sounds cool! and i feel like the seperate editions can be toggled in a sort of utilities menu thing

I like the Watching and Trickster modes, as they add to the tension and don't take away from it like some of the other modes, and would actually like to see these implemented in some form. I feel like having this many is a tad ridiculous, but mostly due to some of them serving little to no difference than other modes (i.e. raging and wandering modes.) besides the taunt mode being too trolly, Ambush potentially ruining the rush with a several-minute wait in large maps, and the Death mode serving no function other than to blind the player (what if I like my deathscreen addons?) I don't really have further complaints. Interesting ideas.

Yes PLEASE! This sounds terrifying

I really like the Taunting mode, knowing you're trapped and being mocked is chilling. I love your ideas, maybe you could work together with Gargin. I don't know if you saw his YouTube video, but he implemented some similar ideas into a Nextbot!

. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2848253104

for ambush mode, maybe it would move near players but never in the players sight so that it wont take minutes just for it to attack

if he allows me i can program all of this

i feel like the "death" and "raging" modes don't really add much to the bot, but i do have an idea for a sort of "searching" mode. if you leave the bot's line of sight for a certain amount of time, it would search for you in the area surrounding where it last saw you. the only thing is that i feel like this would make the bot feel less like it's stalking and toying with you and more like its hunting you, which could make it less scary

we need all of these to be added

I legitimately just watched your video explaining the creation of this Nextbot and the first thing that appeared in my mind were new methods of creating tension and actions that this thing could do.

Then I found that you made this thread and already acknowledged a quarter of the ideas that were in my head. To be perfectly honest I'm happy that all of these where already stated and pretty much all of these new features sound so good and I want to talk about some of them.


I've seen the other comments talk about how Raging seems contrived since we already have chasing. I for one say it feels like a worthy concept to consider, since having a nice chunk of variety is good for something meant to be scary, cause it throws unpredictability into the mix. I think it's better that you're only having the bot enter this Raging mode instead of a choice between that and Chasing.

I think there can be one thing tweaked with Wandering mode perhaps. Since we already have multiple methods where the Bot enters chasing mode when it sees the player, I propose that the Bot instead completely ignore the player even if it comes into a direct like of sight. I feel like a way of playing with the "Stalker" idea would be to allow the player to catch minor glimpses of the Bot while it's in the Wandering phase, all while the bot ignores the player and continues towards it's destination. Like it's a fleeting glimpse of your pursuer. Imagine you're in a hallway lined with windows and in your peripheral vision, for a split second, you see the thing chasing you going off in a different direction. Yeah, that would really play with your nerves, cause maybe you wouldn't even tell if you saw it or if it's your paranoia acting up.

If that's not good then if I could just pose a slight diverging idea:
Keep a response from the Bot when you catch it during Wandering, but extend the time it takes for the Bot to react/decide how to act. This could be for the player catching sight of it in a bigger room and having longer to observe it. In this case, I guess it would be a bit awkward to just watch the bot move an entire large room's length without reacting, so for that you add a timer, specifically for how long the Player has their eyes on the Bot.
After say 3 seconds of direct observation, the Bot comes to a complete stop and then flips a coin between Hiding or Raging. As a concept, it's as if its focused on a location in mind, but then notices the Player's presence within the room, so then it reacts either by suddenly hiding away or suddenly and fiercely pursuing the Player, both of which working as a response from the player catching the stalker midway through their plan.
(Also works to put more emphasis on complexity and utilising Raging mode in a somewhat fitting way, so it works 50/50 as either a brief sign of respite or a punishment for the player staring. I also think it works towards making the Bot feel like it's a thinking being)


For that Death mode, I hope it does literally cut out all audio. I think it would be a great thing to have whatever sound being played (Footsteps from running, ambience from the map, NPC noises and the approaching Nextbot itself) be suddenly cut when the black screen appears. I'm also thinking the "Impact noise" when the bot reaches you and makes you ragdoll, along with the default Half Life heart monitor not even get a chance to play, so it's just a sudden black screen for a few seconds before it cuts to the Bot on your corpse. I think that would be powerful, cause sometimes dark silence is more scary then anything (It also might hit as hard as those classic BlueScreens, how they suddenly appear and are totally silent. Finding that ends up giving you a heart attack)



I really would love to see how this Bot will continue to develop.

@SnashSnorkle I didn't make the bot, I just opened this thread with ideas for improving the complexity. The more complex the AI is, the more unpredictable and scary it is. That's why I proposed almost a dozen different behavior states and a convoluted system of switching between them, the current system is easy to understand and thus isn't as scary once you understand it. If you throw in a ton of different behavior states that are barely explained then it's suddenly much more scary because you have no idea how it's going to react in any given situation. Thanks for expanding on my feedback. I really hope @Gargin sees this and takes it into consideration.

@tpd1864blake Oh damn, I missed at detail. Guess I didn't take the time to notice whether the original creator of the mod was the one to make this thread. Whoops...

Oh well, it's good to see someone else with expanded series of ideas.

Seeing these new potential additions reminded me of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq364jzHsYg where someone actually added the ambush and raging features (raging wasn't made entirely redundant as it only happens every 3 chase attempts where it gets faster and takes tighter corners to get to you while making an ear piercing sound and if evaded, resets the counter to 0 again) as well as having the nextbot do a fake chase where it purposefully goes slower to trick you into thinking you have a chance at getting away from it (this also counts to the three chases needed for it to enter its enraged form).

As for new features i'd like to see personally from an update to the bot.
1. Hiding: Players can now hide from the bot if it's in stalking phase, if the bot is in stalking phase and you get out of it's line of sight, the bot will enter a brand new search phase. The player can avoid being seen by being in a room and hiding in a spot outside it's line of sight (maybe crouching could make hiding easier), or perhaps having spots for the player to hide in that makes the player invisible to the bot (I saw a mod that added closets around maps that if you went inside made you invisible to bots before kicking you out of the hiding spot so you couldn't abuse it and it'd be on cooldown so maybe you could use something similar but more thematic to maps than a closet).

2. Search mode: This new mode triggers when the bot is in stalk mode and loses sight of the player for too long, in which it'll go to where it last saw the player and flip a coin to see if it'll go and go down the path it saw the player enter, or enter the nearest room to search for the player (prioritizing rooms where the doors are closed as to avoid the bot searching through all the rooms that the player opened during a previous chase, the exception being if a door close by to the bot was opened or closed in which it'll go straight to where it heard the door open/close, so if you are hiding, then wait until the static of the bot dies down and you think it's far away enough for you to open the door of the room to leave safely without alerting it. If spotted, it'll go into chase mode, hide mode, or hide and then go into ambush mode nearby (If you take too long when it's ambushing, it'll go and just chase you, so don't linger). To prevent the bot from completely losing the player, in search and desperate search mode (more on that later), it will have a vague idea of where you are by staying within a large radius of where the player is, this radius gets smaller during it's desperate search mode (This way you can never truly lose the bot if your on a larger map)

3. Desperate Search mode: To make sure things don't get too dull, if the bot can't seem to find the player after awhile in search mode, it will enter desperate search mode, in which it'll more quickly break open doors, prioritize rooms with open doors more, thinking you may have left or tricked it by closing doors to make it search those rooms before searching where you hid, and will move faster than it's base speed, but slower than it's chase speed, it will play a more intense and louder static noise than what it normally plays during stalk or search mode (nothing ear piercing, just alarming) to let the player know that the bot is now desperately searching for them. If spotted, the bot will go into chase mode, the bot will only change phases if it spots you.

4. Toying mode: This idea was from the video I linked and is essentially the same from how I described it at the top of this comment where the bot chases you but purposefully goes slower to make you think you can get away from it, but with the additions of it going into taunt mode after awhile and going back to hiding mode or going into trickster mode (so if you ran far away and out of sight, you'd have no idea it switched into trickster mode and was now playing sounds to put you on edge).

As for tweaks to the ideas you suggested tpd1864blake and just in general for Gargitron.
1. Jumping: This was Gargitron's main crippling weakness, most could cheese the bot's chase mode by just going higher up if it was a ladder or if the bot had trouble getting up certain staircases. To remedy this, I feel like the bot should have a relatively short jump it can do in stalk mode to better reach and follow the player. But to prevent Gargitron from being completely inescapable like most nextbots when they chase the player, during chase mode Gargitron can't jump like normal, so Gargitron can reach players higher up during stalk mode and be able chase them from there, but if that doesn't do it, then enraged mode will be able to help with that.

2. Enraged mode: Instead of enraged mode making the bot's chase relentless, I'm going to take a page out of how someone else made an enraged mode (see video section at the top of this comment), this version of enraged mode makes the bot a bit faster and lets it take tighter corners so you can't dodge it as easily, enraged form only occurs after three chase attempts and ends the same way regular chase mode does. Those were just the changes the person in the video I linked made, as for additional things to make enraged mode more fleshed out, in enraged mode, the bot retains it's short jump from it's stalking phase so if the player abuses a spot on a map the bot can't reach once triggering chase mode, after three chases, enraged mode starts and those spots aren't safe anymore, forcing the player to run and leave their spot (given the speed of the bot in enraged mode, it slows down for a few seconds after jumping to give the player a chance to run before the bot picks up speed again). I also liked the idea of enraged mode more quickly breaking doors open so that should stay. As for how it leaves enraged form, it should just end as long or slightly longer than a regular chase, or ending it prematurely by managing to get out of it's line of sight and hiding (harder to do when it's moving that fast and chasing you), at which point after a few seconds it'll switch to desperate search mode to find you (meaning it'll be slower but now your forced to hide and escape it or get caught and be forced to endure a regular chase,

3. Chase mode: Chase mode will relatively stay the same, just having a coinflip to decide if it'll take an alternate path to flank you and trick you into running into it (elaborated in flank mode section). The only other change will come in the form of how

4. Taunt mode: While most say this would break the tension during a chase if it stopped and taunted, I quite like the idea, but a way to make it less intrusive during a regular chase, it could instead taunt if you spot it during it's stalking or watching mode and it's too far away from you to easily go into chase mode and reach you (decided if the bot is out of range of a certain radius around player, in which it'll either hide like normal or taunt and hen leaving, teleporting away like normal, but this time teleporting closer to the player (within range of the players radius, still hidden in which it'll go into wander or stalk mode).

5. Watching mode: Works the same but as stated before, if it's too far away, it'll go into taunt mode or hide mode, but if it is within range, it'll decide between hide, chase, or trickster mode (because having the bot watching you and disappear in front of your eyes and start playing noises would be just an extra layer to that creepiness).

6. Flank mode: Nothing wrong with it, just figured it should be a percentage chance for it to choose an alternate path during chase mode rather than be a separate mode (essentially just grouping flank mode and chase mode into one thing since it seems more fitting to just be a feature of chase mode rather than an entire separate mode).

7. Trickster mode: A slight tweak could be that the sounds it plays can only played from a certain radius around the bot itself so the player can have a vague idea of where it is if it is out of the bots range when it does this and can hear the general direction of the sounds it plays, second thing could be that in trickster mode it still has a hitbox and can kill you, but it wont be invisible anymore, just very see-through so it can be hard to tell if it's in the middle of a hallway if your running and not paying attention. In this mode, the bot will also move really slow so you don't have to worry about it moving to you and not even get a chance to process it while also still have the bot as a looming threat that still follows you (while in this mode it is very slow, the farther away it is the faster it is so it can move but it will always be incredibly slow when its close to you). In addition to the sounds it plays in this mode being only able to be played from a certain radius around the bot, but can also play in random parts in this radius, so the player can figure out if it's in trickster mode if they hear the static sound from the left and then all of a sudden hearing it from the right, or maybe they heard the static of the bot stay in one place without getting closer or farther can make the player realize the bot is in trickster mode.


Love the ideas for making a smarter nextbot! If Gargin doesn't make an updated version, someone could probably make a Gargitron V2 (fitting with the -tron part of Gargitron's name) with some of these ideas, I might also make a flow chart like tpd1864blake to make it easier to explain how phase changes would work with these ideas and tweaks. Obviously some of the ideas I had are still pretty rough and could use some work (namely the hiding mechanics I came up with and how they should work with some modes), so anyone's free to add on or come up with tweaks of their own. I still have a few ideas that i'm debating on how well they would work in practice (such as maybe having the screen darken during search mode and maybe slightly darker in desperate search mode to make hiding more tense and maybe letting the bot darken your screen in trickster mode too to freak the player out ) so if I have any other ideas, I might add more stuff later.

I already posted this on another discussion board but this one seems appropriate for this: "Make the ai capable of moving or throwing props in subtle ways (like in phasmophobia) when hes nearby or just for scares, something like a poltergeist"

I would love that soo much, like imagine being in a map filled of physics objects (like cs_office) and some props randomly move or are being thrown at you