailer]

I have the same and its 2 years later

[sago007]

I have the same and its 2 years later

It is less than 1½ years later.

You can possibly find other posts about it. Like the missionpack menu files, the Quake 3 bot files was never freely released. Dmn_clown created them from scratch using a some additional literature about fuzzy logic and how Quake 3 bots could be made smarter.

I don't really understand the bot files but maybe someone can find a way to give sensible default values.