August 27, 1999
The next 'route file + missions' pack
is now available, this time covering 'Mancis Freeway' (
actcity2.bsp, by CryptR). If you
didn't install the previous pack, please read the FAQ on installation of terrain files first.
Two sets of missions are available, where you, as a police recruit, are to make sure the Reservoir Dogs
go snafu once again, and won't survive. In the 'casino robbery' case, the police force depends on you to
open the doors. Also see the shots below.
Don't expect many more missions for this map until the next CGF version arrives.
Creating good missions for this map was a bit of a problem because the CGF 0.78 bots lack the door handling
and their 'spread' is broken (door handling has already been implemented for the next version).
Talking about the next version: to ensure that the next CGF version has 'out-of-the-box'
support for a decent number of maps, an interim version has been made available to a number
of route file creators.
That version lacks any AI improvement (I have yet to start on that), but contains two weeks worth
of new route file creation code and over ten pages of documentation. I'm looking forward to their
results.
Last but not least: download problems. If you follow a link and you are shown the file name
and file size and the number of downloads, then that link is OK. If you cannot download that file,
that is because telefragged is serving already the maximum number of users. Please try again (and
at a less busy moment - weekends tend to work better for me).
William
August 23, 1999
Borderfield today made available the
first real CGF Mission Editor (by Incubus One). This editor will
speed up mission editing drastically for those already crafting mission scripts, and will
allow a much larger audience to change missions to their liking.
Conforming with the Action Movie theme, the Borderfield's CGF Mission Editor allows you
to drag'n'drop pre-defined actors (need some more John McClane?) or even teams into the
mission. And behind the scenes, Borderfield's CGF Misson Editor takes care of the silly
brackets and semicolons, launching your straight away into your own creation. Get it at Borderfield.
Ross "JoeSatch" Norton's CGF Launcher is still allowing you to find the best missions
easily in your growing missions directory.
Also today, he announces to finally have 'fragged' the "can't find colormap.pcx"
(after Dan Bocker identified the problem - thanks Dan!), and he
has fixed the sorting of mission names in the main screen.
If you were hampered by the above mentioned problem, download the 1.48 upgrade here.
Otherwise, you might want to wait until Ross provides a solid 'single zip file' version 1.50 soon.
Stay tuned for the upcoming actcity2 route/mission pack later this week.
William
August 18, 1999
Finally, here is the first weekly CGF
'route file + missions' pack for
Downtown
(and click here to download the Downtown map by Cougar (D.O.A.) )!
The pack contains a single set of 'clear the streets of scum' missions (with a map annotation) and
a single route file. CGF fan sites will soon provide lots of extra missions for downtown.
To relive the screenshots above, you need to extract it into your action subdir of Quake2,
with 'Use Folder Names' enabled. This file is very small (24KB) because (warning - read this carefully):
- it contains solely the essential downtown.srp terrain file and will create the
optional terrain files when starting a mission for downtown.
At that time, your PC will seem to hang for about 5 minutes (depending on your processor). Instead,
CGF doesn't hang at all but is rebuilding the the lacking 2MB of data from the .srp file. So,
leave your PC alone, go get yourself a drink, and come back in 5 minutes.
Then, just quit Quake2, and launch CGF again with the downtown mission of your choice.
This time, CGF is ready to rock-n-roll...
The big benefit of distributing only the .srp files is saving you the trouble of downloading
some 1MB of additional data.
For more information, visit the FAQ here.
- it does not contain the .cfg and .bat files to launch any of the missions. That's simply
because Ross 'JoeSatch' Norton's bot launcher does a far better job at that. So get that launcher
if you haven't done so already.
I'll continue to provide weekly route files in August. From early September onwards, the
new CGF 0.80 will allow, explain and support gamers in creating good route files themselves for a good
part of the Action Quake2 maps. (Instantly, you'll find the CGF fan sites providing lots of route files!
Read about the current lack of route files at CGF fan sites here).
The past week, I've completed much of the work required to make
good route files easier, and I'll make a test version of that available to a few CGF route
file creators.
The coming weeks, I hope to finally find the time to improve the AI to where I want it to be.
Observations from the bot fans has been very useful, and will result in a CGF version where tactics
make a bigger difference. Since the improvements respond to questions from CGF users, and since
it might help you surviving against the bots, I'll post some previews of these AI improvements
in the coming weeks.
William
August 15, 1999/August 16, 1999 (oops - fixed broken launcher link)
CGF Launcher 1.45 is now available. Ross 'JoeSatch' Norton
proudly presents the friendly way to pick your weapon, record and play demos, and filter for missions
for your favourite maps1.
You better get it into action! (It is available as an upgrade to version 1.0/1.05 only. Get it
here).
Meanwhile I've been struggling to get you the weekly new route file. I picked Lightbeam (by Tristan),
which would enable the bots to do some indoor fighting as well. The map turned out to require
serious modifications to the route file creation code.
In other words, I couldn't create a decent route file for it with beta 0.78: it wouldn't allow me
to jump from the lighttower into the water (didn't understand that you survive jumps into the water,
and numerous problems with ladders). Exactly the reason why the unoffical route files have been taken
down).
As a result, I have added a lot of support for creating decent (unofficial) route files in
the upcoming version 0.79 (the good thing), but don't have a route file ready by now (the bad thing).
If I cannot complete the Lightbeam route file soon, I'll make 'Downtown' available.
(You can find Lightbeam here,
Downtown here,
and read all about them (reviews) at the AQMD and
6th Floor Map Depository).
Finally, for the script 'directors' out there, two minor changes to the script documentation:
you'll find the changes here.
William
1 Mission filtering works as long as all missions in your action\cgf\missions directory are correct, that is,
do not contain syntax errors. If you have incorrect missions in that directory, do not use mission filtering. For normal
users that don't write missions themselves, this should not cause any problems.
August 11, 1999
Ross 'JoeSatch' Norton has even better things to do than playing the bots... And it shows.
Below, you'll find three screen shots of the new CGF Bot Launcher features that are being finalized and tested.
This new version of the CGF Launcher will become available this weekend, both in full size and 'upgrade' format. Again,
if you play CGF and haven't downloaded the launcher, you better do so now. The CGF Launcher will be the friendly way
to access the CGF missions and other CGF features.
William
P.S. The 'Player Configuration' feature shown above solely affects the mission file at hand, not the other missions files (if any)
chosen when you fail or complete a mission.
August 07, 1999
Some serious updates to the site, with (finally) documentation how to modify and craft missions
as the most important one. Click here to read all about the mission scripts, the idea,
the instructions, what works and what doesn't work.
(Questions and feedback are welcome, so I can improve the documentation. It is basically one large (70KB) html file so
you can save it to your hard disk for further off-line reference).
Of course, there have been some clever guys that figured most of the CGF mission scripting out before any documentation existed. The Action Movie idea behind AQ2 is prominent in CGF as well,
as the 'Matrix' (by JamesClonk) and 'Face-Off' (by RobVanDam) user crafted missions illustrate. (Fetch them from
one of the CGF mission sites).
As I haven't seen these movies myself (too busy programming, probably...), I'm
not the one to judge them. Instead, Action Quake co-creator Suislide says about CGF
and the Face Off mission:
"The CGF bot is very cool, even in it's first early beta form. The little bastards are mean too. If you haven't tried it out yet, I recommend that you do. This is no ordinary bot. It is more along the lines of an advanced single player AI with scripted scenarios.
"
"
I recommend anyone who has played their fill of the default missions [...] grab some new ones. The Face Off one is cool [...]
"
A couple of more CGF (beta) reviews are here if you are curious about CGF.
Now Ross Norton provides the CGF Launcher, we get rid of these silly batch files and 'cannot launch mission /
cannot enter CGF mode troubles'. I invite all CGF users to obtain his Launcher (because
.bat files won't be provided anymore). Myself, during the past months, I haven't launched
CGF missions in any other way than using versions of Ross' CGF Launcher.
AQ2 version 1.52 has arrived, now providing the breakable glass re-introduced by CGF. I hope
AQ2 map makers will start dressing up their maps with breakable glass where appropriate. You
can read more about breakable glass here.
If you installed CGF and do not host multi-player AQ2 games on your PC, there's no need to
install AQ2 1.52 (you can already experience breakable glass using the CGF version). If you,
by accident installed 1.52, you did actually overwrite (and disable) CGF. In that case, just
reinstall CGF.
If you do want to host multi player (standard / gangsters / espionage) AQ2 games and want to use
CGF, you need to manually swap the gamex86.dll file in your action dir. (The CGF one is easy
to recognize because it's the largest: over 800KB).
I didn't expect the CGF 'community' to figure out the commands for route file creation
(otherwise, I would have disabled them). I should have known better...
Though I'm impressed by the clever guys working out a good deal of the route file creation
process, the resulting route files are less impressive. That's not so much due to their
efforts (they tried hard) but due to CGF: the current absence of any commands or utilities to
track down problems in route files makes it virtually impossible to construct good route
files for anyone not being able to run CGF in a C++ debugger (me).
Because the CGF bots do more with route files than any other bot (see the FAQ),
they immediately suffer from problematic route files (act stupid, get stuck) and so do
you (more CGF crashes). I'm already receiving email from users having serious problems using
the 'unofficial' route files.
Therefor, the following:
- I'm asking all CGF fan sites not to publish unofficial route files (any more) for the time being
(sites are likely to lose their link from here if they don't assist)
- I'll release an annotated route file + mission skeleton for a new map each week until
- I (have) add(ed) sufficient support in CGF (and documentation) to allow anyone to construct
quality route files
- (I don't mind people constructing route files for private purposes (they are aware of
the problems, unlike the users downloading them))
Paying a visit to the CGF fan sites made me glad: lots of missions available, and some
nice looking informative sites as well. You'll find them (annotated and ranked) on the
links page.
Finally: the most often requested feature is (understandably) the ability to do co-op
multi player against the bots (you and your friends together in missions against the
bots). It's definitely planned for but it needs some serious work before it's in.
William
(And yes, I'm back from my holidays (road biking in France's Alpes mountains). After writing
mission documentation, and re-doing bits and pieces of the site, it's finally time for AI
programming again).
August 02, 1999
Ross has released a new version of the CGF Launcher. Version 1.05 is available both as a full version and an upgrade version. If you want/need the full version you will also
require the (new) runtime files package. The respective links to download are:
Cube
Old News
![Technical CGF information [AI and design]](./graphics/aidesign.png){kind=small}
![Links to related sites [such as AQ2 or AI sites]](./graphics/links.png){kind=small}
