Thank you to everybody who has helped me reach 300,000 subscribers! I couldn't have done
it without you. As always, each square represents a subscriber. Each is a living, breathing
person... or possibly one of the bots that I've paid to subscribe to me. This video is
dedicated to those computer people who make our lives better. Who have made Counter Strike
what it is today. Back in Source, they were touted as being
some of the most advanced ever created. They could work their way around maps never seen
before and would even shoot out breakable items that were in the way! I made my own
maps at the time and moved from Half Life 2 to Source just because of the bot support-
they're the reason I started playing Counter Strike! And I had many happy hours playing
with and against them. This video is a tribute to these unsung heroes of Counter Strike.
Open up a file called 'botprofile' within the cstrike folder and their inner workings
will be revealed. Each and every bot has custom stats ranging from aggression to teamwork.
This file contains a lot of history- you'll see a voicepitch option, dating back to Source,
and a 'cost' option from back in Condition Zero where you could hire them to fight for
you in the single player campaign! Good times. There are 8 different preset skill levels,
each with better accuracy and reflexes than the previous. 'But wait!' I hear you cry.
'There are only 4 in-game!'. True. Easy bots make up the lowest of the 8. Normal, the 2nd
and 3rd. Hard contains the 3 categories above that and expert, the two above that. This
means that even within the same difficulty level, some bots are better than others- apart
from easy, where they're all terrible. So who's the best? Well, I'm not going to de-grade
them to fighting in pits. It would take a really twisted, sick person to do something
like that. But here's a list of the ELITE skilled bots and of them, Cliffe, Wolfe Steel
and Gunner are the most likely to use AK's and M4's, so because of that I'd fear them
the most in play. That's also because, with the exception of
snipers, they handle all weapons in the same way. It doesn't matter if they're armed with
a shotgun, SMG or M4. You'll notice that they'll never use the scope on the Aug or SG because
of this. An interesting side-effect is that expert bots do badly with SMGs since they
refuse to spray and pray with them unless at a very close range, where they seem to
panic with any weapon type. Even with perfect settings in the bot config, there's a built-in
delay to their aiming, which means that they'll miss almost every shot if you run across their
vision. Terrifyingly, they ALWAYS aim for your dick, even if it's concealed behind cover.
If the majority of your body is hidden, like say if you're crouched behind a barrel or
crate, they'll forget that you're there but will remember your position. I saw bots use
this as an opportunity to try and plant, or to try and flank the player's hiding position.
If -God forbid- they get hold of the bomb, they immediately rush to the site. I'm sure
we've all experienced this behaviour in matchmaking at some point.
If Valve wanted to, they could make bots follow orders and leave objectives to players. They
could make them run as fast as humans. Their gamesense and aim could also be majorly improved.
But Valve won't do any of this, because otherwise teams would kick their worst players in favour
of bots, to serve as a spare life for the first player who dies. The poor things don't
stand a chance with the limitations that Valve has put on them.
But we can improve them in some ways. Helping me with this video is Bezimienny, who I'd
consider a bot expert and has spent years analysing their behaviour and pushing their
abilities to the max. Using these console commands, you can see a map's nav mesh. These
blocks tell bots how to move around a level. Where to hide, where to expect enemies from,
where the best sniper spots are and how to traverse obstacles. CS:GO automatically generates
these for custom-made levels and does an okay job, but still leaves considerable room for
improvement. By customising it, bots can become far better at playing the levels that we all
know and love. To show what bots are capable of, Bez showed
me an assault course. It's not hard for human players, but I couldn't imagine a bot being
able to do it in a million years. But sure enough, they did, all thanks to a custom navigation
mesh that he had made. I'll show a quick extract of the course he showed me here. I hope you
find it as interesting as I did! He has some trouble jumping on the boxes because
there's a gap in here, normally this doesn't happen in maps so it shouldn't be a problem.
The first real challenge came with the van, which didn't have an invisible clip to make
it easy to climb on. Because of this, jumping onto it was VERY glitchy and even I struggled.
Bez warned me that the bot sometimes gets stuck, but it's a fault with the mapper more
than it is the pathfinding. Come on!
I believe in you! OOH I'M NOT THE ENEMY
Oh my God, please... Oh yes, finally! Yeah but normally it doesn't
happen. It only happened here because there's a playerclip missing.
He then showed me the ultimate challenge, where the bot had to jump across a gap. I'm
sure we've all seen how bots usually deal with this sort of obstacle.
And he found his solution in the most unlikely of spots. It turns out that Valve knew how
to get a jump like this to work but only included it in one spot. Here- in the most unlikely
of places! It involves a no jump zone that acts as a run-up, followed by a thin jump
zone on the very edge, encouraging bots to make the leap. He's not entirely sure why
it was included in this location, since bots wouldn't successfully manage a jump this far
anyway, but he thinks that maybe they're supposed to fail so they return to ground-level again.
If Valve had included a proper connection between the roof and ground zones then it
could perhaps confuse bots already at ground level who might try to jump onto the roof,
failing in a perpetual cycle. He then demonstrated why the correct start
position and run up was so important. A lot was on the line, and the bot knew it.
Using this run-up method, the bot did both jumps first time and even successfully navigated
the crouching tunnel! The whole thing was impressive stuff to see in action and could
dramatically improve their navigation in official maps.
Which Bez has also done. Through analysing the meshes that Valve has made, he has rated
the official maps. Of course, it depends on the paths they take and how you wish to rate
them, but he was impressed with Italy and gave it a 9. Presumably a custom nav mesh
was needed to help get them up this wood stack near CT spawn. He says that even this map's
nav mesh is out of date, though. He awarded the new train a '1' for simply being a pre-generated
nav mesh, with no love or attention given to it by the devs. He also found a lot of
peculiar mistakes. For example, bots will still walk around the scaffolding in Dust2's
tunnels, even though it was removed years ago. He still rated the map's mesh a '7' overall.
At CT spawn on shortdust there's an invisible car which confuses bots running through this
area. Valve pls fix. But he doesn't just criticise what's already
there. He's taken steps to improve the nav mesh on these maps. Mirage, in particular.
He made it so they could jump back into the apartments in A, or through the ladder room
like so. None of this was possible before, although you might not have noticed! Not all
changes were acrobatic. He made this spot near T-spawn one-way, so bots can drop down
but have to walk up the stairs to get back up, as opposed to getting bugged on the slope
and doing a needless jump going down. His advice to map makers is to spend just a few
minutes testing the nav mesh. To lead a bot around from place to place and to see if they
get stuck on railings or if they camp in bad corners. It doesn't take long to do and ironing
out these problems will quickly make the bots more fun to play with on these maps.
You can download the improved nav meshes in this video's description, which I'll try to
keep up to date with his latest changes and additions. You can also download this bot
script from gamebanana. This will improve their skill level- though be warned, it does
mean that, even on easy mode, you might find yourself against the elite of the bot army.
Or perhaps you won't bother. Clearly, bots aren't important to anybody- not even map
developers. But since most maps will at some point need bots to increase player numbers,
perhaps a little bit more care and respect should be given to them.
So let's thank bots for their years of service. When human players have failed us, they've
always been patiently waiting in the wings, ready to step in. They'll take whatever we
throw at them, often having to ignore a horrifying barrage of team attacks and insults. They're
the heroes that we deserve, if not the ones we need right now. We joke about them. Because
they can take it. Because they're not heroes. They're silent guardians. Watchful protectors.
And a bit shite.