> I'm preparing for a game AI course I'm teaching (soon, yikes!) and was interested in using Pogamut as the platform for students to test out different AI techniques. I wasn't entirely sure which version to use.
>
> I installed the Emohawk bundle and got it working. It seemed like it would do what I minimally needed, but I couldn't work out how to get the UE2 runtime to connect to a remote server (so students could connect from their computers to my server to interact with the bots).

This is actually possible. You can do it either through console command in UE2 GUI:
1) Run UE2Runtime.exe
2) Open console - key ~ (tilde)
3) Type open IP and press enter (e.g. "open 192.168.0.10" without quotes)

Or you can run UE2Runtime.exe with a parameter telling it to connect automatically to desired IP after start. I am using this bat file to run UE2 and connect it to localhost (127.0.0.1) - content of the bat file below (located in UnrealEngine2RuntimeDemo/System folder):

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start "UE2Runtime" "UE2Runtime.exe" "127.0.0.1"

This can be even better for students, because they'll just need to run a single bat file in order to connect to your server.

> Would UT2004 be a better choice? I think that's still a for-pay product, though, which probably lets it out for my purposes in a computer lab.

It depends what you want to teach. UT2004 offers richer environment with FPS game mechanics, however UE2 however is free and you can show them a lot already there. If you want to use UE2 then download the latest UE2 city map (it is not yet in our installers), simple download the file Emohawk Map PACK and overwrite everything in UnrealEngine2Runtime folder. This map adds one new interior and all spawning points are now only in the middle of the town near the monument, which is a big help, because otherwise the bots spawned across the town (if spawn location not specified) and we have spent tens of seconds finding them in the map.

Best,
Michal

P.S. Have you found our site about latest pogamut lectures 2011/2012 ?

Thanks, that helps a lot. Especially the link to the lectures, that'll give me a head start.