What is a QuakeBot?

    Quake© is a first person, multi-player, shoot-em-up game created by id Software.  A QuakeBot ( Quake (ro)bot ) is an artificial/computer controlled player which can participate in a game of Quake with other players.  Properly programmed, a QuakeBot can pose quite a challenge to the best of human players.  First of all, a bot has perfect aim -- it can hit with every shot (this can actually be quite annoying to humans actually, more about that later).  Second, a bot can have perfect memory.  It can calculate when a certain item will respawn, or can recognize patterns in opponents' actions.  Finally, it is also possible to have eyes in the back of the bot's head -- it can see 360o all around (which makes it very hard to sneak up on).

    There are two general types of QuakeBots, categorized by where the bot program is executed:  server side and client side.

    Since the client side QuakeBot is more for the "average" user to use on remote machines (all of us cannot have an internet Quake server running 24-hours a day), I decided to create Itchy.  Some of the information on this page deals with bots in general.  However, most of it is intended to address client side bots.  It has been a lot of fun working on my bot.  I have learned about network programming, graphics, and BSP trees.  And I am still learning more every day I work on Itchy.


Copyright © 1997 Chad Dreveny
All rights reserved.