Official forums for BZFlag.org

Posted: **Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:32 pm**

I did say when 2.0.6 was released I'd publish the robot client patch and associated automation scripts, so here they are.

Instructions for the patch
Download the 2.0.6 tarball and unpack it
Copy the patch file to the base bzflag-2.0.6 directory
Run

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patch -p1 < tep-bot.patch
./configure
make
su [enter password]
cp src/bzflag/bzflag $(which bzflag|sed 's/bzflag/bzrobot/')
exit

You need to make a copy of your config.cfg file specifically for the robot to use. This means you can turn off the sound drivers and turn down the graphics options (for the second or so the window is on the screen), set the bot email string etc.

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cp ~/.bzf/2.0/config.cfg ~/.bzf/2.0/robot.cfg

Now run the robot client with

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bzrobot -window botname@server:port

and after it minimises, re-open the window and change the settings as you want them, and exit bzrobot. Now I tend to change the permissions on the config file so it can't be written to by accident.

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chmod 440 ~/.bzf/2.0/robot.cfg

Run the robot client with

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bzrobot -window botname@server:port

Rotation script
It's pretty simple, put a seperate config file (filename ending in .conf) for each map you want to rotate into an empty directory, edit the script so that '/home/andy/.bzf/confs/' points to this directory, also edit '/usr/games/bin/bzfs' so it points to your bzfs binary.
Put the script in your path (either /usr/local/bin or ~/bin) and run it with

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bzrotate mypassword

The script is small enough to post so

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#!/bin/bash
while true
do
        for conf in /home/andy/.bzf/confs/*.conf
        do
                #echo $conf
                /usr/games/bin/bzfs -conf $conf -passwd $1 -d >/tmp/bzfs.log
        done
done

The Autobot Script
This is a bit more complicated so here is the output of the --help switch

-a or --serveraddress <server ip>: Listen ip of server, default <127.0.0.1>
-p or --port <port>: Listen port of server, default <5154>
-P or --password <password>: servers main admin password, for bzadmin /ban access, default <password> *** SET THIS OPTION***
-c or --confsdir <path>: Path to bzfs log file, default </tmp/bzfs.log>
-l or --logfile <path>: File to log server output to, default <none>
-e or --exepath <path>: Path to bz executables folder, default </usr/bin>
-m or --maxbots <int>: Maximum number of bots to spawn on a server, default <6> max <19> (0=option off)
-s or --startbots <int>: Number of bots to spawn on server startup, default <3>
-b or --bantime <int(minutes)>: Length of time to ban admin/cop askers, default <0> (0=option off)
-d or --display <X display>: Set the DISPLAY environment variable, so script can run in tty with robots i n X
-h or --help : Show this helpfile
-E or --echo : Echo server output to stdout
-A or --abusefile <path>:File containg callsigns of players known to abuse the autobot scripts.

-a -p -P -e -c -m -s -d -E and -h are pretty self explanitory.
-c is a little non-intuitive, but it's an old switch I converted to do something new, point it to the logfile specified in the rotate script.
-l is if you want a permanent server log from all the maps.

I run mine with

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bzwrap-1.3 -P myserverpassword -c /tmp/bzfs.log -e /usr/games/bin -E -A /home/andy/.bzf/abusers.txt &

If you open the script up in your favourite editor you can change the line

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self.botnames=('',blah blah blah)

to names you'd like for your robots.
Job done....

Posted: **Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:35 pm**

Wow! Thanks Teppic! I think some of us could use these.

Posted: **Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:38 pm**

Wow.

/me wishes he had Linux...

Posted: **Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:03 pm**

Just as a side note, these instructions presume you have 2.0.6 allready installed, if you did so from source then just patch the sources and recompile, no configure step.

Posted: **Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:01 pm**

in what order do you run the scripts/apps?

is it rotate.sh->bzrobot->bzwrap or bzrobot->bzwrap->rotate.sh etc....

or does it matter at all?

seems to work, but depends on the TOD

running on OSX 10.4.7

Posted: **Fri Aug 04, 2006 3:32 pm**

Good point.

rotate.sh should be run first, this starts the server and logging etc, then bzwrap
bzrobot doesn't need to be run, as it is run by the wrapper script when needed.

EDIT:I just tested he patch on the 2.0.8 sources, seems to work ok with that too.

Posted: **Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:04 pm**

er just one quick question, probably a no brainer but i musta missed it somewhere, what is the command to add bots to the game? i have tried some of what looks like the commands in bzwrap but keep getting unknown command

sheepishly staring at shuffling feet javascript:emoticon(':)')

Posted: **Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:23 pm**

Run bzflag in your command line and add -solo 3 to the end, for 3 bots as an example.

Like this:

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/path/to/bzflag -solo 6

(6 bots).

Posted: **Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:13 am**

i am aware of how to do it with the client, this script is for the server side. I thought that the command to add bots was xrobotsplease where x is the number of bots, but it dont seem to work.

Posted: **Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:20 am**

that is the command for a plugin

Posted: **Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:07 pm**

When the scripts were written originally it did everything from python, run the server, rotate the maps, add the robots, kick people asking to be admin/cop.
Then I split it into two, one to run the server and one to do the rest, mainly because I had some dodgy nvidia drivers at the time and whenever X crashed the server went down

Once the server is up and running, run bzwrap, log into the server with a normal client and look for 'TheBot Daddy' in the observers, if he isn't there then you did something wrong.
The server watches the log file for specific key phrases that it uses to trigger events. <quickly opens script to look them up.......>

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#robotplayers                                                          sets the currnt number of robots on the server to #

norobotsplease                                                        sets the currnt number of robots on the server to 0

/nobotcontrolfor {player}                                         stops player being able to set the number of bots

/nobotcontrolfor {player} permanently                      stops player being able to set the number of bots and adds them to your bot abuser file for future reference

can i be admin                                                         gets you kicked off the server

can i be cop                                                             gets you kicked off the server

In addition the script will return warnings to players who try to set too many bots (ie above the maximum level), if they ignore the warnings twice more they also get kicked.

Official forums for BZFlag.org

Automatic robots, patches and scripts etc

Automatic robots, patches and scripts etc