For Mappers: Forcing the game to spawn particular marines as bots

Assigning Bots to Slots automatically

THe HUD Mod

plaYer2k's Better HUD mod allows the user to fire off specific config commands to the console before the map is loaded. This is really helpful as it allows us to modify the playing experience for each map we want to play in Alien Swarm SP.

In the folder \Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\alienswarmsp\cfg\configloader

You'll find a .cfg file with the name of each of the official maps.

In order for the mod to recognise the config loader .cfg file it must have exactly the same file name as the map it is designed for and simply change the file extension to ".cfg".

So for example the map name for the first official campaign map is asi-jac1-landingbay_01.bsp therefore the map specific config file must be named asi-jac1-landingbay_01.cfg file for it to be recognised and run before that map begins.

Assigning bots

Some mappers out there may want to control which marine characters are spawned for a specific mission. This could be for a variety of reasons but this is generally because the mapper had a specific experience in mind for the gamer.

Using the following commands and placing them into the map specific config file will allow the user to assign bots to team slots and launch the mission. This will effectively skip over the team roster screen.

Here's a single command assigning a bot.

cl_selectm 0 -1

Let's break this down a bit so we can understand what's going on:

cl_selectm
This is a console command that instructs the game to assign a specific marine to a team slot.

0
The 0 that appears after the cl_selectm is the identifying number for the marine character we want to assign.

-1
The -1 is the slot we want to assign them to. Slots range from 0 to 3.
0 is the first slot and 3 is the fourth.
Using -1 here basically tells the game to assign this marine to the next available slot.

Here's a full list of the identifiers for each marine.

Sarge - 0
Wildcat - 1
Faith - 2
Crash - 3
Jaeger - 4
Wolfe - 5
Bastille - 6
Vegas - 7

So when we put it all together, an example of a map config file that assigns bots to each available slot and then jumps straight into the map would be...

cl_selectm 0 -1
cl_selectm 1 -1
cl_selectm 2 -1
cl_selectm 3 -1
cl_start

Here we're assigning Sarge, Wildcat, Faith and Crash to all available slots (including the player slot, slot 0).

The cl_start essentially automatically clicks on the "Start Mission" button and launches the map.

The end result of this is that the player selects the map they want to play and clicks on the "Create Game" button, the map loads and launches straight into the map with Sarge, Wildcat, Faith and Crash all spawned.

If you have any questions on this please e-mail aazell1@gmail.com