The Quake III Arena Bot Board, co-operated by the cooperative bot-oriented Metropolis and Bot Epidemic, offers some posts by John "Hellrot" Cash, the Dr. Frankenstein behind the bots in id's upcoming Quake III Arena. In one post Hellrot discusses the interface between the server and the bots, and in another, he gives the latest on the state-of-the-bots, which I'll quote here (John tells me he's since learned that Polos are mints, not cigarettes -- I would have guessed condoms):

>1:How well are the bots going? I haven't see or heard anything about them, since, well.. a long time ago. Any chance we'll see them in Q3test?

That's two questions BTW ;-)

1a) They are coming along nicely. It's quite a different task to develop the bots for a game that is still under development itself. Features come, features go, features saty on the "to do" list. Every time we add a new mode of movement (like the bouncy pads), I have to rework the navigation system to handle it. You haven't heard anything because I've been doing a lot of R&D and nobody else knew anything much to say. The best status I can give you is to say that the bots are winning games now :-)

1b) We've not made a firm decision about having a bot/bots in the test yet.

>2: I haven't heard much talk about the "other game modes" lately.. It just seems like you guys will do ffa\1on1\team and possibly CTF. Is this the case? And more importantly, you guys are still planning on doing bot support for ALL game modes, right?

My opinion is that we should only have the bots play in game modes where they can play effectively. IOW, I'd rather have them not play CTF at all than play it stupidly. Of course that means I just need to work hard to have them play well.

>Oh, and any chance we can get an engine license for Cube's £5 & 25p (plus a packet of Polos)? No?

I don't smoke and the vendors here don't seem to accept £, so ummm... No! :-)

>I always have wondered about the ladder idea. We are still going to be able to just fire up a random map and spawn a few bots for some good 'ol DM action, right?

Of course!