We understand how difficult it is to find 10 players to play with, especially for a new indie game.
Can you imagine playing a first-person shooter without anything to shoot at? It simply didn't make sense. As a result, we decided to include bots in the game so that players could play even when their buddies were unavailable.
Bots will be vital in the game since they will not only make the game playable as a single player but will also determine the game's difficulty. We don't expect a bot to replace an actual player, but we do want players to be okay with having a bot on their team or even use them to practice before playing with their friends.
We got off to a rough start since the bots were getting stuck and always running into the walls. We won't lie, it was rather entertaining to see them go against everything, even if it wasn't our intention.
After some tuning, we managed to make them avoid obstacles and even chase their enemies, but they were still aiming at the ground and a bit uncoordinated.
We needed to program their behavior so that they could not only recognize their path to the flag in the "Capture the Flag" game mode but also distinguish which ones were enemies and which ones were "friendlies" so that they could fire back and avoid being hit by enemies.
There is still a long way to go, but it is now possible to jump into a single game and have fun with and against bots in a casual “Capture the Flag” game.
Over the next few months, we will continue to improve the bots' artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure that the game is challenging but not impossible to win (when playing with bots). However, while our ambition is that you will always have someone to play with in the game lobby in the future, it is always a good idea to have a backup for when someone has to leave mid-game or when you just have an odd number of players and are only lacking one to have the same number of players on both teams.