BotSkin

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BotSkin is a modification for Quake made on October 18, 1996 by WACko. This modification is an alteration of the earlier BG Bot to add MultiSkin support. Furthermore, the bots' capabilities have been expanded to the point the original mod is nearly unrecognizable. Note that it shares many similarities with the earlier Swimbot, but is entirely redesigned due to both being closed-source modifications.

Using impulses 200 and 201, the player can rotate through the skins also used for the bots.

Unlike the Enforcers found in the original BG Bot, BotSkin uses Monsters that look like Ranger and behave relatively similar to him. This means he will mostly run instead of slowly walking, plus will also jump frequently to be an even harder target to hit. They can continue attacking whilst moving as well. They can get injured by Lava and Slime, plus can also drown from being under the Water too long. Not only can they cause triggers to occur, but they can hit Buttons. While the original BG Bot had a tendency to get stuck in various dead ends, the BotSkin bot is often able to navigate the main portions of a level with little issue (they won't be found clustered in the small dead end areas of DM6: The Dark Zone for example).

A BotSkin bot, unlike their earlier counterpart, will not disappear on death. Instead they will respawn elsewhere, thus allowing for continued games as opposed to needing to constantly respawn the bots.

Bots are based on Difficulty settings, which means that a bot on the easiest difficulty will move a lot slower and be a lot less accurate than the bots on Nightmare Difficulty. While Nightmare bots are still relatively inaccurate, they can try to follow the player's actions, and can be extremely lethal if they acquire a Rocket Launcher. Note also that bots on Hard and Nightmare move at a faster rate than the player.

Unlike BG Bot, the BotSkin bot will not fire upon the player in Cooperative or Single Player games, thus allowing for bots that follow the player around without attacking them. When teams are on, all bots spawned with "impulse 100" will be put into a "Bot team" that will fight against all players. Players in their own respective teams can add bots that will help them with Impulse 101. Hostile bots will take the various skins chosen by MultiSkin, while friendly bots will appear like Ranger in a colored outfit that represents their respective team. Both cycle through their respective lists.

While the normal scoreboard will only show player scores, a workaround has been created in the console. This can be displayed at any time by pressing impulse 102. A list of player scores will be shown, as well as each bot, and the amount of points each team has if it is a team game. This scoreboard will also be displayed every time the player respawns.

An unlimited number of bots can be spawned into the levels, though this will result in Quake eventually being unable to handle the amount of models and having frequent packet overflows, lag, or even crashes. To remove all bots from the level, the player can use Impulse 103. The message "All bots REMOVED! Couldn't take the heat, eh?" will be displayed as well as the scoreboard prior to the bots being removed. Note the cycle will remain where it last left off, meaning this can be used to get a bot with a specific skin.

While improved from the earlier BG Bot, the BotSkin still has some disadvantages over a normal player. There are cases where they can get stuck in their spawn location, for example, or just are unable to properly navigate a certain room and so endlessly run around a small section. They also will avoid more complicated areas, meaning the Thunderbolt in DM6: The Dark Zone or the Rocket Launcher in DM5: The Cistern will never be reached by these bots. The bots are also unable to swim, instead just walking at the bottom of a pool of Water, meaning areas such as the Thunderbolt in DM5: The Cistern are inaccessible to said bots.

Included with the modification is a fix for Water based Monsters. In the vanilla game, any Monster that is defined as a Water opponent would count as 2 opponents instead of one in the initial counter. For the vanilla game, this only happened with the Rotfish.

Player Team Bot Names

 * SomeGuy
 * JohnSmith
 * BigDude
 * JFK
 * Elvis
 * BillGates
 * Mulder
 * Scully
 * Ahnie
 * Darcy

2.2 - November 4, 1996

 * Buggy release, bots tend to randomly stop. They also tend to not jump around as frequently as 2.0, making for much easier targets.
 * Fixed Nailgun and Super Nailgun aiming. Previously bots failed to hit their targets with either Weapon.
 * Fixed an issue where the server tended to crash after a few minutes if several bots were in use.

2.0 - October 27, 1996

 * When a bot is added, the message now also shows the number of bots in play.
 * Bots now wait a random but small amount of time before respawning. This was done to counter crashes involving no free edicts.
 * Included a fix for the Rotfish counter bug.
 * Added the Cowboy skin.
 * Bots are now less likely to jump into a pool of Lava.
 * Improved movement and strafing.

1.8 - October 18, 1996

 * Official release