I know at least a few here have visited my Steam forum thread on the subject, but I thought it would be very useful to post a tidbit here as well. I don't know if this technically fits under TF2 "mapping" or not, but it closely relates to it. I am not a level designer for TF2.
Anyways, myself, and a few others in the Steam forums have been compiling meshes for many popular maps. I'll never say that bots will be a complete replacement for real players, but they are very useful for testing and when you want to play on a map but can't find a server running it. Most of the meshes I made have been optimized to some extent (much more work put in than a simple nav_generate). This means that bots will get stuck less, and overall behave better on a lot of maps. I don't know when or if it will get to a point where level designers include an optimized mesh with their map, but AI is something I love and this is something I enjoy doing.
I currently maintain two functional packs:
King of the Hill
Attack/Defend
For the most part I only bother to optimize non-WIP releases...in order to avoid redundant work. If anybody wants to coordinate a mesh to go with the final release of their map, just let me know and if interested I'll do it. Oh, and the Steam forum thread gives some additional details:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1264447
How I learned to do this (probably also useful info for mappers):
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Navigation_Meshes
Anyways, myself, and a few others in the Steam forums have been compiling meshes for many popular maps. I'll never say that bots will be a complete replacement for real players, but they are very useful for testing and when you want to play on a map but can't find a server running it. Most of the meshes I made have been optimized to some extent (much more work put in than a simple nav_generate). This means that bots will get stuck less, and overall behave better on a lot of maps. I don't know when or if it will get to a point where level designers include an optimized mesh with their map, but AI is something I love and this is something I enjoy doing.
I currently maintain two functional packs:
King of the Hill
Attack/Defend
For the most part I only bother to optimize non-WIP releases...in order to avoid redundant work. If anybody wants to coordinate a mesh to go with the final release of their map, just let me know and if interested I'll do it. Oh, and the Steam forum thread gives some additional details:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1264447
How I learned to do this (probably also useful info for mappers):
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Navigation_Meshes
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