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Erectin a dispenser

December 21, 2009 - Mike Booth

With the success of the AI systems of Left 4 Dead, we've been continuing to develop these technologies to create new kinds of game experiences. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent "sandbox" for explorations of this sort, and we've been quietly doing so for much of this last year. Some of the results of these explorations are TF "bots" — AI-driven player proxies with simulated humanlike senses, reaction times, and tactics. Although the TFBots are not yet complete, they play a pretty decent game of King of the Hill.

We thought you might enjoy testing your skill against these work-in-progress digital killing machines.

We'd also like to hear your thoughts on how the bots are behaving. Although we have our list of behavior bugs to tackle (this is a beta after all), we're sure you'll discover issues we haven't yet seen. If you'd like to give us bot feedback, you can post your thoughts in our new Bot Feedback sub-forum, or send us an e-mail at tfbots@valvesoftware.com. In either case, please tell us the three things you hate most about the bots, and the three things you like best about them (as well as anything else you think we should know).

Since this is a beta test, the TFBots are only functional on these King of the Hill maps: koth_viaduct, koth_sawmill, and koth_nucleus. They don't understand the rules of multiple point capturing, cart pushing, or flag getting... yet. There's also no interface in the game to accessing them yet (we'll add one in an update shortly), so you'll need to access them manually.

• To add bots to your game, use the console command tf_bot_add. This will drop a random bot onto a random team (assuming there is a free player slot). The tf_bot_add command can also take up to three optional arguments: <count>, <class>, and <team>, in any order. For example, tf_bot_add 10 will add 10 random bots to the game with auto-assigned teams. Typing tf_bot_add pyro blue will add a Pyro to the blue team. Entering tf_bot_add red 5 will add 5 random bots to the red team. The command tf_bot_add red 3 heavyweapons will add three heavies to the red team.
  
• In order to put specific bots on specific teams (for a bots-vs-humans game, for example), you may want to disable automatic team balancing. To do this, enter mp_autoteambalance 0 followed by mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0.
  
• To remove a bot, use the console command kick <bot name>. To remove all of the bots in the game, use the command tf_bot_kick all.

TFBots are "players", and take up player slots. They run the exact same code that human players do, moving and firing weapons by pressing "virtual buttons". The bots have simulated humanlike senses, and only know what they see, hear, and touch. They also have realistic reaction times and aiming limitations. They don't "cheat" or use omniscient knowledge of the server state to make their decisions.

If you're interested in the technical details, give this a read-through.

Update Update

December 21, 2009 - Shawn Zabecki

We've got one more update to go out to our backend item system. After that, we'll be granting all the missing items that weren't granted properly when you finished achievements.

And the Winner is...

December 17, 2009 - TF2 Team

...the Soldier!


Sorry, Demomen. You fought the good fight and kept it far closer than anybody could have predicted. But in the end, at the noon Thursday deadline, the Soldiers kept their razor-thin lead, with 6,406,065 killed Demomen to the Demo's score of 6,372,979 killed Sollys.

What a week it's been. We're really big fans of both the police and the fire department, so it's been a real treat for us, as they've been here pretty much non-stop since last Thursday. There were the arguments between Demo and Soldier-supporting staffers; that unexplained knifing in the elevator; Drew Wolf; and a host of other calamities that resulted from the creation of this massive update. At one point we even saw a police officer and a fireman in a fist fight over who was more mad at us.

Anyway, it was all worth it to give you this update. Which is now live. Enjoy.

VI DAY!

December 17, 2009 - Robin Walker

Victory on the Internet Day has been declared! The war is over! Who won? We don't know! Yet!

Luckily, I, Robin Walker, was up all night building a kill-calculating machine for just such an eventuality. We turned it on, the building filled with smoke, and right now a fireman is yelling at me to leave the building with everyone else. I'll leave when they pry this tiny netbook out of my cold dead hands. Or when an angry fireman fireman-carries me out of the office, which is what is happening right now. Anyway, once all the firemen calm down, we'll announce the War results with today's huge update. To pass the time, go get yourself a fresh mouse and start reloading this page as fast as you possibly can.

Please note: Beginning now, we're going to start transitioning the new inventory system into the game. Until the update goes live later today, you will not have access to your inventory.

Countdown: War ends in less than an hour

December 17, 2009 - Robin Walker

You heard right As of noon PST today, the Demoman/Soldier WAR! is over. The score is, as of this writing:

Demoman Killed: 6,323,921

Dead Soldiers: 6,298,465

It all comes down to this. I'd give you a motivational speech right now, but the time you wasted reading it would be less time you spent making a difference on the battlefield. Go ahead and break the bad news to your grandfather: YOU are officially now the greatest generation.