Wow, almost a year has gone by already since I last posted anything. There has been so little interest shown in this project over the last year that I have put my time into other things. If there is anybody out there that would like to continue developing this then get in touch with me. If there are people that still use this and would like to see some of the feature requests implemented, please comment! :)

Have a good 2008

Hi all!

First of all, this project is not dead .. it's just not very active at the moment :P I still have no intention of dropping BF2Bot at all, however I don't see BF2142 support being added now ... at least not on my own.

One very nice looking mod should appear this week: Desert Conflict and I am very interested in seeing this one (I used to play the BF1942 mod DC). Possibly more on that soon with regards to support for reporting games from this mod.

So why has this project been so darn slow? No one reason ... some of my other projects are also running slow so I switched some energy to those. Being a one man crew can be tough sometimes - mostly with motivation though ;P If there are any Java programmers with some spare time and interest and, most importantly, patience then please drop by #deaded on irc.quakenet.org and offer some help for this project. There are a few bugs and numerous feature requests that can already be started on, plus a load of other features that I have in mind, not to mention some very friendly users hanging around as well :)

The main reason, at least over the last 6 months, is that I have been working with TGBF.TV on an application called MatchShark which goes far beyond the text output that this bot produces and provides a 2D graphical view of the game events as they happen, detailed stats about each player and a map showing the locations of the kills and deaths as well as the flags and their status. This is currently still beta quality and is not running 24/7 at this point so stay tuned to #tgbf (quakenet) for info if you want to see more about that.

BF2142 is upon us! I haven't had the time to check further into this, but as the engine is pretty much the same as with BF2 (as far as this bot is concerned) then I think that the BF2Bot script and code should work reasonably well for BF2142 already ... maybe a few minor adjustments would be needed. If anyone tries this, then let us know! :)

Edit: 24.10.2006: I just quickly tried this myself and it doesn't work well. Do expect BF2142 support though! :D

After some recent discussions with some BF2Bot users (some of which are also coders), I have been playing around with a way to allow developers (Java) to easily extend the functionality of BF2Bot by being able to add your own parsing of the info from the server, own commands, and own responses. At the same time, the reporting feature will be changed to use this new extension system as well enabling you to easily disable it (useful for people wanting the bot as an admin tool only).

What do you think about this feature? Has anyone already made or wanted to implement changes to the BF2Bot? What would you want to be able to do from your own extension? Please comment or post in forums!

Ok, I am lazy. Fortunately there has been some prodding, first by DrakePake to get some things done and then by Addict. The result has been some features added and bugs fixed, but still a little to do.

Addict has been very generous with his time and setup a help channel on GameSurge and has helped a number of people install the BF2Bot. Many thanks to Addict for this.

I'll try to throw out something soon ... basic (default) RCON features are working but it doesn't seem happy with BF2CC RCON scripts yet so a little work needed with that before a release (I am assuming quite many use BF2CC).

Things are slow here ... maybe a little too slow. I am really wanting to get a much more polished system with documentation available for next release but realistically it looks like I will have to just throw out another beta with some of the bugs fixed and a small amount of the feature requests implemented just to keep it active. This project is not dead and has no intention of passing away as long as BF2 itself is alive and kicking.

Showing support and interest for the project is a big boost and having someone post a "hi" message is real nice :) Dropping by #deaded on irc.quakenet.org to say "hi" or ask how things are is also welcome.

The more interest I see from people, the more I am interested myself in putting more time into it. Also, if anyone is interested in helping out in some way, then let me know what you could do.

Hi

Yeah, we are still here and slowly adding / fixing things as we find some spare time.

There has been some support given on IRC as well and some nice feedback. Thank you!

Have a nice Christmas :D

Just to let people know that I am still here and will be putting some more time into BF2Bot soon.

In the meantime, feel free to make feature requests in the forums ... you never know, it may end up in the bot :)

So what does this bot do exactly?

What the bot does at the moment is just report BF2 game events to IRC. That's pretty much it.

The question "What will the bot be able to do?" is a little more exciting.

Read on if I have your interest ...

I have started to fix bugs that have been reported and also add some of the feature requests.

If you have anything that you would like to see fixed or added, then there is a good chance now to give your input for the 0.2 release. If you have anything, post in the forums.

Thanks!