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Daikatana Bots
Daikatana will feature co-operative bots in the single-player game which will help the player through their missions.
There will be two characters, Superfly Johnson and Mikiko. There is also a possibilty of deathmatch bots being included in the game, possibly based on the AI used for the co-op 'helpers'.
In Autumn of 1998 I had a quick talk with the then lead programmer, Jonathan 'Nelno' Wright, who had this to say on the possibility of deathmatch bots making it into the game:
"It is our plan to include deathmatch bots with Daikatana, and I have
said before that they
will, but in the end it will come down to how much time we have. We are
concentrating
on the single-player aspects of the AI right now, but it shouldn't be
too huge a step to
implement a deathmatch bot based on the code for the NPC sidekicks and
monster AI.
NPCs can already use the same weapons the player uses, and one of my
current tasks
is to code sophisticated intelligence for each type of weapon, so that
the AI knows how
to use them best. That will go a long way towards implementing a
deathmatch bot.
Even if we don't have it completely polished up and with the initial
release of Daikatana,
it's my sincere hope that we'll be able to release an upgrade with the
deathmatch bots
completely implemented. Aside from that, it should be a breeze for
anyone with Quake
C/Quake 2 programming experience to come up with a very sophisticated
Daikatana bot
based on our AI system."
In late '98 however there was a mass departure of staff from ION Storm and the Daikatana team, including Nelno. Daikatana's development is still meant to be on track but these
happenings could put extra ancillary features (such as bots) in danger.
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