Bots are CPU controlled opponents. They can be useful for development, debugging but can also fun to play with.
They're fake clients, traversing the level, and acting upon objectives they either figure out themselves, or are told to to act a certain way.
We encourage any multiplayer game to support them, because they often also fill in the function of balancing teams. There's a whole slew of benefits of supporting bots, and players will generally thank you for including them.
## Technical Info
Bots are handled by BotLib, located under `src/botlib/` in the source tree.
Nuclide's BotLib takes some inspiration from **Quake III Arena** its bots, but shares no code or specific ideas or implementations. We do not use **AAS** for navigation, we leverage the route/pathfinding system **FTEQW** provides. Bots also share some code with regular NPC/Monster type entities through the use of the NSNavAI class.
Nuclide has support for bot profiles, like in **Quake III Arena**. They work differently although they appear compatible by design. You can define them in a script that looks something like this and is located at `scripts/bots.txt` in your game directory:
```
{
name Albert
model zombie01
topcolor 0xeff
bottomcolor 0xff0020
}
{
name Susie
model police02
topcolor 0xff6b00
bottomcolor 0xff0b00
}
{
name Dog
funname ^4D^2o^1g
model dog01
topcolor 0x9200ff
bottomcolor 0xc800ff
}
```
Only the `name` key is required. The only other special key is `funname` which sets the nickname to be different from the internal name. The other keys are set as user info (setinfo) keys on the bot client.
This will allow games to add whatever extra keys they wish that they can then recognize anywhere in the client/server codebase. No additional networking or APIs necessary. Simply query bot properties via their userinfo.
# Bot Console Commands
## addBot [profile name]
Adds a bot to the current game.
## killAllBots
Force kills and respawns bots in the current game.
