Anyone have Bot Clip secrets?

[Bricejohnson]

Hello, I’m trying to finish off a game using the Quake III engine. I've been looking for people to help me finish but it looks like it isn't going to happen unless I have cash, so I'm going to do them myself. Most of our maps I have sealed and detailed, my big issue are Bot Clipping. To me it looks like I have to line the whole map with these clips which would take 0978930890328 hrs.

To me this seems like it will take an insane amount of time, I basically have to recreate every brush.

I'm hoping maybe there is a program out there I can use that would automatically create bot clips in a level then I can just go in and manually tweak them. Or is there a way to cut corners when creating the clips so the map and AI runs fine but I don't need to spend 1000 hrs creating them all?

Thank you for your time

Bricejohnson@projectraven.com

[spookmineer]

This site helped me a lot getting bots to work on a map.

Only use simple rectangular brushes, overlap them for mapping convenience if needed.
Rectangular shapes make bots navigate easier and players won't notice that the bots will not actually touch curved walls etc.
It will still take some time but it is nowhere near as complex as mapping the map itself.

[bork[e]]

Also take a look at the sample maps that come with radiant. You don't need to recreate every brush and turn it into a bot clip at all, that would indeed be absurd and pretty much pointless. What you need to do with this clip is hide or basiclly cover up brushes that the ai has no need of "thinking" about, like extensive brush work on a ceiling or a detailed rock surface.

Here is another thread on this topic that might be of some help.

What exactly are you working on anyway, have any screenshots or something of your work thus far?

[Bricejohnson]

I have a link just below

http://quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=37136

It's a fairly far along project. But it ran out of steam a long time ago.

I just need to clip like 8 maps and find some more to fill in spare levels then go from there.

[Fjoggs]

Botclipping _any_ map shouldn't take more then like 30/60 minutes. I don't think I understand your problem.
If you're done with everything else that a quake3 map has to offer, then complaining about botclip sounds weird. Hinting and player-adjusting is a fucking nightmare compared to it. :P

[obsidian]

Agreed. It shouldn't take you more than an hour to clip a map for players, bots and weapons combined.

[Bricejohnson]

I'm confused now, how is it easy? It says Walls/floors/ceilings with lots of architectural detail - this kind of thing should usually be flattened with playerclip or bot clip.

Here is an example of a typical room in the game



To me for this one single room I would need a brush for the roof, the floor (both levels), the ducts, the hand railings, the crates. I have to make sure they all line up so there is no space, I'm not sure for hand railings and stuff if I can create one box and drop it on top or if I need to create a hollow around the whole hand railing?

Am I looking at this correctly?
Will the loose tiles on the floor and the hand railing not increase the aas file and increase the load for bot AI to calculate stuff.

[obsidian]

No, you botclip anything that sticks out that bots might get stuck on (because they are not all that smart). You also botclip areas that the bots wouldn't normally visit like places really high up or little nooks where they probably wouldn't walk inside anyway. Botclip can be of any size and it doesn't have to fit the geometry, you want it to be somewhat close to make it look like the bots are walking around them.

That floor tile for instance, you would just use a single botclip brush to cover the entire floor to the height of the tile. If bots aren't able to jump on top of that crate or reach that ceiling area where those glass window panels are hanging, stick a big botclip brush overlapping the crate and up to the ceiling. Clip off that entire ceiling area with another botclip brush if they can't normally reach it. Stick one botclip over the entire railing section. You can clip those stairs with a triangular clip to simplify them.

You don't need to botclip smooth surfaces like the upper level floor, walls. All in all, I don't think you need more than 5 or 6 botclip brushes for that entire room.

Note: You usually want to start with playerclipping first, smoothing out areas that the player might snag on or places that you don't want them to be able to visit, places where he may be able to "fall out of the map", or other odd places that you want to restrict him. Playerclip automatically does botclip at the same time. In this room, if the player can't get up to the ceiling, I would playerclip that, and then proceed with botclip for everything else I outlined.



Here's another example I did for someone else. Playerclip the column to prevent the player from snagging on the complicated round bits, but a player may want to stand on the raised bit. Then botclip the whole thing since bots have no business hopping on those raised bits anyway.

[Bricejohnson]

Alright, thanks for the information I'll give it a try and see what happens.