In Quake3:Arena, the game set up for multiplayer, bots are the only computer enemies.

“Mr. Elusive”, their main producer, is the author of well-known at their time Quake 2 bots “Gladiators” by nickname. I can’t say that I appreciate their mental abilities, for example in comparison with those produced by Steve Hardi for Unreal Tournament, but as they say, we are to chew what we are given. Or something like this.

According to the game plot, these bots are nobody else but creatures picked out from different worlds, times and so on by the Vadrigars (an unknown race that adores watching gladiators fighting) to take part in Arena created by the Vadrigars. In this part there are description and pictures of all gladiators and their legends.

You can fight bots in ordinary “Deathmatch” and in “Teamplay” (one team against another, wins those who will have more frags) and also in “Capture the Flag” (two teams steal the Flag from each other).

If you’ve ever played the single player Q3A, then you know how to start the game on standard maps with predefined enemies. It’s interesting, but sometimes I’d like to play on another map with another opponents and with other settings... All you have to do for it is just to set the server parameters (in the game menu), switch to the chosen map (MAP mapname command) and add the bots you want to play with. There is ADDBOT command for it. Here is its parameters:

ADDBOT name [ skill: 1-5 ] [ team: Red/Blue ] [ delay: мс ] [ nickname ]

name - is a main bot name (Anarki, Mynx, Doom, Grunt ..), defining its model
skill - skill level (1 - weak, 5 - strong)
team - – you should specify the team for the teamplay
delay - in what ms he should enter the game
nickname - his name, nick name with which he’ll be running about; if you leave it out, a bot will stay with his main name.

Some examples:
addbot Anarki 3 - adds Anarki bot with skill level 3 to the game.
addbot Razor 2 Blue Gogi - adds Gogi Razor bot with skill level 2 playing for the Blue team to the game.

You can add as much as ten bots to the game, though it won’t become more interesting. On duel maps they play usually with one bot, for other maps three or four bots will be quite enough.

There are a long list of variables for bot settings in a game, in order to look it through just type “bot” command on console and press TAB, and you’ll be given a page listing them but most of them are useless for you. Main variables or commands that can be useful are ADDBOT, mentioned above, and also:

bot_rocketjump - allows bots to use the RocketLauncher for rocketjumps. "1" - granted, "0" - denied. Bear in mind, that rocketjump is possible only for those bots that have "weapon jumps" function ON.

bot_usehook - in CTF bots can be allowed to use the hook ("1" – granted, "0" - denied).

bot_nochat - in order to forbid bots to send messages, use "bot_nochat 1".

bot_fastchat - usually in a game bots, that are allowed to chat, stop for a while and can easily be fragged. If you turn this option on ("bot_fastchat 1"), bots will chat without stopping and wasting time.

bot_thinktime - this variable defines the level of the bot mental abilities. In other words, its value defines the time that bot will have for thinking. It’s 100 by default. You can cut it down, then bots will be player worse.

bot_enable - Global variable - granted ("1") or denied ("0") bot usage.

kick [name/nickname] - kick the specified bot out of the game. Example: kick major.

By Goblin and Littleb