End of a era: The zeta players are now officially finished.

A new addon known as Lambda players had been released. Go check that one out.

The Zeta Players, are nextbots designed to have sandbox elements to them, they are made to to mimic players such as spawning things, voice chat, emotes, using weapons, driving vehicles etc.

Starfrost made a video going through everything in detail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDyloosp7V8

To see all features that are planned or released, see here
https://trello.com/b/RV2t7Ggp/zeta-players-board
this discussion only covers the major ones.

Zeta Domain discord
https://discord.gg/gGptF8kpKc

Since there nextbots you need to play on a map that have a navigation mesh ( or for short navmesh) on them. To generate a navmesh do nav_generate in the console.

The addon is very, very user-friendly and very configurable. Almost everything can be adjusted and changed via settings. You can find these settings in the "Zeta Player" tab in your spawnmenu

Note: Some features require some file work to be done to get full use out of them.

With that outta way here's what the zeta's have to offer (Reminder: Not all features are labeled here im just mentioning the important and main ones)

COMBAT SYSTEM: Zetas can engage in combat using a variety of weapons from either TF2, CSS, HL2 and some custom weapons such as the Junk Launcher (no custom weapons from the workshop aren't possible, starfrost need to code them manually remember that.), they can also use the physics gun to prop kill/prop push. They can strafe, dodge bullets, stay back while attacking and more. They can randomly start fights or when something attacks them such as a player, npc or a zeta they will chase them down until there dead, or if the zeta just decides to let it go and do something else. Before the improved combat update there werent much going on, there aim wasent good and overall was easy to take them down.

VJ BASE SUPPORT: Well as the name suggest, the zeta players has VJ support. VJ Base NPCS and zeta players will know either exist, and that hostile vj base npcs will attack zetas, its not perfect but it works for the most part. Im putting this here so that people won't be asking about it.

SPAWNMENU/SPAWNING Zeta's can spawn props, entities and npcs. You can register what they can spawn using these console commands
zetaplayer_registernpc (NPC class)
zetaplayer_registerentity {Entity classname)
zetaplayer_registerprop {Model Path}
zetaplayer_registermaterial {Material Path} (for the toolgun)
If you want to remove something from there spawnlist, replace register with remove.
To get a items path/and or classname, go into the spawnmenu find what you want them to spawn, then right click on the item and select "Copy to clipboard" then paste it next to the command. ex: zetaplayer_registernpc npc_citizen
For Materials its the same thing, but you find it in the material tool.
(be careful when giving them things like nukes, extremely powerful npcs or bombs as they don't care how bad your computer is)

BUILDING SYSTEM V.2 (Version 5.3) : In this system Zetas will chose a dupe from either the duplications folder (will talk about that later on) or any dupe from "My Dupes", The zeta will then manually build it using the physics gun and toolgun or choose to spawn it in. Zeta's can also add things on to props, you can see this in action when a zeta spawns a prop in and adds more props to that prop by using the physics gun and weld tool.

To add dupes to the Duplications folder you have to spawn a dupe in and use the Zeta Dupe Creator tool on the dupe and zetas will then be able to use that dupe

NAMING: Zetas can have names assigned to them, you can register custom names using this command "zetaplayer_registername (Any text)" or use the register panel
ex: zetaplayer_registername Jduke

PHYSICS GUN: Zetas can use the physics gun to manipulate anything, including map entities. Also as explained in the combat system, zetas will use the physics gun to prop kill

MEDIA PLAYER SUPPORT: Zeta's can watch Media players, depending on the media player chance, zetas will walk towards the nearest media player if there is one on the map, once there at the media player they will face towards it, until they decide to stop. If you remove the media player while their watching they will react to that action via voice chat lines.

(Note: Starfrost stated that this is a low priority for the random+ personality type so you might have to relay on custom or random if you really want alot of zetas to watch media players)

PERSONALITY SYSTEM: This system determines the chance of what actions a zeta will do, such as getting in a vehicle, going into build mode, attacking, using the physics gun etc. There are personality profiles for Map wide spawning zetas and respawning zetas. There are also personality presets that you can set to aswell

Builder: Will mostly focus on building stuff or spawning things and using the physics gun and toolgun

Aggressor: Will mostly focus on attacking stuff and engaging in combat, these zetas are hostile

Random: Will randomly generate a limited personality from 10-60 on each zeta that first spawns in

Random+: Will purely generate a random personality 0-100 on all sliders on each zeta that first spawns in. You can get a very friendly zeta, a zeta that LOVES building or some mf that there existence is based on killing everyone they see

Custom: Enables the customization that you set the sliders to.


VEHICLE SYSTEM: Zetas can drive vehicles and randomly drive around. On random occasions though they ram into npcs/players/other zetas over. The vehicle system supports source vehicles and simfphys (although zetas can't use weapons on armed simfphys vehicles)


TOOLGUN: Zetas can use a variety of gmod tools using there toolgun such as coloring, creating balloons, creating ropes, making lights and more. They can even apply certain things on players, npcs and other zetas if your lucky. Certain things like the remover tool is off by default due to being to powerful

ZETA SPAWNER: Located in NPCS>Zeta Bots, you will find the "Respawning Zeta Player". This will spawn a zeta that is able to respawn when they die. Now while it does not seem major let me tell you this. The spawner will save the personality, the profile picture, the name and the playermodel making it seem like there actually respawning. There is a option to make the spawner spawn new zetas when the zeta dies aswell.

COMMUNICATION SYSTEM(TEXT AND VOICE CHAT): Zeta's can use both text and voice chat when idling, attacking, taunting, panicking etc. They can also engaging in conversations with you or another zeta, using text chat lines and voice chat lines using the folders conrespond and conquestion. To respond to a zeta you can either chat or "voice chat" using your voice chat key to them while facing at them.


TEXT CHAT(COM SYSTEM): If enabled, zetas will use text chat. Zetas will use text chat depending on the situation such as idling, attacking, taunting, panicking etc. They can also use text chat to celebrate certain days with special chat lines, such as 4th of july. They can also use text chat to wish you happy birthday if you set the zetaplayer_setplayerbirthday command to your birth month and day.

EXAMPLE USAGE: zetaplayer_setplayerbirthday April 7

Make sure you spell the month correctly! Always capitalize the first letter!

EXAMPLE USAGE 2: zetaplayer_setplayerbirthday August 16


VOICE CHAT AND VOICE PACKS(COM SYSTEM): Zeta's have voicelines for certain events such as dying, panicking, taunting, attacking etc. There's global chat setting where you can hear there voices globally similar to the real gmod chat, Along with this there is a popup gui thats identical to the real gmod voice chat box where you can see which zeta is talking. There are two versions of voice chat, V1 and V2. V1 uses the source sound system(voicelines would be affected by lag, and will repeat when your game freezes or lag), V2 uses a different sound system(you can here voices even when your game is minimized, similar to media player, its unaffected by lag) and voice boxes will have a green indicator of how loud the voiceline is, also with V2 enabled a zeta's mouth will move when there talking. Voice Packs are a feature that was added in recent updates, Zeta's with a voice pack will only use the voicelines in that voice pack. To use voice packs you can make one youself or finding ones on the workshop (most voicepacks would have "ZetaVP" in the name)

4/18/2022 Update: You can now add custom voicelines by following this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qyilJw_tP8

ZETA MUSIC BOX: The Zeta Music box, is well a music box that plays music, If a zeta is near the music box they will dance via, act dance, act muscle or act robot. Zetas can spawn there music box aswell. You can spawn the music box via the "Others" tab in entities. You can add your own custom music for them to dance to in this tutorial

MUSIC BOX UPDATE (UPDATE 4.9.7): The Music box got a major update, with a new visualizer, it now uses a bass audio system, meaning that first, you are not restricted to MP3 anymore. You can now use files like FLAC, OGG, WAV, MIDI. A new video tutorial had been uploaded

New Tutorial
https://youtu.be/RdlqAAos8uA
Old Tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fVPl7N6eNs&t=135s

PROFILE PICTURES: You can add your own custom profile pictures for the zetas that can show on the voice chat popup, tab menu list and on a another addon starfrost made called MW2 Cards. To add pictures follow this tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDj5Ho9j4kI

SPRAYS: Added in 4.9 Zetas can now use sprays, you can enable this in "Others" in the zeta tab. You can add sprays by putting pngs, jpgs or VTF's in following file path C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\garrysmod\data\zetaplayerdata\custom_sprays

TEAM SYSTEM: Zetas will join a team and will help there team members, they will attack opposing teams. You can also join a team aswell. When joining a team you are able to see your team members represented by the color highlighting there bodies. You also count as being part of the team, so lets say if the team limit is 3, if your in a team only 2 zetas will be able to join the team your on.

TEAM SYSTEM REWRITE(Version 5.2): The team system was reworked on version 5.2, In this rework many things were fixed and changed. The key point in this update is the addition of gamemodes the zetas can partake in. There is currently 3 gamemodes King of the hill, Capture the flag and team deathmatch. To set up these gamemodes you need to spawn in stuff required for it in Tools>Zeta Player.

FRIEND SYSTEM: One zeta will have a chance randomly be your friend, Friend zetas will never attack you and give you medkits and will defend you and attack anything that attacks you. You can manually make a zeta friend by doing friendly actions such as defending the zeta or you know giving them a medkit, reminder you can only have one zeta friend at a time, this was made to prevent this system from becoming a "team system". You can also have a permanent friend zeta by setting a name thats registered in the addon, this will allow a zeta thats named "whatever name here" to automatically be your friend, you can also make the permanent friend zeta to always spawn

Updated Friend System (UPDATE 4.9.7): You can have multiple zeta's friends now, Zeta's can also have friends aswell. Behavior from before is now applied to zeta's friends aswell, so uh be careful when a attacking a zeta as there friends will be alerted.

ARMOR SYSTEM: Zetas can use suit batteries to increase there armor, and will take less damage from most sources depending on how much armor they have. This system is identical to the real HL2 armor system we players have, There is a option that controls how much armor is absorbed when a zeta with armor takes damage.

ZETA VIEWSHOTS: When having this enabled, zetas will have a chance to take a screenshot randomly, Just note that your screen will take the POV of the zeta for a split second then it will create a file in the "Zetaplayerdata" folder, its off by default due to possibly taking up alot of space on your computer due to the amount of zetashots.
To check viewshots go to this file path:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\garrysmod\data\zetaplayerdata\zeta_viewshots

ADMINISTRATORS/PLAYER COMMANDS: Admins are variants of zetas that can do things that normal zetas can't. They can use commands such as jailing, slaying, giving themselves armor, health etc. They can enforce the current rules: Random Deathmatching(RDMing), Prop Killing and Griefing. When not currently dealing with offenders, they will naturally use commands, mostly giving themselves health, armor or teleporting to someone. If the player(if treat owner is off) or zeta gets caught breaking these rules the admin will teleport to a location marked as a "Admin Sit" (if there is no "admin sit" they will just teleport to a random location), bring the offender to the admin sit and use the jail command on them, then depending on the "strictness value" they will either slay, ignite, slap, kick or ban the offender, or do nothing and send them back to there original position. Banning and kicking is only for zetas tho. If a zeta is banned the name can't be used for the time the zeta admin set it for. Before deciding what to do they will either use text chat or voice chat to scold the offender, When using voice chat they will use the adminscold voicelines from the "admincold" folder, and a conversation begins with the offender using text chat or voice chat with idle and sitrespond voicelines, after the conversation the admin will give the result they decided on. Adding adminscold and sitrespond is the same as before when adding custom voicelines. Options related to admins is in "Admin Enforcement"
Added in the Text chat update: You can now use the admin commands

{} Is a required arg
[] is optional

THESE ONLY WORK WITH ZETA PLAYERS! DOWNLOAD ULX IF YOU WANT TO USE COMMANDS ON YOURSELF!

,goto {Zeta Name} "Teleport to a zeta"
,bring {Zeta Name} "Teleport a Zeta to you"
,return {Zeta Name} "Return a Zeta back to their original position after teleporting them"
,slay {Zeta Name} "Kill a Zeta"
,kick {Zeta Name} [Reason] "Kick a Zeta from the game"
,ban {Zeta Name} [Time in seconds] [Reason] "Bans a Zeta for a certain amount of time"
,slap {Zeta Name} [damage amount]
,whip {Zeta Name} [damage amount] [times]
,ignite {Zeta Name} [time]
,sethealth {Zeta Name} [amount]
,setarmor {Zeta Name} [amount]
,god {Zeta Name} "Grant damage immunity to a Zeta"
,ungod {Zeta Name} "Revoke damage immunity from a Zeta"
,jail {Zeta Name} "Jail a Zeta"
,tpjail {Zeta Name} "Teleport and Jail a Zeta where your crosshair is pointing"
,unjail {Zeta Name} "Unjail a Zeta"
Starfrost said this

MINGEBAGS: A variant of zetas that appear as mingebags, they will have a klenier playermodel with no animations and all tools and weapons will be located at there crotch. This is purely cosmetic and doesn't change how a zeta works function-wise. This feature is a reference to War of the servers which is where Mingebags came from. Hey since admins and mingebags are here you could probably reenact war of the servers?

NOCLIPING: Well zeta's can noclip now, they will fly up in the sky and move to the position that they want to go. This featured used to be considered scrapped, but thanks to Erma Starfrost got a idea of how to do it.

CUSTOM WEAPONS (not addon sweps): Added in the finale major update, you can now design custom weapons for the zetas, this doesn't mean you can give them sweps as thats not possible. This is quite complex to explain in depth so ill try my best.
To create a custom weapon go to "Equipment Options" in the zeta player tab and click create custom weapon, then you can choose to create either a melee or ranged weapon or import a VMT file. When choosing to create a weapon you can change a bunch of things such as the firerate, model, sounds, where the zeta holds it etc. You can also create Callbacks which requires lua knowledge, Callbacks can allow you to do many things such as spawning projectiles, increasing zeta speed etc. When your finished with your custom weapon click compile weapon data.

Watch this video made by the creator himself, as it goes more in depth into how this works. I would definitely recommend to watch even if you not loss and know what to do before watching it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B9EWtrE5JM

You can also upload your weapons to the steam workshop or export it as a VMT, but i don't really feel like explaining it, so here is a video by the creator telling you how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thJeWf8qeHY



Upcoming features:

None



Possible features that may or may not be coming:

None

Removed/Scrapped Features:

Proper multiplayer support: There is no proper support for multiplayer, however despite this Zeta's work for the most part in multiplayer, however there are some issues here and there, Starfrost could add it when he wants to, he currently doesn't want to add it due to how Multiplayer works.
This used to be in the section above, however now with the addon finished this feature may never be released.

Major Code Optimization: Was to optimize all of the addons systems to make performance better. Unfortunately this was scrapped due to the creator being burnout


Gravity gun and manhack gun: Was scrapped for unknown reasons

Voice DSP: Allowed zeta voicelines to have effects applied to them, to make them sound clearer or have a broken microphone. However this was removed due to source only handling a little bit of this and overall just wasn't good for the mod

DSP feature archive: There is also DSP effects, which adds effects to the sound files, so you can have a zeta having a bad microphone (WARNING: Starfrost stated that source cant handle a bunch of dsp effects and that the game will crash when there is alot zetas are using dsp effects, make sure to keep the option "DSP Limiter" on in the Voice menu in the zeta players tab to help prevent these crashes or just not use the dsp feature at all).

Randomized Building: Would allow zetas to build structures of random shapes, props etc. Was scrapped due to it possibly being impossible or extremely difficult

Old Vehicle System: The first version of the vehicle system, it only supported source vehicles. Zetas had positioning issues and overall just buggy and glitchy, it was reworked later. Nextbots in general doesn't work well with vehicles unless you use hacky tactics. The developer also had severe burn out when first working on it.

Mingebags description archive: A variant of the zeta's where they are well mingebags.. Those weird players with a klenier model with no animations(A/T-posing) and all weapons and tools they have will be at there crotch. Hmm Admins and Mingebags, Seems like a War of the servers thing. The options related to mingebags are located in Playermodel Options and Map wide spawning.
Felt this wording was cringe


Theres some more features however i just wanted to label the main ones

Hope this discussion helped give a explanation of how this addon works.