What does E[POD] mean?
POD is an abbreviation for "Ping of Death". CountFloyd gave this name to his bot once he created it. He called it that way because it was derived from the "High Ping Bastard Bot" botman is doing (Look at the Bots Ping they always have a Ping of 5). Since my bot is just a modification of POD-Bot and 98% of the source is not made by me but by CountFloyd and botman I keep this name in my bot to show tribute to his (their) work. (For the same reason I will not rename the command "podbotmenu", cause it just is THE podbotmenu. I did some modifications but I will not change the name of the menu. Maybe I will rename the bot, but the menu will still be called podbotmenu.) The E stands for Eminem... LOL, no of course not!!! It just means "Enhanced". I inserted the brackets because POD-Bot uses "[POD]" as a clantag and I found "EPOD" very ugly.
What is the correct wording of E[POD]bot?
The answer is in the question! *g* Very wrong are: EPOD-Bot, [E]PODbot, E[POD]Bot and such things... If you are lazy, type epod-bot, like in the URL of the website, but not epodbot, because it is very hard to read. You can also abbreviate it like this: "EPB" or "epb".
Why is the bot's name that hard to spell?
Umm... it's a challenge for you! ;-)
Why did you make E[POD]bot?
I was a big fan of POD-Bot since I installed version 1.4 a long time ago... I ever liked Counter-Strike, but I neither have a flatrate nor a broadband connection, so I cannot play on the Internet. So I play with bots most of the time. Every update of POD-Bot was like christmas to me ;-) and I felt very disappointed because after 2.5 no new version followed. I wanted to start a "shopping list" with wishes from me and some of my friends and wanted to send it to CountFloyd, but then he published his source and wrote that he lost version 3.0 as his harddisk crashed. I got the idea to make a better bot myself and as I got some spare time I started my work on E[POD]bot. (spare time? I hope my teachers will not read this...)
What's the E[POD]bot team?
Most of the work is done by me, LightNinja. I'm doing all the coding and I maintain the website, doing the installers, readmes and many waypoints. But I'm supported by several cool guys.
There are Kain and judas, (real-life) friends of mine, who really enjoy beta-testing my bot. judas' machine is very slow (266 MHz) and does not fit the system requirements of E[POD]bot, so some bugs and disadvantages will appear at his machine first. Kain also hosts the EPB files on his webspace.
I'm very glad to have MarD from the Nukebox forum helping me with waypointing. He is a really good waypointer, at least as good as TAZ or CountFloyd.
AustinBotServer is also in some kinde associated to this project. He runs a 24 hours CS server with bots and tested also my bot on it. So he is also a very important beta-tester, because he tests it in action. But the most important thing is, that he tries to find out some reasons for bot crashes with runtime debugger error logs. Since I do not understand anything about this, it's a great thing he does for me.
Last not least Steve++. In fact he does not work on E[POD]bot, but on his own POD-Bot-Modification POX-Bot. Sometimes we help each other to fix some very weird problems and we also exchanged source-codes of our first bot-versions.
What are the system requirements of E[POD]bot?
OR: Why do I get less frames-per-seconds in CS after installing EPB?
I recommend a Intel Pentium II CPU 300 MHz or higher and a 3D Graphics Acclerator Card (at least Voodoo 2 / Riva TNT 2) The Bot boosts CS CPU Usage and needs a framerate of 30 fps or higher to run properly. At lower framerates the bots may appear not as clever as they are on high framerates. The higher your framerate is the cleverer the bots will get. Using the bot will also reduce the framerates a little, because the bot-code has to be run every frame. Adding more bots will cause more CPU Usage and lower framerates. If your system isn't that fast, only add a few bots.
E[POD]bot does not work after I installed it. Why?
Version I and Version II are update versions. You have to have a correctly installed and working POD-Bot version 2.0 or higher, because of the waypoints and other files.
Also make sure you unzipped the Archive into the right Folder. You have to unzip it into the Halflife Main Folder NOT the cstrike one and NOT the POD-Bot folder! If you have CS Retail version you have to unzip it into the Counter-Strike Retail Main Folder (where cstrike.exe is.)
The bots won't plant the bomb at de_dust...
It's a waypoint problem. Download the fixed waypoints or fix them yourself. Or wait for Version IIa which is a standalone version with waypoints.
After I installed E[POD]bot the bots began to behave very strange on some maps...
It's a problem with the experience files. Because it is another version of the bot they have problems suing the experience they gathered before the update. You should delete all experience files, which are the *.pxp files inside the Waypoint folder (standard is \PODBot\WPTDefault).
Where can I download POD-Bot?
You can download both POD-Bot 2.5 and POD-Bot 2.6 Source-Code at the official POD-Bot website podbot.nuclearbox.com ! I think it's also available at FilePlanet.
How do I install POD-Bot 2.5?
Just run the automated EXE-installer you downloaded and install it to your Half-Life/CS-Retail main directory. If you got a zip file, look into it. If there is a single automated EXE-installer in it extract and run it. If there are many files like podbot.dll, botskill.cfg, but no installer, delete it and download it again from podbot.nuclearbox.com !
How do I install E[POD]bot?
RFTM! *g* Just run the WinZip-Self-Extracting EXE and follow the instructions given to you.
Can I use different Bots with CounterStrike?
You can easily switch between them by changing the gamedll in the "liblist.gam" file. It has to point to the bot dll file you want to use. Be sure to only have ONE gamedll line in "liblist.gam". If you want to use multiple bots at the same time try botman's BotMixer 5000.
If you want to use different versions of POD-Bot or different POD-Bot modifications your best choice would be to make multiple backups and copy the one back to the PODBot folder you want to use. Version IIa will be in it's own directory, so this problem will no longer exist.
Is a Linux version of E[POD]bot available?
There is no linux version yet. Propably there will be one.
There were a discussion about this at Nuclearbox Forums, you could download a linux version of POD-Bot 2.6 there but it does not function properly. http://forums.nuclearbox.com/thread.php?ar=&threadid=15402&boardid=15
What about the plugins PODAIM and PODFIX? Can they be used with E[POD]bot?
It is recommended that you DO NOT use these plugins with E[POD]bot. I don't think PODAIM is compatible with E[POD]bot, because it has aiming improvements itself. PODFIX could be used, but is quite useless because the modifications of this plugin are included in E[POD]bot (except some useless features). Some people already tried EPB with these plugins and said that the bots behave much better without them.
How can I use the bot with MetaMod?
You have to install the POD-Bot first and then MetaMod, otherwise it won't be nice. ;-) But you can update your POD-Bot 2.x with EPB after you installed MetaMod without having to reinstall it. Add the param +localinfo mm_gamedll podbot/podbot.dll to your Counter-Strike Shortcut. It will look like this then: C:\SIERRA\Half-Life\hl.exe
-console -game cstrike +localinfo mm_gamedll podbot/podbot.dll. You can also use metamod and other plugins, but the bot is not designed to use it with any plugins, so it could be incompatible. The best solution is too use as few plugins/addons as possible.
How do I write my own Bot ? What do I need for this ?
First, you need a good understanding of C/C++. It would help a lot if you read the Halflife SDK.A good place to start writing a Half-Life Bot is botmans webpage. If you want to do a modified POD-Bot yourself go to Count-Floyd's POD-Bot site and download the source code. At the Nukebox forums you will get help and additional FAQs by other members and developers.
epodbot.bots-united.com