An ongoing issue with Bot War is that games tend to end up in a stalemate, and then drag on for ages. To fix this, I've made the following changes, which are now in the beta release. The team AI now attempts to surround its enemies in order to prevent them from breaking out. Players will now find that they are often ordered through a series of blue spawn points. What the AI is doing is manoeuvring you to a particular gap in the front line that it wants you to fill. The bots on the blue team are now generally more skilled (quicker reactions and more accurate) than on the other teams. This causes the blue team to steadily make headway. On the higher difficulty levels, the difference in skill is less, and so the player plays a more pivotal role. So, if you find the game too easy, increase the difficulty level to give the blue team less of an advantage. Note also that there are now five difficulty settings. The result of these changes is that games now finish in a timely manner. Expect further changes to the AI strategy in future updates, as I have some more ideas for improvements in this area.

[ 2019-11-15 19:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bot War is a single-player, team-based FPS. Three teams battle to capture 12 spawn points. The player belongs to one team, and all other soldiers are controlled by AI. Having three teams means that the two losing teams can form an alliance against the winning team.

Spherical Planet

The game is played on a relatively small, spherical planet, that you can walk all the way around. The planet is constantly rotating on its axis, as well as orbiting its parent star, so you'll see the parent star rising and setting each day, and the other stars in the galaxy sailing across the sky each night.

Innovative Controls

The player's controls are somewhat different from those normally found in an FPS. Moving the mouse turns your head, not your body. This allows you to look left and right while continuing to walk or run in the same direction. To turn your body, you need to press the left or right key to align your body with the direction in which you are looking. This system is a more realistic simulation of body movement, and gives you more control over your actions. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, but soon becomes second nature.

Energy Meter

The game also simulates energy levels. The player's energy is shown as a graph in the corner of the screen, where the vertical axis is the level of energy, and the horizontal axis is the energy term. The more long-term energy you have, the faster your medium-term energy will restore when you rest. The more medium-term energy you have, the faster your short-term energy will restore when you are walking or resting. The more short-term energy you have, the longer you'll be able to run. So, it's important to conserve your energy, and occasionally rest.

Slow Bullets

Bullets travel at 50 metres per second. This means that you can see bullets as they fly through the air, and hear them as they whizz past you. It also means that there's a delay between when you fire your gun, and when your target falls to the ground.

Moddable AI

Each soldier, including the player, is given an objective by the team's AI. In this way, the bots and the player work as a coordinated team. The Java source code for the AI will be included in the game. With an IDE, you can either modify this AI, or write your own AI from scratch. Furthermore, each team can be given a different AI implementation, so you can see how effective your AI is against the default AI, or against someone else's AI.