What do you think is in store for the future of bots/AI, are they getting bigger and better, or is the game industry drifting towards a multiplayer-only audience?

I think they are getting bigger and better. The game industry is drifting towards a multiplayer-only audience, but this is a good thing. It's the multiplayer aspect of a game that allows the development of gaming communities and keeps it alive. I've never completed the single player side of Quake, Quake2, Unreal or Heretic2, but love the multiplayer aspect. Where you have multiplayer, there will always be a need for bots. There are plenty of people like me who cannot get a good enough connection to play over the net, and so bots are essential. They also offer the opportunity to practice offline without other people seeing just how bad you are. What I am not sure about is whether the inclusion of bots with games such as UT and Q3 is a good thing. I know that it instantly allows the user to play multiplayer games off-line, but I think that it slows down bot-development in general. I don't think that there's been a single bot written for UT other than the ones shipped with the game, and that is a real shame.

-supports Grinbots DM, bladematch and botchallenge mode
-automatically and casually chooses a map among the installed ones
-automatically supports every .bsp map installed into base/maps
-automatically recognizes (and uses) every model installed into base/players
-cycle trough the models, so you'll see different ones every time, until you see them all (if you have enough of them)
-chooses for every bot, a casual model and skin
-if you own enough models, every bot will have a different one
-choses randomly a different name for every bot
-allows you to exclude every:
   map (so you can avoid the single player ones)
   model (i.e. to reserve some of them for the human players)
   skin (to protect your little brother's innocence...)
-updates the map list with a click
-allows the user to save and reuse specific configuration (and once for every supported bot...)
-allows (obviously!) the user to customize the deathmatch flag through
-config text files

V0.9 finally sees them climbing ropes (not very well, but it's a start), better platform riding, slightly changed navigation and some enhancements to their blade skills.

Additionally, it includes 3 new routes - Karvok, Mosque and Skulls.

Also, I've incorporated the bots into the Skull-Hunters mod, so you can now play SH against the bots. This was really just a test to see how easily I could incorporate the bots into other mods. I've had so much fun playing it that I thought I would put it up for DL too.

To play SH with the bots, you will need V0.9 of the Grinbots, the Skull Hunters client files, and the Skull Hunters-GrinBots Edition server files.

More information and files can be found here