Been a while but reaper bots come to mind, dude who made them went on to make the bots for Unreal Tournament.

IIRC there is also a version for Quake II as well.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-07-12, 15:22:

Been a while but reaper bots come to mind, dude who made them went on to make the bots for Unreal Tournament.

IIRC there is also a version for Quake II as well.

Yeah as I mentioned, the Reaper bot was a breakthrough, and Steven Polge went indeed on to write the bots for UT as well. The Reaper bot is actually quite early in the overall history and development of Quake bots, though. So it is definitely not the best or even a good one, compared to more modern bots (like Omicron).

To play with bots you better to install modern multiplayer quakeworld client from http://nquake.com, it even supports old-school graphics. Then follow the guide https://www.quakeworld.nu/wiki/Playing_with_bots
QuakeWorld still has a pretty active (even small) community, you can find all the information on a wiki (start with https://www.quakeworld.nu/wiki/Qwrookie), there is even a discord server for it: discord.quake.world iirc
Good luck!

Doesn't the recent-ish Quake remaster have bots? How do they compare to the third party bots?

The thing I didn't like about the Quake third party bots was that there was no in-game menu for adding/removing/modifying bots and their behaviour. It wasn't a total loss, as you could bind the bot options and commands to your your choice of keys, but it was a little disappointing. A flaw it shared with every third party bot I can think of for every FPS that didn't have native bot support.

Kerr Avon wrote on 2023-07-12, 23:25:

Doesn't the recent-ish Quake remaster have bots? How do they compare to the third party bots?

The thing I didn't like about the Quake third party bots was that there was no in-game menu for adding/removing/modifying bots and their behaviour. It wasn't a total loss, as you could bind the bot options and commands to your your choice of keys, but it was a little disappointing. A flaw it shared with every third party bot I can think of for every FPS that didn't have native bot support.

I think it isn't that bad with later bots, the original Reaper bot uses "impulse 205" or something like that to spawn a bot, while later bots like the Omicron just uses "addbot". It isn't a big deal I think to just have to type that in the console a few times.

On the other hand, the pain of getting Quake to work at all, isn't trivial. I've had issues with the graphics stuttering, with the sound stuttering, and now with CD audio.

Quake also has a weird configuration system for its config files, I had to create a new config instead of writing to the original config file (and use autoexec to start my new config), otherwise it seems to overwrite my changes to the original config file.

Man I haven't heard about Reaper bots in a long time. I remember playing them when I was on dial-up and could only be on the internet at certain times of the day.

I still have my old Quake installation:

fractal5 wrote on 2023-07-13, 16:37:

I think it isn't that bad with later bots, the original Reaper bot uses "impulse 205" or something like that to spawn a bot, whi […]
Show full quote

Kerr Avon wrote on 2023-07-12, 23:25:

Doesn't the recent-ish Quake remaster have bots? How do they compare to the third party bots?

The thing I didn't like about the Quake third party bots was that there was no in-game menu for adding/removing/modifying bots and their behaviour. It wasn't a total loss, as you could bind the bot options and commands to your your choice of keys, but it was a little disappointing. A flaw it shared with every third party bot I can think of for every FPS that didn't have native bot support.

I think it isn't that bad with later bots, the original Reaper bot uses "impulse 205" or something like that to spawn a bot, while later bots like the Omicron just uses "addbot". It isn't a big deal I think to just have to type that in the console a few times.

On the other hand, the pain of getting Quake to work at all, isn't trivial. I've had issues with the graphics stuttering, with the sound stuttering, and now with CD audio.

Quake also has a weird configuration system for its config files, I had to create a new config instead of writing to the original config file (and use autoexec to start my new config), otherwise it seems to overwrite my changes to the original config file.

Just set your original config to read only, should stop any unwanted alterations 🤣

There were Frogbots and Gyrobots too. And even a QWTF bot that never got completed IIRC (only a few classes were operational)

Errius wrote on 2023-07-13, 18:08:

Man I haven't heard about Reaper bots in a long time. I remember playing them when I was on dial-up and could only be on the internet at certain times of the day.

I still have my old Quake installation:

1996 timestamp on some of those files, wow!

I envy you for having correct timestamps from way back then, my timestamps have been mangled multiple times from migrating between filesystems (fat32, to linux with ext2, ext3, ext4, to windows again with ntfs, etc. etc.).

It's actually a fresh installation of Windows (hence the directory with a July 8 date). My drive (a crappy WD Green SSD) failed on Friday and I had to spend the weekend reinstalling everything and restoring backups.