The bots in CZ arenвЂ™t some mookish collection of pre-defined brainwashed drones, conforming to a set of poorly comprised Al routines and scripts. Eager to make amends I tried again, attempting to outflank the enemy with my squad of three highly trained soldiers. Twenty seconds later, I was dead, decapitated by a well placed LAW rocket. Gesturing for me to have a go, I clutched the controls in tepid palms.Д¬ocksure that my years of office Counter-Strike sessions would put me in good stead for the trials ahead. So the first bot will go to a certain point and cover the next guy as he makes his way to the same spot, so that the whole group moves together like a real military unit.' Coo. An example of this is walking into an open area where there is potential to be sniped. However, as youвЂ™re the squad leader, sometimes youвЂ™ll have to make the all-important decisions and thatвЂ™s where the direct command system comes in.'ДЄnd what about the second approach to interacting with your team-mates? 'The other approach to solving the problem is to get the Al to take a look at both what the player and the other Al characters are doing, as well as the way the map is built, and from this figure out what the smartest decisions are. So a lot of the time, the bots will be making their own decisions about whatвЂ™s going to keep them alive and whatвЂ™s going to get the job done. Once the mission starts, itвЂ™s chaos, and both human and computer-controlled players will care primarily about survival and their objective. We decided it was important that we give the player some direct control over what their team-mates do.

'WeвЂ™ve actually used two interfaces instead of one.ДЇor the first one, weвЂ™ve developed a complicated system which allows you to directly give orders to your teammates, such as getting one bot to take point. Randy was now in an ebullient mood so I thrust my Dictaphone nearer to his face to record his every word. Things were beginning to get interesting.

Like a newborn I wedged myself between the two animated hunks of flesh that stood either side of me to get a better view. Basically they should be enhancing your experience of the game, not counteracting it,' explained Randy chirpily. One of the key problems is making sure the guys donвЂ™t look like idiots, and doing what you want them to. Developing this kind of FPS is no longer about being alone in the world - itвЂ™s about developing a team-based singleplayer game and making the Al believable, plausible and fun. The first of these is getting your team to do what you want. 'When we started work on Condition Zero, we found that there were two approaches to solving the problem of a command interface. During a lull in the action, I took the opportunity to ask how you, as the commander of your team of special forces soldiers, would be able to interact with your comrades. I watched for a while as a manic bot-filled firefight kicked off on one of CZвЂ™s impressive-looking new levels, where shards of debris flew off every surface as mis-aimed bullets thudded into walls. speaking to a pair of buck-toothed Ren and Stimpey lookalikes. Standing in front of me, was the man himself, Mr Randy Pitchford, not a bazooka-toting behemoth, but an affable enthusiastic man. Suddenly it appeared, looming from the greyness like a beacon to the lost, drawing in slack-jawed observers like fireflies to a lantern. Visibility was down to a minimum as I eked my way through swathes of bodies, matted together with sweat and spilt coffee towards the Gearbox stand showing Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, the single-player version of the greatest online shooter of our time. My mission - to track down legendary developer Randy Pitchford, who, it was rumoured, was as big as a giant and had a rocket launcher for an arm. Throngs of pallid, under-nourished journos shunted their way from one room to the next as Hill and I peeled off in opposite directions. After four and a half hours, we arrived at the grandiose building, and were promptly ushered out of the vehicle by clucking Frenchmen towards the galleries housing a host of VU Games developers demonstrating their wares to the press.

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