SamBot was developed by Sam Stephens aka "Spam-man" as an extension to the roambot.
Sam describes himself as a second year computer science student at university.
Massey Uni student, 2nd year Comp Sci, guy whose machine is too small to REALLY play quake (486dx2/66 :-(
-- SAMBOT.TXT
Only a single version of the bot was released publicly as the file sambot.zip.
It was uploaded to ftp.cdrom.com and remained a part of the archive, including modern mirrors.
sambot.txt 08-Sep-96 02:50 4k
sambot.zip 08-Sep-96 02:47 721k
-- http://www.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/quakec/bots/ (archived December 25 1996)
The archive contains the compiled game code (PROGS.DAT), a readme (SAMBOT.TXT), source code (SAMSRC.ZIP) as well as an assortment of other files such as configuration files, files for the multiskin mod, and compilers for windows.
118465 8 Sep 1996 SAMSRC.ZIP
2598 8 Sep 1996 PROGDEFS.H
452056 8 Sep 1996 PROGS.DAT
96 8 Sep 1996 PROGS
4395 8 Sep 1996 SAMBOT.TXT
7062 8 Sep 1996 CONFIG.CFG
21 7 Sep 1996 RB.BAT
4167 3 Sep 1996 ROAMBOT1.TXT
81 1 Sep 1996 QUAKE.RC
342 20 Aug 1996 QCCWIN32.TXT
79360 20 Aug 1996 QCCWIN32.EXE
2346 18 Aug 1996 ALIAS.CFG
660 1 Aug 1996 QC_READ.ME
12345 1 Aug 1996 MULTISK.TXT
155416 25 Jul 1996 QCCDOS.EXE
26 23 Jul 1996 AUTOEXEC.CFG
The key files in the release such as the compiled game code, readme and source code have a timestamp of September 8th 1996.
This matches the timestamp on the public FTP site and the date in the readme file.
Title : SamBot
Filename : sambot.zip
Version : 0.9
Date : 8th September, 1996
Author : Sam Stephens (Spam-man on IRC, Quake, etc)
-- SAMBOT.TXT
The version is listed as 0.9, but this appears to be copied directly from the roam bot readme file.
The readme gives credit to Carson Sutton, the author of the roam bot on which the sam bot was based, as well as progenitor bots such as he BGbot, DMBot, and TMBot. Credit is also given to Dennis Noordsij, the creator of the mutliskin mod.
Key changes to the mod include the removal of shell ejection from the roam bot and the addition of multiskin support, as suggested by the credits section.
I got rid of the ejected shells as I found more than 5 bots all fighting
on The House of Cthon cause massive amounts of packet overflows. However
the mod is now combined with the multiskin patch
-- SAMBOT.TXT
Sam describes hte changes as "mostly cosmetic" to the bot to make it behave less like a monster, including:
- Bots are now player shaped, with random skins out of multiskin
- Bots are named after their skin type
- Bots can be gibbed (mwuhahaha :-)
- Bots don't ever flinch in pain
- Bots don't make idle noises, seeing noises, etc.
- Bots respawn when killed (total kludge code :-)
Be warned, they're now fairly bloody lethal because of the lack of flinching.
If you want a bit of fun, try House of Cthon with 5-12 bots. But get the
rocket launcher before you start it.
-- SAMBOT.TXT
No additional releases to the bot or other Quake mods by Sam can be located.
- Sambot v0.9, sambot.zip, September 08 1996.
- http://www.cdrom.com/pub/idgames2/quakec/bots/ (archived December 25 1996)