Bots
What a bot does when it plays a level for you, what it does not promise, what it costs, and how the two bots differ
A bot plays the level for you, with your own controls. It watches what is coming, looks for free room and moves the same character you would. It walks, dashes, takes damage and dies
A bot does not guarantee a clear. It never gets tired, but it can lose. If a pattern has to be entered correctly a second early, the bot will be hit. Nothing is broken when that happens
A bot loads your device. Looking for free room is real work on every frame. On a weak device expect a lower framerate. On a heavy level the first seconds are the worst
To pick a bot, use the Bot option on the level screen: No Bot, Reflex Bot v1 or Warm Bot v1. It is chosen per run, like lives and speed
A bot cannot cheat, and that is how it is built rather than a promise. It has the same controls you have and nothing more: the same speed, the same dash, the same hitbox, the same damage. It cannot pass through anything you could not
A level beat the bot?
Bots get better on levels the developers have never seen. Such a level is worth sending in
Open an issue in bullet-hero/releases. Say which bot lost and where, and attach the level folder
The two bots
Every frame a bot produces one input, the same kind a keyboard produces, and nothing else. It has no access to the avatar's position, its health or the level's state. If a bot does not answer on some frame, your own device steers on that frame
Reflex Bot v1 | Warm Bot v1 | |
|---|---|---|
| What it knows | the next 1.5 seconds, recomputed every frame | the whole level, worked out once |
| When it loads the device | every frame, for as long as it runs | once, before the run |
| What it can do | avoid what it can see coming | follow a plan no lookahead would find |
| What breaks it | a pattern that had to be entered a second early | the level changing under it |
| How it steers | a direction | a target |
The warm bot aims for zero damage. It pays for that with an extra loading stage, Baking route. It can take tens of seconds
Before the calculation the game warns you. Cancel stops it and gives the run back to you.
The warm bot's route depends on the seed, Determinism
Where else bots play
- The editor's preview player:
Settings→Game Editor→Bot Steers The Player. Only the reflex bot plays there: it needs nothing prepared and survives a scrub. More - Letting a bot play your level - The main menu background: the arena behind the buttons is the reflex bot playing live, with no lookahead at all
The bot is part of a record's conditions. So a run played by a bot never replaces your own best, Statistics