GameBots feature several debug tools accessible directly in the environment of UT04. These debug features (Fig. 4) are:
| Visualization of navigation points on the map together with the visualisation of the reachability grid on the map – gives a quick overview of a bot’s navigation capabilities; places without navigation points are usually unreachable (see coloured oriented arrows (Point 1)) |
| A list of all avatars in the world – serves as a quick overview of avatars, both computer driven as well as human driven, present in the world (Point 4). |
| Visualization of individual avatars on the map – allows a user to see avatars even through walls, assists in finding a desired bot in the environment quickly (Point 2) |
| Visualization of a bot’s trace lines – assists in development of steering algorithms and algorithms of low-level sensation1; green colour indicates the ray does not collide with anything, red indicates a collision (Point 4) |
| Visualization of the bot field of the view – helps to identify objects the bot can see; the yellow lines enclose the field of view, the white line indicates the bot’s heading (Point 5) |
| Visualization of a bot’s intended path – helps with debugging of the bot’s navigation (Point 6, blue lines) |
| Visualization of a bot’s health – helps with debugging bots for the death-match game mode (Point 7, the health bar) |
Fig. 4. GameBots debug features.
For these features to be active, user has to run the GameBots server with certain mutators on. The first feature requires GBPathMarkerMutator to be on. The rest of the features requires GBHudMutator to be on (this mutator should be on by default). To run the game with mutators on, user needs to supply correct arguments to command line e.g.:
..\UT2004\System\ucc server DM-TrainingDay?game=GameBots2004.BotDeathMatch?mutator=GameBots2004.PathMarkerMutator,GameBots2004.GBHudMutator
This will run GameBots deathmatch game type on the map DM-TrainingDay with both mutators on. The help containing key shortcuts that enables and disables debug features is accessible by pressing ALT + H key.
Alternatively you can select these mutators in the mutators page when running the GameBots server through UT04 GUI.