Could something like this be either useful or even doable in Vavoom?
This tutorial is mainly about setting the bots to have difficulties to target players in dark areas, such as a real human player would. Would this be possible to translate easily to KA? If not wanted in KA for gameplay reasons, I would be very interested in improvements on general computer characters' perception, for the future Mod...

http://www.inside3d.com/qctut/bip1.shtml

What can you wizards tell me anout this topic?

I believe I saw some variables that allow to know current sector (or subsector) lighting level. However, I am not sure about static light things. Anyway, if there is a way to know lighting level at a point, it is possible to make what you are asking for. (And there are already algorythms for monsters to miss while shooting into invisible player).

This looks interesting , I'll check it out and see what can be done with the current progs, as Crimson Wizard says, the bots already detect the sectors light level, but it doesn't works with static lights, I don't know if this could be done, the bots also have difficulty settings for some of their basic actions (aiming, roaming, chasing, etc.), there's room for big improvements for some stuff, but we can make this gradually as it's being needed for more advanced gameplay modes .

I was thinking that the static lightning detection could be done by maybe looking for the actor that spawns the light and it's radius, it could make problems with missiles light, I'm unsure of this.

This may be wrong in case static light source is near but beyond a wall.

Thanks for the explainations and for showing interest. I'm not really requesting you guys to work on it, just that I saw this, thought this could be useful (could have some procedures you could use), and as plans on complex Bots are still on the way, I decided to bring this up.

I for one, adore an AI that is subjected to the same conditions than a human would (Thief comes to mind, as one of my all time favourite games, which has a pretty advanced computer AI with very realistic human-like senses).

I don't know if you guys already did that, but I was checking out the Skulltag pages, and they seemed content with their bot AI. Is that the same one applied to Vavoom MP? Did Janis use some Bot system or came up with his own routines?

The bots routines come directly from a very old version of the Skulltag bots, since the Skulltag Team hasn't released any newer version of their source code it's difficult to implement the newest bot AI they use, which is very bad, since their bots have almost perfect moving around the maps, I remember downloading the latest version of Skulltag and being surprised by the bots behaivour, it's very well made, the bots react to the players actions in some interesting ways, there is also a new script for making new bots and importing them to the engine, giving certain amounts to certain "bot properties" (aiming, accuracy, reaction speed, etc.), we already have these properties implemented in a basic form, with enough work we could even customize every bot available in the game to make it unique in attibutes and behaviour, but it still might require a bit more work, BTW Mago, have you tested the latest beta release? I'm sure you remember how stupidly the bots got the walls and get stuck, heh! There's a HUGE difference from that time to now, as I previously said, there's a lot of things to improve and modify and there's a lot more to add, but we are advancing on the AI part in a good measure .

They still have strangenesses; for example I tested Ancient Arena lots of time (because it is default for dm) and they often got stuck when spawned on the 2nd level of central part of map.

Firebrand - I have been following your wrok on the Bots AI and KA in general, I'm hugely surprise you can understand, organize and design so many things in such different areas (to think you began as a 2d artist!). But you are right, I haven't tested it for long months (mainly due to lack of HD space, yes I know it's only around 30 mega, my pc is that limited, I'm stuck with my old one), I'll be sure to give it a try today!!!

As for Skulltag - How come they havent released the code? Is that because they don't want it to be used by others? Or could it be they simply forgot to release it or are waiting to get something fixed before releasing a more finished version of the source? If you guys want I can send an e-mail their way explaining our project, I'm sure they would be willing to help, Doom still has quite a unified community. Unless of course Janis or other has already talked to them and no luck... Now you got me very curious about this!

AFAIK Carnevil, the project leader (which I know from a while on) is not completely sure of releasing the Skulltag source code because it involves networking protocols and functions that are involved in online playing, so for security reasons he won't release the source code, I don't know why he don't even "borrow" us the bots AI, we don't need the entire source code for it, just the bot files that are involved there, I have personally asked him about this, but I got no response from him .

Hmmm. Ok, let's hope for the best then. Thanks for the insight.

EDIT: PS- surely the e-mail didn't got blocked or something. Project e-mails usually are not often read, and usuallly got a lot of random mail so yours could have been overlooked. Maybe a private message or something could ensure the communication?

There's a slight chance this could have happened, since it was when Skulltag was changing their server from Doomworld to Skulltag.com, I'll try to reach him on the forums and see what happens, maybe just asking for the bots AI code could be better (that way no network code will be exposed).

I suddenly realised how to make this!
We are using a function CanSee to know whether monster/bot etc can see an object. So, if an actor can see a light source, this means that light source's light CAN reach actor. AND the actor is standing in the light.
So, Bot can see actor if actor is standing in light source's radius AND can see light source.
The same method is good to be used with glowing objects like missiles.

Yes! That should work for now, anyway I think Janis should make some changes in the game structure so server would also see static lights too, heh! .