Bot Enabled Server AI Load On CPU

[WildcardX]

I haven't yet done any performance evaluations of the bot code as I've been focused on bug fixes and features for bots in a group. But I've been thinking about the new features I have been adding to the AI and I am wondering how this is performing on a larger scale. I know there are a few bot enabled servers out there like The Hidden Forest (love their YouTube video!!) and I hear Mort has a server with bots running around. I'd like to hear some feedback about how this bot code behaves on a larger scale. If there are any performance issues, I'd like to hear them so they can be addressed.

[Lillu]

Hey WildcardX, thanks again for all your hard work improving the bot system. We are looking forward to update the server code with the new bot AI. Tbh, we already gave some hint to our playerbase that some cool stuff is coming soon. :)
I'll ask our community to provide feedback and will keep you updated.

[Lillu]

Our cpu (I call it The Beast) is a Xeon X3320 2.5 GHz Quad-core processor, dedicated to THF server and the web based sql tools (our portal is hosted on a separate host in US). with 100+ players online and 1 bot per toon the cpu it hardly ever breaks 30% usage, at 10% average.
It's a IBM x3200 M2 server with 4G ram.

Will let you know how things change once we updated our code.

[WildcardX]

That's encouraging to hear. How popular are the use of bots on your server among your player base? Can I read from those numbers that if you have 100 players online, then there may be as many as 75 bots spawned?

[Lillu]

I would say, 50-75ish. We have a 1 (spawnable) bot per toon limit, and 1 bot per group limit. Players mostly solo or play 2-3 box with one bot (besides the group/raid zones and progression content).

[WildcardX]

Did you impose these limits on the bots because of performance concerns or simply your arbitrary choice?

[Lillu]

Bot limits were imposed encourage grouping and raiding among the players, while access to 1 bot gives the ability to solo w/out the need of going lfg if they so desired. The whole custom content, lvl 1 to 70, the (normal difficulty) custom adventure system are tuned for solo player plus 1 bot. Bots has a role in hard ldon and group/raid/progression content too on THF.

We have never been concerned with the performance of our server due to anything bot related. When we upgraded our hardware, it quite simply was to provide a better enviroment for our player base and to allow more players to connect smoothly.

It feels like 1 bot per group works out perfectly across the boards though, a tank gets a healer bot, a cleric a tank bot. If you are two boxing a tank / healer you can toss out a dps bot. We constantly try to tweak bot spells to meet player needs. Recently, we found that bot ai constantly feared mobs resulting in many trains and deaths (sk / necro bots) To fix the problem, we removed the fear spell from their spell list. It would be really nice to see a command line spell cast i.e. #bot fear target.

I belive our server is a good source for bot AI related feedback, specially due to our limitations. I'll start a separate topic for bot AI at our forum once we go live with the new code. (planned for this saturday) We can give you summarized feedback here but you are welcome to join us there and admin that thread aswell.

[WildcardX]

Excellent and thank you for your feedback.

[Lillu]

Rev1099 is now live on THF.

BoT related feedbacks will be posted: here (http://forum.thehiddenforest.org/viewforum.php?f=24) on our forum to avoid spam on this board.

Let me know if we can help with anything else to test or improve the BoT system.