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[$lacker]

Everyone knows that you can hook your modded Xbox up to your computer to allow you to play online... so what has stopped people from making a computer program that simulates (lagfree) opponents?

AI is already out there (people have made multiplayer bots for Quake, etc long ago), and we already have the ability to play others through our computers (and the internet), so why can't I have my computer join my game (with AI opponents) via an ethernet cord and a System Link?

Is there some critical thing that can't be done? Or is it just that no one has taken the time to do it?

This post has been edited by $lacker: Dec 10 2005, 02:41 AM

[KaioShin]

What game are you talking about?

Bots are programmed spacificly for each game and (99.9% of the time) require the game's engine to be ran at the same time.

Since you referanced Quake... For the quake series you can run the bots on your xbox. From within the game... Quake3Arena makes it obvious and easy by having them built in. Quake1 and Quake2 would require you downloading and setting up a mod that has bots built in. Most of those mods would then require you to have a keyboard to setup and add the bots ingame.

If you saying... "Why cant I use my computer to run bots for Halo 2?" it is very simple...
Halo 2 cannot run on your PC. (no version has been released for PC yet)
Halo 2 for PC will most likely not be able to connect to the Xbox games (or vice versa) via Live or System Link
Halo 2 does not have bots (with suitable AI) avalible.
There are several other reasons as well.

At least one of those reasons will work for all other games... Like the xbox versions of Battlefield 2, Counterstrike, Unreal Championship (1 or 2), Splinter Cell (2 and 3), etc, etc, etc...

For comercial games it would be an extremely difficult task (near impossible?) since so many factors weigh against it ever happening. Sourcecode being the main one. Though LOTS of work could be done to crack an engine and eventually develop a client simulator than can run on a PC. Client simulators have been done before with the quake series (and probibly other popular computer games of the past like counterstrike) but pretty much all of them required the game to be running on the pc at the same time as the simulator program (which goes back to my above list of reasons it cant be done)

Homebrew games would be the main exception... Since the source is avalible for most of the ports someone could program a client simulator to run on the PC equivelant engine which could then either host the game which the xbox would connect to or be told to look for and connect to xbox hosted games. The AI would have to be programmed from scratch for each game though... and take it from me that programming fun to play against AI is not a simple task.

Anyway it goes it would be a lot of work. And, like I said, in most cases nearly impossible.
Sorry to disappoint.

[$lacker]

Ah, I probably should've mentioned that I was talking about Halo 2 specifically  

Great answer though... you obviously know your shit

[$lacker]

Someone should try put the Halo 2 maps and weapons into Quake 3... then change the Quake 3 online communication language to that used in Halo 2. Then we could use the already built Quake 3 bots in a Quake 3 terminal on the computer to play multiplayer Halo 2 on Xbox  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

This post has been edited by $lacker: Dec 10 2005, 08:18 PM

[BlackFoxx]

QUOTE($lacker @ Dec 10 2005, 07:46 PM)

Someone should try put the Halo 2 maps and weapons into Quake 3... then change the Quake 3 online communication language to that used in Halo 2. Then we could use the already built Quake 3 bots in a Quake 3 terminal on the computer to play multiplayer Halo 2 on Xbox  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

This, mon Ami, would be rather hard. First, you would hve to clone the Halo2 engine (try asking bungie for it, they laugh and tell you no.) and extract the code to use models from halo 2. The weapons would need to redraw phisics and be recoded. Then, you'd have to have a rather hefty computer to process all of this shit. I'm sorry, but it doesn't look to promising. Oh, then you'd have to ask ID games for a code for their bots to run on system links.

And about that other guy...he REALLY knows his shit. I've never seen such a comprehensive analogy!

[WesleyPipes]

Doesn't xbdm.dll stay in memory/run while you are playing games on a debug box?

If so, I don't see why it techincally wouldn't be possible to run a bot.

[ckpcw]

When I was into modding Halo PC (this was probably 1-2 years ago) I remember a couple of guys were able to get multiplayer bots in Blood Gulch by importing the AI from singleplayer and applying it to a chief model - It was cool stuff.

Now, I would think that this mod would be possible on Halo 1 for the xbox, as the map files were practically he same, but I don't know if a mod like that has been done/is possible for Halo 2.

Wow.. I'm gonna look into this.

[noselessmonk]

Been done for Halo 1 xbox. not terribly hard to do in it(Spawn them through vehicles).

Halo 2 is a different story. It has not been done as of yet.