Team Fortress 2 Adds AI Bots

25
As Valve continues to update and expand Team Fortress 2 PC, the latest addition to the two-year-old multiplayer shooter comes in the form of computer-controlled bots.

These "digital killing machines" are a "work-in-progress," Left 4 Dead creator Mike Booth revealed on the TF2 Official Blog, noting that their implementation is beta.

"TFBots are 'players', and take up player slots," explained Booth. "They run the exact same code that human players do, moving and firing weapons by pressing 'virtual buttons'. The bots have simulated humanlike senses, and only know what they see, hear, and touch. They also have realistic reaction times and aiming limitations. They don't 'cheat' or use omniscient knowledge of the server state to make their decisions."

In their current form, the bots can only play on three King of the Hill maps--koth_viaduct, koth_sawmill, koth_nucleus--and need to be spawned via console command. A graphical interface for bot spawning and control will be added soon, but until then:

  • To add bots to your game, use the console command tf_bot_add. This will drop a random bot onto a random team (assuming there is a free player slot). The tf_bot_add command can also take up to three optional arguments: count, class, and team, in any order. For example, tf_bot_add 10 will add 10 random bots to the game with auto-assigned teams. Typing tf_bot_add pyro blue will add a Pyro to the blue team. Entering tf_bot_add red 5 will add 5 random bots to the red team. The command tf_bot_add red 3 heavyweapons will add three heavies to the red team.

  • In order to put specific bots on specific teams (for a bots-vs-humans game, for example), you may want to disable automatic team balancing. To do this, enter mp_autoteambalance 0 followed by mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0.

  • To remove a bot, use the console command kick . To remove all of the bots in the game, use the command tf_bot_kick all.

Booth further added that Valve would "like to hear your thoughts on how the bots are behaving," asking players to "tell us the three things you hate most about the bots, and the three things you like best about them (as well as anything else you think we should know)" via e-mail (tfbots@valvesoftware.com) or the bot feedback forum.

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 22, 2009 9:50 AM

    sweet. now i can not play with the thousands of other people and shoot bots instead.

    • reply
      December 22, 2009 9:55 AM

      Ya, I sorda've want to know the reasoning behind the new addition of bots ?


      Is it because the TF2 really has spare time or is it because they knew once they quit updating, TF2 will lose a good chunk of it's player base ?

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:00 AM

        Well what updates keep the CS 1.6 folks playing?

        • reply
          December 22, 2009 10:09 AM

          the 1.6 folks are a sad bunch of souls. i cant fathom any reason why you would ever want to play that game these days. its a ten year old game that hasnt had any sort of gameplay modifications. its the exact game that was born a ten and a half years ago. its like if people would still be playing cod4 in... what... eight years? shouldnt they be raising families and paying taxes or soemthing?

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:05 AM

        I like to practice on bots when I've been away from an FPS for a while, that way I don't drop into a MP game and just get raped because I don't remember the maps or something.

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:06 AM

        I like this for two reasons:

        1. Gives me a good way to introduce friends to the game in a slower, more controlled way. Let them learn some classes before going head-to-head with people way better than them.

        2. Some times I just don't want to play versus the internet. There's a lot of assholes out there.

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:07 AM

        I assume it's hobby/testing ground. The tech described sounds applicable to general bot stuff.

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:16 AM

        They are creating LIFE. They don't need a reason.

        RISE!

      • reply
        December 22, 2009 10:35 AM

        On the pdf posted on the blog post, which was about the AI on the original L4D, it seems they were planning on rolling out bots to TF2 for quite some time.

Hello, Meet Lola