One year and a half since I've written anything for the bot. Where does the time go ?
A new challenging job and a life : I just don't have the time for this anymore.
My thanks to the ones who helped. It was fun.

Hurricane

Here is the new version of the bot with all the features previously only available to the users of the forum.

Please read the README.TXT (LISEZMOI.TXT) for details about the cvars and commands.

Thanks to Dave, the new forum is phpbb3 and hosted by thedefectospro.com
It is much faster and has got no advertising.

You can find it here.

I've got a bit more time that I used to so I can add features and fix reported issues faster.

A couple new features have been added and some improvement has been made here and there.

Third party issue workaround.

Here is the first beta version of the new bot architecture.

The best game of the Orange Box. Hours of gameplay if you try to do the advanced and challenge maps.

As you may know, Bioshock PC is plagued with securom (nothing new, many games are sold with this crap).
What's bad is that for Bioshock the said crap only allows two installations of the game.
I'm even more disappointed that even the Steam version of the game seems to have this. (Maybe the last Steam update fixed this ? One can only hope ...)
Anyway, here is all the good I think of how 2K loves its custommers.

---

To: Eric Monacelli<inquiries@2kgames.com>
CC: <dave@ttlg.com>
Subject: Thank you so much.

Dear 2K.

Thank you so much for the securom infection and the 2 installations limit on Bioshock PC.
Your wise decision makes me 50€ richer until I find a paying-customer friendly game.

Regards,

An ex future customer.

---

I get a lot of feedback on the bot. Most of it good. Some of it ... let's say some people have no shame or think the world spins on their belly.
Anyway, here are the answers of a few recuring questions:

• Although I though it was obvious : my first language is not English. No need to excuse yourself for your "bad" English in your emails ;).
   (From this, you can also infere I'm not American)
• I'm not paid to develop the bot. I get no money whatsoever : nothing, nada, 何も, niets, nichts, rien, zéro, zlicht. (Actually it costs me money)
• I do not know anybody working for Valve.
• I only do this because, when my real job is not too taxing, it's funny.
• The said job is computer security (cryptography, digital signature, ...)

My developement computer is worthy again.
• Vista 64 Ultimate
• E6850 (my first Intel since years) cooled on a Thermalright Ultra-120 extreme.
• Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6
• 4Gb Crucial ram
• 2*T7K250 RAID hard disk (unchanged)
• nVidia 7800GTX512 (unchanged)
• Seasonic S12-650 (unchanged)
• P182 (note: The three fans on low are emiting a noisy wind noise. The P150/SOLO is much much better noise wise)

The current developement version of the bot is 1.1.0 (new, modular, software architecture).
It works fine on Windows XP/Vista/Vista 64 but I have trouble with Linux. As soon as it is fixed, I'll update the bot.

Many minor improvement have been made in this version (many were already available in intermediary builds made for the users of the forums)

The most relevant change is that this new build does not use SSE2 instruction set anymore.
• It prevented the bot to run on Windows with older processors (Linux was fine).
• It has been reported to run faster.

The sources of the bot have been recovered.
I can now resume working on the project.

Today, the dev computer with all the latest sources of the bot has died.
That A8N32-SLI Deluxe's infamous overheating finally lead to a suicide, probably killing the X2 4800 CPU along. (The vcore was changing like crazy yesterday)
The sources of the bot (and all my work) being on a 500Gb nVidia RAID I cannot access them anymore.
(Do not panic, I still have a 1 week-old backup in case the RAID is not recoverable)
I know, striped RAID is risky/stupid but it was sooo fast.
It will take some time to get replacement parts (939 MB and CPU are "old", so it's difficult to get them at reasonable price.)

A little rant (I makes me feel better) ...

I disliked the A8N32-SLI Deluxe and it's 40° to 50° and "AI" overclocking issues since November 2005 (when I got it).
The temperature is "normal" for ASUS. Well, it's not rocket science that the life expectency of overheated components is shorter. I'd say : about 17 months.
So I'm in for about 250€ of diagnostic (new cheap video card, mb and cpu to pinpoint the problem) and then 500€ of new good components. (ie: no ASUS part)
Too bad the K10 is not released yet.

In case you are wondering if another part could be the issue, the computer was:
• A8N32-SLI Deluxe (or so they say)
• Athlon64 X2 4800 cooled by an XP120 (Thermalright/Papst)
• Corsair 2Gb 3500LL Pro (DDR433)
• Antec P150 with two 92mm Papst for intake
• Seasonic S12 600W
• Geforce 7800GTX512
• two Hitachi T7K250 in striped RAID (Windows XP, games, dev tools)
• one Hitachi T7K250 (for Vista and Linux OSes)

So I'm pretty confident in the quality of the remaining of the computer.
One could hope stability and silence with this (the 7800GTX512 is quiet, except at startup and when mass-murdering (a.k.a fun) is happening.)

A fix for a balancing bug in the the Team Deathmatch game is available on the forums.
You only need this version if you are using the bot to play in Team Deathmatch mode

My current lack of free time is drastically slowing down the developement of the bot.

It's really good to know players are playing against the bot.

The version 1.0.56 is now bundled with a small installation tool for Windows (v 1.0.56b).
It basically does the manual installation steps. Only automatically. Please give feedback about it.

Fresh new forum created here.

The infamous Internet Explorer will not render this page properly (and will cripple the look of many others).
Consider using a fully functionnal internet browser like FireFox, Opera or even Netscape.