Next year I''m required to do a formal research project, and I was thinking of doing something to do with bot AI in an FPS, however I''m not gonna code my own fps for it :-D. I want to be able to concentrate just on programming the AI system and some type of GUI to interact with it. I''m not familiar with the mod scene, and I was wondering if its possible to do this with a tradition fps, like half-life, ut, etc.. and if you guys had any opinions on what the best way to go is. Thanks!

Picking a game like Half-Life\Quake with a massive fan base will make your task a little easier. The internet is filled with sites that will help you with all aspects of modding these games so you''ll never be too far away fom an answer to any questions you may have about a particular engine.

1. Half-Life: It has awesome AI. Also, it has some of the best mods ever made, a good community, and a nice editor.
2. Unreal 2: If you want to do single player, try this.
3. UT 2003: Unreal Tournament 2003 is great. It has a nice editor.
Otherwise, get a Quake 3 engine game. Then go to QeRadiant.com. They have a level editor for every Quake 3 game.

Scott

if you are doing bots why not get the quake 2 source code and go from there. plenty of information on the web about q2 bots also.

Battlefield 1942. It has some great mods out now (Desert Combat) and some other great ones in the works (A Star Wars Hoth battle mod?!) The mod community is going to be really active for some time to come, I think. Best of all, I was reading in PC Gamer today that these mods have been completed WITHOUT official tools. Imagine what will happen when the BF1942 Map Editor called "Battlecraft" is released

Links to check out:

http://www.bf1942.com //general BF 1942 site
http://www.desertcombat.com //best.mod.ever.

EDIT: I just reread the OP's post and it mentioned AI... BF1942 doesn't have the greatest AI, lol. Still a good game, if you just want to mod something for fun, though,.

[edited by - Peon on April 30, 2003 8:24:49 PM]

Halflife, quake2, or quake3. They''ll have the most resources available for breaking into modding. With Quake2 you can get the entire game source (which may or may not benifit you in your AI project), which is why I suggested it. Go dig around a bit and see which one best suites your needs.

Ratman

quote:
EDIT: I just reread the OP''s post and it mentioned AI... BF1942 doesn''t have the greatest AI, lol. Still a good game, if you just want to mod something for fun, though,.

Well it appears his project is to mod the AI, in that case BF1942 is a good choice. I know the AI isn''t the greatest I play it a lot. So for the project maybe give them some smarts! Seems like a not too bad plan to me.

Thanks guys, I think I might go with Unreal Tournament (the original) only because theres an api out (Gamebots) to allow client apps to interface directly with a server running the game, specifically for the purpose of modding the AI, but I''ll look into the others as well. :-D

UT has a really nice scripting language that will make modifying stuff VERY easy.

I agree with billybob. I''ve written mods for Half-Life and Unreal Tournament and the Half-Life code is a bit sloppy, whereas the UnrealScript code was excellent.

~CGameProgrammer( );