11/29/2023 0 Comments Battlefield bad company 2 offline bots![]() While servers and internet connections now are generally reliable, if a company decides the time has come and pulls the plug on their servers, that’s pretty much it. ![]() This is a longstanding problem that always-online games face: they are absolutely dependent on a stable connection and uptime. For one, if one’s connection goes down, or worse still, if the servers go offline, then an entire segment of the game is rendered unplayable. The emphasis on always-online games is not without inherent risks for players. As such, most games don’t bother with implementing offline bots: writing pathing algorithms and decision trees to give the AI the proper level of sophistication is a demanding process, and studios would, understandably, prefer to focus on their core mechanics so that they can provide the best possible experience for players interesting in squaring off against other players. However, it is rare for modern multiplayer games to feature bots the idea behind multiplayer is that one is fighting human opponents, the ultimate foe in terms of strategy and skill. Others simply don’t enjoy the frustration of excessively serious players ruining sandbox moments. When properly implemented, AI bots provide players with more choice and more options: some folks might want to explore maps and blast enemies at their own pace, without angry teammates screaming at them about what to do. When friends weren’t available to visit, I used to still play Nightfire‘s multiplayer with bots for amusement, marvelling at the fact that I could still learn the maps and weapons without needing a second player. Bots could be team players, focused on grabbing power weapons or simply care for kills. This feature would later make its way to Nightfire, which further allowed the bots’ AI to be customised. Against the bots on iconic maps like Town or Castle, one could spend an hour just learning the map and its tactics, facing AI of difficulties one found appropriate. In this area, Agent Under Fire completely raised the expectation for what games could accommodate, offering single players additional choice even if they did not have additional friends over at the time. If one’s friends were unavailable, or one wanted to learn the multiplayer maps that way, one could add a few bots into a match, set their difficulty and aggression, then enjoy a match against the AI, whether it be to explore the map or warm up prior to a split-screen session. While Agent Under Fire today might be counted as unremarkable, it was revolutionary for its time: tucked away in the multiplayer menu was an option to play against AI bots. “What will limit us is not the possible evolution of technology, but the evolution of human purposes.” –Stephen Wolfram
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