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You're right, but to allow bot show human how to play this or that map, there has to be correctly created waypoints for that map otherwise the bot is going to only blindly roam around ... much like the new gamer :). And as I've said a few times already, MB waypointing is different from typical bot that kept the original system from botman's bot template. I find MB system easier to work with, but I'm biased, because I designed it. So if someone who is used to botman's system starts working with MB system then he/she has to get used to different approach to the overall waypoints layout. In other words the most common approach based on using many cross waypoints with short paths connecting them is a road to hell. In such case the bot cannot fully utilize the 'needs' and will not be able to navigate in a way that is presented in this video for example. Good luck with the work on your house. I know what it is. Had to stop working on MB for like 10 years till I finished the work on my house... well most of it as there is always something to do ;). And thanks for the offer. I think I'm fine the way I am. Plain HTML is easy to maintain ... I'm using just the notepad in Windows to update MB homepage. Then I upload this say "text" file via drag&drop system my host provides. Quick and simple task for me. You put the video on your site (Thanks!) that explains the only small problem with my current host... missing HTTPS protocol. So I believe people can get to everything related to MB just fine.

Thanks. Yeah this "negative" reply. I like it too :). Reason why it's been implemented that way. I believe it makes one feel like it's more "real". It's kind of universal reply for all cases when the bot isn't going to shoot ... as the first source code snippet on MB homepage shows.

There is no paypal or anything like that, and I'm not planning it. Marine Bot is purely a hobby. And it's great to know people like it. By the way currently available version of Marine Bot for Firearms is almost a year old so nothing of the features that are presented in recent WIP videos, like this one, is available in it. I plan to update it, but don't know when yet. Most probably early in 2025. But no promises.

@@marinebotofficial No problem pal, I play it from time to time and the last version I had was 0.91, the skills jump in 0.96 is pretty heavy, I can't mow them 🤣

:) Yeah compared to that ancient version the bots play the game better now, because there was a lot of things corrected, changed or adjusted so the bots can perform the actions precisely. This means there are way less cases when the bot gets stuck in trying to do something and is unable to act at all till someone kills him. Still many bugs left.

@@marinebotofficial Is there a way to command a bot to follow me in obj_thanatos and help me crank the wheels from the secret document storage?

Unfortunately not. I think I mention this case with the wheel buttons on obj_thanatos in the HTML Waypointing Guide. Marine Bot can operate them. Also you can get bots to follow you, but the bots aren't able to synchronize their actions to operate two wheel type buttons at the same time to open that gate. If these buttons didn't reset immediately then it would be possible to create the waypoints so that the bot would open it and get the documents. But currently this sort of a secondary goal on this map isn't possible for Marine Bot. Well unless you purposely used extremely long wait-time on the 'use' waypoint and so made the bot kind of stuck at either of the two wheel buttons. You would then dragged one bot to one button, then second bot to the other button. This way you'd be able to get the documents and leave those two bots there.

Thanks. Yeah that ladder is created bad. I mean the sandbags weren't the best idea there really. Because the ladder doesn't end where you would expect it normally.

Thanks :)

You're welcome. This was a chance finding. I'm sure that I did test this map before, but haven't noticed them getting stuck there. I guess I was most probably looking on how do they behave when they carry the documents or whether they can actually do it. No idea whether anyone else noticed it. I got no bug report about it. Anyway this is part of the reason why I moved the checking commands from development only build to regular release build commands. You know so that people can see whats going on if they notice something like this. As I wrote in some older news on MB homepage the guess game I do on the text files with engine dumps isn't always correct :) ... this bug proves it too. And the updated info I posted yesterday, I mean yesterday in my timezone, shows where I made the mistake.

Thanks. Later on I've found the core issue behind the problem with this Capture Area. So it will work correctly in Test version 7 even without using the external file with custom data for the Capture Areas for this map. I'll try to update the news on Marine Bot homepage, but I'm fighting with cold or flu or whatever it is. I had to stop working on it yesterday late afternoon (in my timezone). I mean I didn't finish proper testing. I'll see if I get to it today, based on how will I feel, or at least get to posting the updated news on homepage.

There isn't any command menu for DoD version of Marine Bot. DoD still allows this original HUD text based menu so I used it. But yes, you can use the bot related parts from the command menu from MB for Firearms. These commands are the same in both mods. You can obviously remove the 'ammobox' and 'parachute' waypoints from it seeing DoD doesn't have ammoboxes and parachuting. On the other hand some new waypoint related commands are missing in the command menu for Firearms, because the features were either added after the release of the latest version of MB for FA (e.g. the waypoint range increase/decrease) or because there is nothing like that in Firearms mod (e.g. anti-armor specialist path type). You can watch the MB Work In Progress videos to see them in action. Then there is this new command to make MB waypointing system gather the data for the Triggers. Shown in the video about setting up the Triggers in DoD. As said in the video this is DoD specific feature, because in Firearms things work even without it. Finally there's a bug in the command menu for Firearms version of MB. The original author made a mistake in the waypoint range submenu, probably due to using copy & paste. The second argument (i.e. the value 2) shouldn't be there, because the range command doesn't use 'the team' argument. Speaking of it the 'Red team' is team number one in Firearms so it is the 'Allies' in DoD. And 'Blue team' is then the 'Axis' in DoD. By the way all commands should also accept the words 'allies' and 'axis' instead of the team numbers for easier reading/understanding. These are probably all the differences I can think of right now. One last thing. I have a feeling someone from former MB team said back then that Firearms map named 'ps_splinter' by Zach "VonFerret" Ford was created for DoD as well. So if that is true and you have it (I don't have it) then you'd have another custom map to play with MB after converting the waypoints from MB for Firearms ... like I showed in one of the more recent WIP videos.

@@marinebotofficial Thanks for the further info', very handy. When I get time I will do some waypoints for simple orange maps, then go on to some of the more popular custom maps.

You're welcome. Thanks for keeping interest in Marine Bot. Waypointing for MB won't be easy in the beginning, because the system is really different from other bots, so good luck! Oh and yes starting with it on small simple maps to learn it, is the best way.

Wait, did your DoD 1.3 crash on map Charlie even on Windows? Like I mention on MB homepage, on Windows I never got any crash. As for verifying DoD files. Yes this is something I can't do anything with. Also if you install MB using the liblist install utility, i.e. the recommended way, then after verifying your DoD files you wouldn't be able to reinstall MB using this utility. This is because I've added sort of a file protection into it. I mean that if you run the "liblist_install_mb.exe" and it detects there already is the "liblist_mb_backup.gam" present then it won't do anything to your "liblist.gam". So in order to reinstall Marine Bot after verifying DoD files you will have to either: a) run the "liblist_uninstall_mb.exe" first, i.e. virtually uninstall Marine Bot. The uninstallation utility simply erases current "liblist.gam" file and then it replaces it with the backup of it. b) or simply manually erase the "liblist_mb_backup.gam" file and then install Marine Bot by running the "liblist_install_mb.exe".

@@marinebotofficial Sorry got that mixed up with another issue my Windows had, black screen in games, turns out that is a faulty monitor (new one) with a mainboard issue. Edited post.

I see. Thanks for making this clear.

Recorded a new video to showcase and explain the use of the liblist install and uninstall utilities that are part of Marine Bot package. The uninstallation utility can even recreate default liblist.gam file for the mod where it is used, but this is a bit pointless in DoD, because you can use the verify feature for that. So I'm not showing that in that video.

Thanks. I've learned from the past. The times of former development team and times when MB had forum boards with various "how to" guides. You can write a novel, but some gamers simply won't read it and get annoyed that things don't work. So hopefully if they can watch it straight they will understand it :).

Nice. I had Athlon II X3 in my old desktop PC. So the same silicon chip, but a piece that didn't pass the tests to be sold as elite Phenom :) There was 4 GB RAM, old Radeon RX560 GPU and classic 500GB HDD spinning at 7200rpm. That PC ran a lot of Firearms games with MB. Fun times for sure. Sadly that HDD died and I lost some waypoints and such stuff for MB. Luckily the source code and other really important bits were backed up. Also my friend from former MB team, Drek, had backups that helped restore some stuff.

@@marinebotofficial Just on dod_charlie, I put Marine Bot on my windows PC (it has a Nobara linux SSD I can play Marine bot on that more powerful PC as well) and I ran through no problems, ran 2 lots of 12 minutes and won both rounds. Bots worked great. Edited my post (Sturmbot and LINUX - Offline bots.) on the Steam dod forums where I said Marine Bot didn't work on Linux, that's corrected now. Still not ready to make another video yet but will do soon.

On Windows the map Charlie plays well. I've spent a lot of time on that map doing tests. You know, there is the video about roadblock+claymore waypoint mechanics recorded on map Charlie on Windows. No crashes at all. DoD Linux Dedicated Server also runs this map without issues. Like I said in the reply to the other comment earlier today, it's the DoD Linux "dod/cl_dlls/client.so" and map Charlie that seem to not coop well which results in these crashes back to system desktop. Oh I'll look at it. I've never posted anything there. That's cool. I didn't mean it so that you must create a video. Just that I'll enjoy watching it if/when there's is one ;). The one about Sturmbot and Proton was fun to watch. Watched it in parts. Whenever I had a while I watched couple minutes. Reminded me the time when I was creating the guide about running Firearms on Linux that is on MB homepage.

Just released sort of a hotfix version of Marine Bot for DoD, a Test version 5. In the limited time I have now, I found a quick solution for that crash of Linux game client on map Charlie or any map that can cause it. On Charlie this is activated by default though. Anyway more details can be found on Marine Bot homapage.

@@marinebotofficial Tested Version 5 and no crashes on dod_charlie, it allowed me to play an entire game, cap all objectives. Well done!!! Also Martee made a quick set of waypoints for "dod_overlord2_b1" (just for me) that also works!

Thanks. Yeah I've watched that video. Actually I added a comment trying to let you know that Marine Bot works natively, but the comment didn't show. I did some reading then and I think it probably got blocked by the RUclips comment ruling system. By default it's set to strict and I added a link to one guide on MB homepage. So maybe that was the reason why. Can't say for sure though. As for PC specs. As far as I can say Half-Life engine is a single core app so the higher clocked CPU you have the better. Better to say the more instructions per clock the CPU core can process the better experience you get in Half-Life mods/games. I mean modern CPUs with advanced IPCs that can also turbo boost one core, that is needed, to high clocks will make the game run really well even with full pack of bots. I recorded this video on my desktop PC. Intel 10th gen Core i3 10100F (usually boosts up to 4.1 GHz), 16 GB RAM, Radeon RX 6700XT and main drive is PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SDD, but Ubuntu is installed and running on old Samsung 850 EVO, a 2.5 inch Sata 6Gbps SSD. And as you can see when I filled the server to max it did pretty well. There was no FPS drop even with recording. The other laptop I have, Lenovo L490, won't handle that. I bought it really cheap (like 250 USD) as refurbished unit last year. Specifically to test Marine Bot on Linux on it. I don't want to dual boot my main laptop and I don't want to leave the desktop PC run for couple days only to test Linux Dedicated Server with MB on it. This laptop has a mobile 8th gen Core i5-8265U (1,60 - 3,90GHz), 8GB RAM DDR4, 256GB SSD, 14" LED IPS Full HD (1920x1080px) and Intel UHD Graphics 620. It came with Win 11 Pro, but I'm dual booting Ubuntu 22.04 LTS now. Standard 16 client game is still playable, but going higher or you start recording and that machine starts to have problems handling that. I guess your Phenom II system would be similar to that.

@@marinebotofficial Yes adding links to these they get auto deleted. I got my AMD Phenom II based PC running and it's next to test but right now running tests on my mid-range Ryzen 5 2600 PC, Sturmbot - Shrikebot - Marine Bot, already seeing Marine Bot has a much higher skill level even though I bumped up the skill and reaction settings for the other two windows only bots. That is a good thing, Marine Bot is showing it is closer to a experience on a good human only server, I'll keep testing but very impressed so far. Performance wise it's obviously better not having that layer of Proton, how much is what I want to see next, using dod_anzio and dod_charlie for the tests. Then I'll do the tests again on the very old AMD Phenom II based PC that would have been common in 2009-2013. To really test that I also installed a Nvidia card and they first run... looks OK to me.

Thanks for the compliment. I tried to make Marine Bot act as much as a real human player as possible. Sometimes they show some nice behaviour, but some other time they act totally stupid. But I guess that's how common gamer plays these mods too. We are humans and we do some stupid mistakes from time to time. Looks like MB can do that too :). Already can't wait for your video from those tests.

@@marinebotofficial I hit a snag on my Medium PC. For some reason when on non Proton dod_charlie crashes when I am near the red smoke flares on the allied beach. I'll see what the other PC's do, I have a Ryzen 7 system, Ryzen 5 and the older Phenom II, all on Nobara to test. But overall, FPS alone is + 80 to 100 just walking around most maps and the bad spot on dod_charlie (behind the tank over on the right) it 70 FPS versus 48 FPS . Most maps I am getting 100-165 FPS in general areas where I was getting 60 to just over 100 FPS using Proton. Love the dod_caen work and the speed the bots deal with the destructible walls!!! The bots are defiantly quicker in reaction speed even on the Marine Bot default settings verses pumping up SturmBot and Shrikebot as far as the skill/reaction settings can go. it's definitely one you would call closer to a on-line server experience on default settings where the other two bots are at a much lower skill level.

I plan to do the Nobara + MB + DoD1.3 installation recording in about an hour from now. Still need to finish some house work now. So I'll try to remember to test map Charlie to see whether there is something bad on it. Marine Bot bot skills and reactions are connected. If you keep default skill (i.e. on level 3) then the reaction time will be exactly the value you set (0.5 sec by default). But if you make the bots better (i.e. set the skill level to 2 or 1) then the reaction time will also be modified, will be reduced a little, making the bots start shooting at you faster than the default 0.5 second delay. And if you worsen the bot skill level to value 4 or 5 then the reaction time will raise so bots will start shooting at you later than the default 0.5 second. Or you can leave the bot skill level at default value 3, because the skill level affects more things the bot does, e.g. the worse skilled bots will hear you from much smaller distance than the better skilled ones. And you can modify just the reaction time. Increase it or decrease it. Which won't have any impact on the other behaviour of the bot ... like the hearing distance mentioned above. Basically you can fine tune Marine Bot to fit your liking in many aspects. All the external configuration files have notes to ... hopefully ... help you understand how do they work.

Thanks. I plan to make another similar video, but in Nobara Linux, because this distro looks to be more gamer oriented. And generally it feels almost like if you are in Windows. Hopefully I'll get enough time for that during weekend, but no promises.

@@marinebotofficial ok

Thanks. I'm trying :). Need to tidy some variables in the source code. Then deal with the issue of the sewer cover on top of the ladder I mentioned elsewhere. And then Test version 4 may go public.

No. Currently the bots are available to the gamer. But I was thinking to allow a bot using the Master Sergeant class use the "I need backup" command once in a while to form a unit. This is something for future. Not going to happen now.

Thanks. There are some conflicts in the code. So I'll have to do more tests and obviously some changes, but what is shown in these clips shouldn't change. The changes will be in the source code. To get rid of the conflicts of some variables. Which then leads to weird behaviour in some cases.

Answer to what? I don't see any comment I didn't reply to here. And I didn't get any email from you.

@@marinebotofficial I wrote in comments in another video . So I did download sourcecode. Just happy that someone make some for DOD and else. of course I wanna join to your development team . Your website in my tabs and I update it every day )

This is strange. I just went through all the videos and unless I accidentally missed one I don't see your comment. I have no idea what is wrong. Still I do apologize. And if there is anyone else who added a comment and/or asked a question that I didn't reply to then please accept my apology as well. Thanks for the kind words and the passion you show to Marine Bot. The thing is that there is no development team anymore. And I don't really want to start new one. I'm sorry. Former MB team was great experience and I value everyone who was part of it. I'm honored I can call Drek a friend of mine. We are still in contact even after all those years. I'll never be able to thank him enough for all the hard work he did there. He willingly took the team coordination on himself so that I could fully concentrate on the work on the code. He was the true team leader not me. But being a part of such great team and having the responsibility put a lot of stress on me. This is the reason why I don't want to go this way again. There's a lot of stress at work and in real life in general. I'm using the work on Marine Bot as a chill out now. To learn new things. To enjoy my free time. And gather enough energy to survive another day/week in that stupid work :). I would like to keep it that way. You said you've downloaded the source code so feel free to use it to base your own bot on it. If you have the ideas and the passion (you seem to have) you might create something way better than Marine Bot. If you find anything useful in Marine Bot then feel free to use it. I'm totally okay with it. Reason why MB is open sourced.

Thanks. There's a bit more the Triggers can do, but I wanted to keep this video as simple as possible for easy understanding.

@@marinebotofficial ok ;)

Thanks for the info. I just asked if there is any map like that, because in that case I'd have to increase the arrays. I set them to 8 slots, because from the quick check I did on official 1.3 maps I didn't find one with more objects than that. If there's no such map I think this value is safe then.

From what I can tell any map with more than 12 flags will crash the game (this isn't related to the bot, seems to be a hard limit in the game). I've made a basic debug map to test out the different kinds of flag captures. It has a basic flag, 1-4 man area captures, a 20 second long cap to see if they can cap such a long wait, an allies only and an axis only flag. A flag where the cap area is far away from the flag, currently the bots seem to get stuck at this flag, which is obviously related to the issue you're already aware of, and finally a few flags just to take the map to 12 flag limit I can send you a download link for the debug map if you're interested and can add/remove/change any flag types you might want to test.@@marinebotofficial

@@MarteeWarreeIt would make sense that the DoD developers used similar static array like I did. Reason why I asked about the number of objectives on other maps :). To make the arrays large enough to deal even with custom maps. You said bots were having some issues with some of the points on that test map you've created. Was it with the Test version 2? Test version 1 sure has problems, like I mentioned here as well as on MB homepage. But recent Test version 2 should work independently on the positions of the CapArea and the CapPoint (aka flag). I am interested in that test map. It'd be cool if you emailed me the link. But limit it to just 8 flags to fit MB array limit, please. Thanks. I checked more than these 3 maps. But that was only a quick check through those debugging commands. And it looked the data are gathered correctly. But you never know. Maybe there is still some bug even in Test version 2 system.

@MarteeWarree This test map is cool, Martee, thanks again. It allows me to check things easily. Back in the days when I started with Marine Bot I've created simple testing map for Firearms to ease the work. But I'm not sure I'd be able to do it now for DoD too. It's so long ago that I don't remember anything related to creating maps anymore :). The zip was missing your .wad file, but I got it from one of your other maps on your webpage. And already checked the 3- and 4-man flags capturing. You're right. Bot doesn't capture them. But that's actually a good thing, because there is no code to handle the cases when there are just 2 bots in such capture area. I changed the function that handles the decisions about this to make the bot react also on 3- and 4-man flags. And when I was testing it in game the 2 bots were waiting there "forever". So this will probably have to be done through the idea mentioned in this video. I mean using another engine message. There seems to be one that most probably starts turning the objective icon to relevant team color. I remember I've seen one message when I was going through those huge debugging logs while updating the capture code for Test version 2. It's named StartProg or something like that and was being called at the moment when I was capturing the area. I'll know more when I get to it next time. For now this is just an idea.

I think I did start DoD with Marine Bot with the 25th anniversary version of HL. It was on my other laptop where I do Linux testing. How stable it is on Windows or for a long time gaming I don't know. I do basically all development and testing on my main laptop with Windows and there I'm using the steam_legacy version of HL. Sorry I can't say more.

Thanks.

Thanks. Yeah Marine Bot waypointing is really different. So everyone new to it will need some time to get used to it. It's great you're willing to do so. Also I'm glad you're enjoying the waypointing system. Before I started working on Marine Bot I was toying with original bot/s for the Firearms mod and I didn't like the fact I couldn't make them do what I wanted. So giving high level of control over the bots to the waypoint creator was one of my goals. Good to know people like it.

Thanks.

Thanks. Honestly I hope it'll work same way on all maps, because I only did the tests you can see in these clips. I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not really familiar with DoD maps. That means I only know of the British tanks on dod jagd map where you have to use Panzerschreck to reach the map goal, but I haven't had time to create a test waypoints for the Axis bots to test it. From a simple check of variables of these game entities they look the same. However dod_charlie objects are built different. I don't know of any other map with similar object/s that would be close to spawn area where you can test these anti-armor weapons. I guess it will be the poor souls, who decide to create waypoints for Marine Bot DoD port, who will be true guinea pigs and really prove whether this ability works in general or not :).

Well each bot has its own strong points and weaknesses. As far as I know Sturmbot is using the original Botman's waypointing and navigation system. That one is great for deathmatch oriented mods, but not all that good for more tactical objective oriented mods. Figured that out all those years ago when I started working on Marine Bot for Firearms. Which is also tactical mod with more complex maps, just like DoD. That is the reason why I scrapped what botman provided in his bot template and created my own waypointing and navigation system for Marine Bot. It isn't fully finished yet. Stuff like advanced map learning is still missing from it. But as you can see in these clips, it can do quite well when it comes to dealing with not so common maps and the objectives on them.

@@marinebotofficial Yes it was a good decision to go away from the botman set. I can see how this bot is going to give dod bots some capabilities it never had in Shrikebot or Sturmbot. It's looking good, well done!

@@INsanedod Thanks. Yeah I also think I've made the right decision back then. The early stages were rough, but as the whole system grew and new features were added, it turned into something where the gamer/viewer believes that bots really know what do they have to do ... while they don't of course ;). I mean if the waypoints are bad, where the creator didn't follow the rules and didn't care to test the waypoints, then the bots are totally dumb and can move blindly in circles. The system used in Marine Bot is less forgiving than botman's system. You know, if you don't pay attention to what you should do while waypointing for Marine Bot then you won't achieve desired results.

Thanks. Well Marine Bot waypointing system is different from those two bots you mentioned. There's a Video Guide on this channel where you can see general stuff. Then there's a written HTML guide on MB homepage where are all the details explained. Here's direct link marinebot.xf.cz/waypointingguide.html (I hope YT won't break it like in that Video Guide :) where it just doesn't work no matter what I do.) So far the only option to get some direct experience is to use Firearms. Marine Bot port for DoD isn't available yet. I still need to check a few things, before I'll release the test version. Just yesterday I was testing MB with Linux client version of DoD. And found out that MB will have to omit the underscore character from both the library as well as folder name, because even client Half-Life (much like Dedicated Server) simply crashes if there's any underscore in the liblist.gam file in gamedll_linux entry. Luckily MB is written so that custom names aren't an issue. So I only rewrote the install utility MB uses to modify the liblist.gam and added this exception. Will have to do some testing whether there aren't any new bugs due to that.