lgbot: review fixes: drift reset after pauses, player-like acceleration, sticky targets with hysteresis, wall backoff; plugin glue tests

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>

docs/ADMIN.md

@@ -56,11 +56,11 @@ Movement levels (the details override one part, `-1` = use the level's value):
 | 4 | 180–450 | 35% | 380 | yes | 100% | 350 |
 | 5 | 120–350 | 50% | 350 | yes | 100% | 300 |
 
-Range is the distance it tries to keep (LG reaches 768). Lane is how far it may drift sideways before it turns back, so it does ADAD in front of you instead of circling (0 = no limit). With push in / back off off, it always holds its range.
+Range is the distance it tries to keep (LG reaches 768). Lane is roughly how far it may drift sideways before it turns back, so it does ADAD in front of you instead of circling (0 = no limit; while it's also closing in or backing off, the real drift can be up to ~30% more). With push in / back off off, it always holds its range.
 
 Underneath it's plain console settings, if you'd rather: `./rcon addbot lgbot <aim>`, `./rcon set lgbot_move <1-5>`, and `lgbot_strafe_min`, `lgbot_strafe_max`, `lgbot_fake`, `lgbot_range`, `lgbot_range_play`, `lgbot_speed`, `lgbot_lane`. The plugin rereads them every second. `set lgbot_debug 1` writes one line a second about its movement to `home/minqlx.log`.
 
-The bot fights the nearest human. Its own movement only takes over when you're within LG reach (900 units) on about the same floor; farther away, the normal bot AI walks it over to you. If a wall blocks its strafing for half a second, it lets the AI walk around for 1.5 s. One lgbot at a time.
+The bot fights the nearest human and sticks with them unless someone else is clearly closer. Its own movement takes over when you're within 900 units (a bit beyond LG reach) on about the same floor, and keeps going until you're past 1000. Farther away, the normal bot AI walks it over to you. If a wall blocks its strafing for half a second, it lets the AI walk around for 1.5 s, then longer (up to 6 s) if it keeps getting stuck. It speeds up and turns like a player (a full left-right reversal takes about 0.2 s), not instantly. One lgbot at a time.
 
 ## Admins and bans: `home/baseq3/access.txt`
 

docs/HOW-IT-WORKS.md

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ In warmup the client draws "The match will begin when more players join" / "Pres
 
 Quake 3 bots take their personality from a character file. `home/baseq3/botfiles/bots/lgbot_c.c` (registered by `scripts/lgbot.bot`) sets aim accuracy, aim skill, reaction time and view speed per skill level, sets jumping, crouching and rocket jumping to 0, and weights the LG above everything else. QL reads skill blocks 1, 4 and 5 and interpolates 2 and 3 between 1 and 4, which is why the file has only three. The server loads these loose files from `fs_homepath` alongside the ones in `pak00.pk3`, so no pk3 is needed (bots run on the server only, so clients don't need the files).
 
-The stock bot AI moves like a bot: it runs at you, hops around and goes for items. So the movement is overridden. The `lgbot` minqlx plugin sets the bot's horizontal velocity on every server frame: sideways to its target in the current strafe direction, plus an in/out part that holds the wanted distance (capped at 70% of the speed so it still strafes while closing in). The strafe direction comes from a small pattern generator: hold one side for a random time between the min and max, then switch. Sometimes it fakes instead: a 60–120 ms tap the other way, then a new hold on the same side. Strafing sideways to someone moves you around them, and fakes keep you going the same way, so the bot would slowly circle you. The pattern therefore tracks its net sideways drift and turns back once it is `lane` units off centre. Ground friction removes 15–25% of the set speed before the move happens, so on the ground it sets 1.2× (measured at sv_fps 40: the bot then moves at about the set speed, never faster than a player can). An upward speed of 200–320 (a jump; QL jumps at ~275) is cancelled. Falling, slopes and jump pads are left alone. The AI still aims and shoots, so aim and movement don't interfere. The steering is straight-line, with no pathfinding. So it only runs when the target is within 900 units horizontally and 200 vertically. Farther away, the AI's own navigation walks the bot over. If the speed it makes along the steered direction stays under 60% for half a second (a wall, a ledge), steering pauses for 1.5 s so the AI can get around it. Without this, on thunderstruck it pushed against a wall toward a target on another level for 12 s. Measured on a test server, the plugin costs no extra CPU you could measure.
+The stock bot AI moves like a bot: it runs at you, hops around and goes for items. So the movement is overridden. The `lgbot` minqlx plugin sets the bot's horizontal velocity on every server frame: sideways to its target in the current strafe direction, plus an in/out part that holds the wanted distance (capped at 70% of the speed so it still strafes while closing in). The strafe direction comes from a small pattern generator: hold one side for a random time between the min and max, then switch. Sometimes it fakes instead: a 60–120 ms tap the other way, then a new hold on the same side. Strafing sideways to someone moves you around them, and fakes keep you going the same way, so the bot would slowly circle you. The pattern therefore tracks its net sideways drift and turns back once it is `lane` units off centre. Ground friction removes 15–25% of the set speed before the move happens, so on the ground it sets 1.2× (measured at sv_fps 40: the bot then moves at about the set speed. On ramps no boost is applied, so it's ~15% slower there). The velocity also changes at most 3200 u/s per second (QL's ground acceleration of 10 × 320). So a left-right reversal takes ~0.2 s like a player's, and a fake is a short wobble, not an instant flip. Its top speed and its turning are both what a player can do. An upward speed of 200–320 (a jump; QL jumps at ~275) is cancelled. Falling, slopes and jump pads are left alone. The AI still aims and shoots, so aim and movement don't interfere. The steering is straight-line, with no pathfinding. So it only starts when the target is within 900 units horizontally and 200 vertically, and keeps the same target out to 1000 / 250 so it doesn't flip modes at the edge. It switches targets only to someone 150 units closer. Farther away, the AI's own navigation walks the bot over. If the speed it makes along the steered direction stays under 60% for half a second (a wall, a ledge), steering pauses for 1.5 s so the AI can get around it, doubling to at most 6 s while that keeps happening. Whenever it stops steering (dead, nobody near, paused), the strafe pattern starts fresh. Otherwise the pause would count as sideways drift and the bot would strafe one way only after every respawn (found in review). Without this, on thunderstruck it pushed against a wall toward a target on another level for 12 s. Measured on a test server, the plugin costs no extra CPU you could measure.
 
 minqlx gives bots Steam IDs from 90071996842377216 up. The plugin uses that to pick human targets only.