Bot question (counterstrike source)

[smeikle]

This may seem to be a stupid question, but I haven't hosted a server in a while and cannot remember, but do bots take up more CPU than normal people?


Example:

Server has 20/20 bots = more CPU

or

Server has 20/20 people = more cpu


??

Thank you to whoever can answer this

[Edge100x]

Yes, bots eat up a large amount of CPU power, much more than real users.

[smeikle]

Thanks, I was pretty sure they did but didn't want to make an assumption and be wrong

[smeikle]

Alright, a new bot question!


Adding bots to the server, is there a way to keep them from taking up the player slot count?

Example, my 20 slot server, I added bots to it, and now it shows up as only being a 10 slot server. How do I add the bots without making the server count appear lower?

[TimeX]

Bots will always take up a real player slot, but it should be showing up as a number of slots taken, not a number of less slots. 10 bots in a 20 slot server should show up as 10/20 and not 0/10. If you have some sort of mod controlling bot functions, it may be dynamically adjusting server slots as well.

[smeikle]

I just tried it again through the console. I added 10 bots and it showed my server as being 1/10.


I am currently running:

Metamod:source
Sourcemod
Zblock

I haven't set any bot specific configurations up and as far as I can recall, I didn't see anything that would have changed slot size to correspond with bot usage. Could it be doing it because I am adding them via rcon?

[TimeX]

Unless it is some sort of quirk with the new Orangebox version of the game that I am not aware of, adding them through rcon should not matter. It is possible that zBlock is somehow adjusting it, since the old zBlock would not even allow bots. The same could happen if you are running any custom 3rd party plugins for Sourcemod.

I would recommend trying it again without zBlock running, and see if that helps. If need be, disable Sourcemod as well.

[smeikle]

I disabled zblock through the zblock config file and when I then attempted to add bots to test, the server froze and restarted. I will do some troubleshooting on this in the morning, but have you heard of issues of this happening before?

[Edge100x]

Are you sure that the bots were in the game and playing? Were they showing in the 'rcon status' output?

By default, bots don't start playing until a player joins. You can disable this by setting bot_join_after_player to 0.

[smeikle]

Yeah, I was in the game itself when adding them through rcon.

I think I tried that bot command already, but I will do it again just in case, but I am pretty sure it stayed at 1/10 when I was in game and then 0/10 when I stepped out.


I will do some troubleshooting and option testing to see if I can locate the issue (as well as the zBlock server crash thing I experienced last night) and report back here.

[smeikle]

Alright...

I messed around with any and all bot commands I could and it did not change anything, the server slot count still remained 10 although it is 20 (without bots)

I take bots out, it goes right back to 20.

Interesting note, the 10slot count only shows up in the valve server list. If you go to server info, it shows total slots being 20 (reading 10/20 with bots enabled) so it is in fact in there.

The status window from the control panel shows 10/20.

Maybe this is an issue from the upgrade to OB?

** I also attempted disabling sourcemod (by renaming the .vdf so it wouldn't even load, and still got same results.



Now, the zBlock issue:

Disabling zBlock renders server useless as it wont even show up. Server loses all connection and will not allow restart until zBlock has been re-enabled. The workaround to this was to rename the zBlock's .vdf file (which I renamed to zblock.vdf.old) and that disabled it without any server instability.

[Edge100x]

Are you using our standard setup as a base for your server? I tested recently (post OB update) and did not have this problem with bots changing the slot count on a 40-player server. I was using a vanilla server with just a couple of bot lines added to the server.cfg:

bot_quota 20
bot_join_after_player 0

[smeikle]

To test this out, I created a brand new server, unmodified...a complete virgin.


I went in and added 10 bots.


Server slot count showed 1/10 from counterstrike server listing. This happens with and without the bot_join_after_player 0 setting as well.

Here are some screenshots for you to see what I am talking about.

1: http://durkastan.com/pics/counterstrikewindow.jpg

As you can see, the highlighter server shows that it is only a 10slot server. This is how it appears in the server listings.

2: http://durkastan.com/pics/counterstrikeservermenu.jpg

This one shows that the server count is really 20 slot, but only if you go into the server detail view.

3: http://durkastan.com/pics/serverstatus.jpg

Screenshot from the control panel, once again showing that the server is indeed a 20 slot server.


So the server is showing up in the server listing as a 10slot server, when it is in fact a 20slot server, confirmed by both the server detail view and control panel. That is why I am thinking that this must be an update issue when they converted to OB, as this has occurred on each server I have tested it on.

[TimeX]

That does certainly seem like an issue on Value/Steam's end. It is still possible that a controllable factor is causing it, but the fact that it still happens on a stock server certainly narrows things down.

[smeikle]

Yeah, its not a huge deal, I found a quick workaround for it!

I increased my servers slot size to 40

As for the virgin server, the only commands I ran for it were

rcon_password *****
rcon bot_quota 10

and then changed the bot_join_after_player option (both on and off) in the server.cfg file.

Could it possibly be something in the default server.cfg that is making this happen?