Legacy:BotCandy

Many UT mods lacked good bot support, some used the basic Bot Support (UT), which is great for running around, collecting weapons and killing anything you see. However, once you remove the pickups you'll notice that bots will only travel between HomeBase, DefensePoint and similar actors, and objective based actors such as FlagBase or actors special to the mod.

In order to fix this despite the coder's lack of time/interest which haunts many mods, I found a work-around.

The idea is based on the simple fact that bots are hunting Pickups. Sadly, we can't have that in the map. Instead we will have to cheat the bots into thinking they are hunting weapons. To do this, do the following:

1. Place an Actor >> Inventory >> Pickup >> TournamentPickup >> UT_ShieldBelt
2. Open Actor Properties and set its Filter -> OddsOfAppearing to 0
3. Set the Inventory -> MaxDesireability to an appropriate number (The higher number, the higher odds of bots going there)

The desireability detirmines how sweet the candy is, making bots want it more. When a bot runs over the candy, it is "picked up" despite not really existing, ensuring bots will have to move on searching for the next piece of candy. Place these candy at keypoints, intersections or in areas the bots are ignoring.

LegalAssassin

This technique was used in TTR-Nuenen

Related Topics

• Bot Support (UT200x)
• Bot Support (UT)

Discussion

SabbathCat: Is the Filter -> OddsOfAppearing=0 supposed to keep the UT_ShieldBelt from being displayed?

It still shows up for me. Maybe setting its DrawType = DT_None and BCollideActors=False ?

LegalAssassin: It works for me. Perhaps Advanced -> bHidden = True would do the trick?

Wormbo: OddsOfAppearing actually prevents the pickup from being spawned altogether, which is something completely differnet than visually hiding it. If you only hide it can still be picked up. If you make it untouchable, bots will likely get stuck there because they try to reach it and can't pick it up. OddsOfAppearing has the advantage, that UnrealEd still creates an InventorySpot for the pickup, but the pickup itself will never exist in the game.

Legal: Yes, but I can't see how it couldn't work, ie still being visible. Either SabbathCat did something wrong or it works, but still shows. If it's the second one, you should try to make it invisible.

Gustavo6046: I think actually SabbathCat have forgot to test ingame, despite showing up on Unreal Editor due to obvious reasons (so you can select, move and all the icky rest) it won't show up in UT. May I do a Candy actor for bots? Display->DrawType is set to DT_Sprite and (editor) texture is set to EyeCandy.Editor.Candy to turn things easier.