Hello, just placing here a reminder for an idea which surfaced on Discord.
While developing the
milestone tribute mappack, we noticed that in the original
q3tourney6 map, bots behavior of shooting at the shootable button is an hack
hard-coded into gamecode by id software, which cannot be applied to other maps.
The code shows that, in case the name of the map fits, bots check if there are enemies (but not themselves or teammates) in the hardcoded coordinates of the crusher trap, and in that case, they start shooting at the hardcoded coordinates of the button. Hence, it's not possible to reproduce a similar behavior on other maps.
So, the idea would be t
o see if it may be possible to have bots shooting buttons. A
low priority thing of course, but in case someone wants to try looking into it, it may be nice.
So, some considerations:
- Bots might at least
randomly shoot at buttons by now and then, as at the moment it looks like to me that they
never to that. Or at least, I don't remember ever seeing them doing that (well, there are also very few maps with shootable buttons around), apart q3tourney6 where it is a map-specific gamecode "hack".
- Pay attention to do not make it shoot at there continuosly, in case the button is always visible like in q3tourney6ish maps...
- I don't know if it may be possible, or how hard it may be, to have bots learn the cause-effect relationship of shootable buttons, like to understand
when to shoot at them (e.g. shooting them when there is some enemy in the trap they activate, or shooting at them to open a door they wish to enter).
-- I think I've seen bots trying to enter a (push)button-activated door, finding out it won't open just running into it, then pushing a button nearby and opening the door. I don't know it that may be used as a starting point for a shootable-variant of the same. I don't know if bots activate button-activated traps knowing what's actually going on, or just randomly.
- I'm not sure if bots do actually try to push pushable buttons also on their own, or
only if there are item_botroam next to them. Surely item_botroam can be used to invite bots to randomly push buttons more often... but that cannot be applied to shootable buttons as item_botroam mimics something to pickup, not an enemy to shoot at.
-- Maybe an optional key like "shootme/1" on item_botroam, or a complete new entity, to suggest bots places where to randomly shoot? That starts to sound a bit complex...
- Even if we add in new gamecode the ability for bots to shoot at buttons, things like shootable-button-activated-doors
would still be a problem for bots when playing in any old mod, and map makers should use them carefully!
- Now that I think about it, I don't even know if bots do shoot at shootable-only
doors (func_door with health key)!
