AI woes...

So I'm finding the base AI in Quake to be totally inadequate for my needs. The inadequacy comes from the fact that a major part of the Quake AI, the part where the monster decides where exactly on the map he wants to move (IE: his goal), is HARD CODED into the engine. That means I can't do any QC magic to change it. Why they decided to do this when the rest of the game relies so heavily on the QC scripts is beyond me.

This means that I have to gut the AI code and put in my own. My only problem? I don't know jack about AI! Sure, I've done the same basic tutorials on how to get an entity to intelligently (and efficiently) move towards a goal using a couple of different methods as everybody else... But now doing it in practice, as well as in 3D space... This is scary!

Luckily, the Quake modding community is there to rescue me. There is some super old code for simple, beautiful bots hanging around. The TutorBot, made by a (former?) community member named Coffee (I'd be hyperlinking the shit out of this, but it is all so old that Coffee's Quake site doesn't exist anymore except in Internet archives and the memories of appreciative Quake modders). It is exactly what I need as a nice base reference from which to build my new AI on top of.

What do I need my AI to do? Well, the base AI can find an enemy (usually the player) and intelligently(ish) move to it and attack it. This means pathing out a bunch of waypoints based on the level geometry so that the monster moves around walls, avoids falling off of cliffs, ect... My monsters, however, will not path around walls. I want my monsters to climb the damn walls.

Imagine having a Quake level in an office full of cubicles, desks, and chairs. Normally, the player would be bounding all over the environment while the monsters would have to awkwardly weave through the obstacles in a maze like fashion. I want my monsters to be able to climb just as well as the player can jump. Maybe even better.

We'll see.