One of the original FPS title that let you play LAN multiplayer game is the Half-Life, its been 25 years since the release of this game to Windows by Valve. Now, you’ve been wondering how to play the LAN games without playing with real people, and you just want to play the game nostalgically with some bots.
Half-Life is available on Steam, but for some reason, they didn’t developed their own bot for their LAN games and this leaves for some owners of the game unable to enjoy playing the multiplayer maps like crossfire.
How to use Jumbot 2.4
Even after 11 years, mods such as Jumbot 2.4 remain compatible with the latest Half-Life version on Steam, available on GameBanana. Despite the availability of a Steam-specific release, we still recommend using the original jumbot24_2.zip version as it has fewer DLLs and safer for the latest version of Windows.
- Jumbot24_2.zip (535.17 KB): https://gamebanana.com/dl/3510
Once you’ve downloaded the zipped file, you need to extract the Jumbot folder inside the installation directory of Half-Life (eg. F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Half-Life). If you don’t know how to look for the installation directory of Half-Life, go to your Steam Library, right click the game Half-Life, then select Properties > Local Files > “Browse Local Files…“.
Next, open up the Jumbot folder and look for the file LIBLIST.GAM, edit this file with notepad (right click -> Open With -> Notepad).
Add these 3 configurations at the bottom of the lines (This extra lines will fix the black screen menu and bot maps problem):
fallback_dir "valve"
animated_title "1"
hd_background "1"
Your new LIBLIST.GAM file should look like this:
Save the new changes and there is one last thing we need to edit to enable this mod.
How to Play with Bots
To run Jumbot with the Half-life game, you need to add some start up launch option to play it. To do that, same as looking for folder, you need to go to your Steam Library, then look for the Half-Life game.
Right click on the Half-Life, then click Properties.
Then at the General Tabs, browse down and find the Launch Options.
Then add this code “-game Jumbot“, without the parenthesis. Once done, just close the pop-up window.
We can then launch the Half-Life.
To play with bots, just select Create Server > Select the map like Crossfire. Then click Start.
Once the game is loaded, the bots will be added automatically, and you’ll be able to play with them offline.
Bot Configurations
By default, you’ll be playing with 3 bots. If you want to configure how you’d like to play with the bot, just look for the Jumbot.cfg file inside the Jumbot folder and edit it.
For example, if you want 15 bots, change the bot_num 3 to bot_num 15.
There are also other settings that you can change in the file like bots.cfg where you change the name of the bot. Format is “<bot number> <name> <model> <shirt color> <pants color> <skill level (1-4)>”. For example: “bot1 GamingPH barney 30 6 3“
Here is the list of model name in Half-life:
- gordon
- femsci
- onna
- barney
There is no limit of adding bot, you can put 200 bots or more, if above 90, you need to edit large_bots.cfg for changing their names. It will only depends on how powerful your CPU can handle.