GorillaNextBots

Garry's Mod-style nextbots and ragdolls for Gorilla Tag. Spawn nextbots that hunt your friends across the map. When one catches you, your gorilla goes limp and gets thrown the way the bot hit you, dust flies where you land, and the colour drains out of the world until you are back on your feet.

By stridefr.

Private lobbies only. All three mods switch themselves off in public lobbies. They are for playing with friends who have the mod too, not for spawning things on strangers.

---

What's in it

Three BepInEx plugins. Install all three for the full experience, or just the ones you want.

Plugin	What it does
NextBots	Spawn nextbots from a panel on your wrist. They find their way to you, cut you off, jump gaps, climb ledges, and sneak up while your back is turned. Any PNG or GIF becomes a bot, and a WAV with the same name becomes its chase sound. A Garry's Mod-style death log shows who got caught by what, in your headset and on the monitor.
GorillaRagdoll	Full-body ragdoll for your gorilla. Go limp at the press of a button, tumble with real physics, and get up where you land. You can watch in first or third person in the headset, and there's a separate camera for the monitor. Other players with the mod see your ragdoll too.
NextBotsRagdoll	Connects the two. A nextbot catching you knocks you down and throws you in the direction it hit you, with a death vignette, landing dust, per-bot weights and Garry's Mod impact and death sounds that the whole lobby hears. There is a kill cam too, switched off by default. Needs both of the others.

Install

You need:

• Gorilla Tag on PC
• BepInEx 5, 64-bit (tested on 5.4.23)
• Utilla

The easy way: download GorillaNextBotsInstaller.exe from Releases and run it. It finds Gorilla Tag, installs BepInEx if you have not got it, and puts the three mods in. Run it again any time to update - it tells you whether anything is new, and does nothing if not. Windows will warn about an unsigned program the first time: choose More info, then Run anyway. Close Gorilla Tag before updating, or Windows will not let the files be replaced.

By hand:

1. Download GorillaNextBots-<version>.zip from Releases.
2. Extract it into your Gorilla Tag folder, so the DLLs end up in Gorilla Tag\BepInEx\plugins\. The zip already has the right folders inside.
3. Start the game once. The mods create their folders and config files on first launch.

To update, extract the new zip over the old one; your settings are kept. To uninstall, delete the NextBots, GorillaRagdoll and NextBotsRagdoll folders from BepInEx\plugins\. The installer never touches your settings, bot images, sounds or death log style.

Adding bots

Put images in BepInEx\plugins\NextBots\skins\. Each one becomes a bot named after the file:

skins\
  obunga.png       <- the bot
  obunga.wav       <- its chase sound (optional, must be .wav)
  sanic.gif        <- animated bots work too

PNG, JPG and GIF are supported. With no images in the folder you get a red checkerboard placeholder, so you can tell straight away that the folder is empty. In multiplayer, everyone needs the same images: bots are matched by file name.

Playing

Join a private room, or play offline. In a room, only the room's host can spawn bots, and everyone else sees the host's bots.

Controls

	Input	Does
Bots	Left controller Y	Open/close the wrist panel
	Point your right hand	Aim where to spawn; a see-through preview of the actual bot shows where and how it will land
	Panel buttons	Pick a bot, spawn, undo, clear all, and tune settings on the TUNE page
Ragdoll	Left controller X (hold for a moment)	Go ragdoll / get up
	F6	Same, from the keyboard
	F4	Settings menu on the monitor. Its Effects tab has every setting for what a hit does - the colour drain, the ringing, the dust, the sounds and their timing - with a button to fire a test hit, so you can drag a slider and see the result straight away
	F10	Panic button: instantly get up and put everything back
Knockdowns	F5	Pretend the nearest bot just caught you, to try it out. The rest of the lobby sees it in their death log too
VR camera	Right stick	Circle around your ragdoll and move the camera up or down (third-person view)
	Left stick	Move the camera closer or further away
	Your own head	Always free - looking up, down or around never fights the orbit; only the stick moves where you stand
Monitor camera	Hold right mouse, drag	Circle the body, raise or lower the camera
	A / D, W / S	The same, from the keyboard
	Scroll	Zoom
	C	Look back at your body
	O	Switch the slow automatic orbit on or off (see below)

Keyboard keys only work while the game window has focus, so in the headset use the controller buttons.

Getting caught

When a bot gets within about a metre of you:

• You ragdoll, and your body is thrown in the direction the bot was running. A faster bot throws you harder, a sprinting ambush hardest of all, and heavy bots hit harder still.
• It all lands as one moment. The thud and the flashbang bang play at once, the death cry follows a beat later, and the flash, the colour drain and the dust are held back by your audio output delay so they arrive with the sound instead of just before it. Sound takes 20 to 90 ms to reach your ear after the game asks for it and a picture takes none, so without this a hit feels like two events and a recording looks out of sync. [11. Hit timing] (and the Effects tab) has ExtraDelayMs to tune it by ear: up if a recording shows the picture early, down if late, and usually up for a Bluetooth headset.
• Your hearing goes. A heavy hit muffles everything, like hearing it from the next room, and leaves a thin high whine on top, both fading over a few seconds. The whine is added after the muffling, so it stays clear. Heavier bots hit harder, and only the very hardest ragdoll impacts and landings do it as well. A Counter-Strike flashbang bang plays first, from your own install. It is quiet by default; [10. Impact daze] has the whine's volume, how dull it gets (Muffle), how long it lasts, and Enabled to switch it off.
• The edges of your view flash red, and the colour drains out of the world. It is real desaturation - every pixel is pulled towards its own grey, so brightness and contrast are kept and only the colour goes - done by a small shader the mod carries inside its DLL. The edges go dark, and the whole thing eases away by itself over about six seconds, so by the time you stand it is mostly gone and the return is smooth. [8. Death vignette] has Drain (how much colour goes), Dim, Seconds (how long it takes to fade) and Enabled. In the headset it uses a dark grey wash instead, because the real thing renders both eyes in a single pass and that has not been tested on a headset; TrueDesaturationInVr = true turns it on to try, and false turns it back off if the view goes wrong. It shows in the headset and on the monitor, including the third-person orbit camera, so it is in a screen recording. [8. Death vignette] has the strength, how long the red holds and how slowly the colour returns.
• Dust. A body landing throws up a ring of dust that runs out along the floor, grit that bounces, a crack of fine dust at the moment of impact, and a scuff mark that fades over ten seconds or so. The debris is real 3D rocks that fly, hit the actual floor, walls and tables, bounce, skid and settle wherever they land, then shrink away; grit in dust.json is how many (up to 60 a burst), gritSize how big, and 0 turns them off. Only a ragdoll's landings trigger this by default; HardLandings in the config also puffs a normal hard landing on your feet (dropping off a roof) if you want that too. Everyone in the lobby sees it, including other players' landings. The look is in BepInEx/plugins/NextBotsRagdoll/dust.json; the numbers under [9. Landing dust] in the config switch it off, change how hard a landing has to be, and how many puffs the biggest burst uses.
• The camera orbits by itself, slowly, for filming: about 10 degrees a second with a gentle drift up and down and a slight breathing in and out, so it reads as a camera move rather than a turntable. Touch the mouse, A/D/W/S or the wheel and it is yours at once; leave it alone for a couple of seconds and it eases back in. Speed, drift and delay are under [6. Camera (monitor)], or press O to turn it off.
• A kill cam can film your body flying and then swing round to the bot that got you, on a floating screen in VR and in the corner of the monitor. It is off by default - it draws the whole scene a second time - so switch Enabled on under [4. Kill cam] if you want it.
• The bot moves on to someone else and leaves you alone for a couple of seconds after you get up, so you can't be caught again the moment you stand.
• With DEATH ON CATCH switched on in the wrist panel, you respawn after the knockdown instead of getting up where you landed.
• Everyone hears it. The hit and Garry's Mod's death sound play where your body is, and every thud as your ragdoll lands is sent to the other players, timed to when they see it land.
• The death log shows it to the whole lobby: the bot's name (its image file name), its picture, and the player it caught.

Lives

Turn on LIVES on the wrist panel's LIVES config page to play in rounds. Everyone starts with LIFE COUNT lives (1 to 10), and every catch by a bot costs one. Other ragdolls and the test key don't. Hearts float over each player's head, and over your own left wrist. With GHOSTS on, a player with no lives left is a ghost: the bots ignore them. Switching lives on, or changing the count, starts everyone over. In a room the host runs it and everyone sees the same hearts.

The hearts are Minecraft's own, and come with the mod.

Speed-up rounds

Turn on SPEED-UP ROUNDS on the wrist panel's ROUNDS config page. Once bots are out, a timer counts down ROUND TIME (60 seconds to start with). Each time it runs out the round goes up: every bot runs SPEED PER ROUND faster, its jumps and climbs reach JUMP PER ROUND further, and with ADD A BOT on another bot joins, out of sight, up to your BOT COUNT (now up to 30). The round and the time left show at the top of your view, and the speed-up is announced on screen. Clearing the bots ends the rounds; the host runs them for the whole lobby.

Head flick

Snap your head hard just before you ragdoll and the body is thrown and flipped the way your head was turning: whip it back for a backflip, sideways for a spin. Turn it off or change how hard in the F4 menu (Launch).

Death log

Every catch shows up in the corner of your headset view and of the monitor, Garry's Mod style:

Obunga [bot picture] stridefr

The look and position live in BepInEx\plugins\NextBots\killfeed.json, which is created on first launch. Change corner to TopLeft, TopRight, BottomLeft or BottomRight, or restyle it completely: colours, a box behind each row, an outline when it's you, icon size, how long rows stay. Saving the file updates the game within a second, no restart needed. When more catches come in than there are rows, the oldest one fades out as it's pushed off the end.

Fonts. Set font to the name of any font installed on your PC, like Verdana, Impact or Segoe UI, and bold to true or false. Garry's Mod's own death notices are Verdana Bold. No fonts come with the mod: it uses the ones installed on your PC, and if a font isn't installed that text just uses the game's default.

The monitor is fussier than the headset: it can only use fonts Windows has installed for all users, which is not what you get from double-clicking a font file and pressing Install. If the log says a font isn't installed for all users, either right-click the file and pick Install for all users, or set monitorFont to one that is - Verdana is always there - and keep your own font in the headset.

The log draws above everything else the mods put on screen, including the death vignette, so a row is never dimmed by your own screen going dark right as it appears.

Bot weights

After the first launch there's a file per bot in BepInEx\plugins\NextBotsRagdoll\bots\. Set a bot's weight in kilograms: 80 is normal, and a 320 kg bot hits twice as hard as an 80 kg one. You can also change how high it launches you, how long you stay down, and which sound it makes. The files are reloaded when you save them, so you can tune with the game running. The README.txt in that folder lists every option.

Impact sounds

Your ragdoll makes the classic Garry's Mod body sounds when it hits things, and you hear Garry's Mod's death sound when someone gets caught. The sounds belong to Valve, so they are not included. Instead:

• If you own Garry's Mod or Half-Life 2 on Steam, the mod copies the exact sounds those games use from your own install the first time it starts. Nothing to do.
• If you don't, drop any WAVs you like into the folders in BepInEx\plugins\NextBotsRagdoll\sounds\. The README.txt in there explains which folder is for what.

Other players only hear your ragdoll if they have sounds in their own folders too.

Settings

• Bots: the wrist panel's CONFIG page, split into sections (Movement, Pursuit, Ambush, Jump, Audio, Lives and so on). < PAGE and PAGE > turn between them. Your changes are saved. In a room, the host's settings apply to everyone.
• Ragdoll and cameras: press F4 on the monitor.
• Fonts: the death log's is in killfeed.json (above). The wrist panel's is Font under [UI] in com.stridefr.nextbots.cfg, and the F4 menu's is MenuFont in com.stridefr.gorillaragdoll.cfg. Use the name of a font installed on your PC; restart the game after changing these two.
• Everything: the config files in BepInEx\config\: com.stridefr.nextbots.cfg, com.stridefr.gorillaragdoll.cfg and com.stridefr.nextbotsragdoll.cfg.

Known issues

• Multiplayer has had much less testing than single player. Bots, ragdolls and knockdowns are all built to work in a lobby, but expect rough edges. Bug reports are very welcome.
• Everyone in a lobby needs the same version. Players on different versions don't see each other's bots.
• The NextBots keyboard shortcuts (F1, F7) don't work on the current game version. Use the wrist panel.
• In the third-person VR camera, players without the mod see you floating where your camera is, because in VR your camera and your networked body are the same thing.
• The kill cam draws the scene a second time while you're down, which is why it ships switched off. If you turn it on and your frame rate drops, lower Resolution in its settings.

Fixed since the last release

• The death log in the headset now matches the designer. Text is sized by its font size, as the designer does it, instead of by its full line height, which made it smaller than the preview next to the same-size bot image. Colours go in exactly as picked; an earlier change converted them for the game's colour space a second time and darkened them. GIF bots animate in the log.
• First person had a lag your real eyes don't have, because the ragdoll's camera-follow smoothing was applying to it same as a third-person camera chasing a body from outside. Both first-person modes now place the eye instantly, with none of CameraSmoothing's lag.
• A reanchored face cosmetic could fill your own first-person view. In normal play you never see your own glasses - they sit at the edge of your vision by design. Re-anchored onto the head bone for the ragdoll, that placement no longer has any reason to land outside your own view the same way, and could end up dead centre. It's now hidden from your own eye specifically, matching how normal play already looks to you, while staying visible on the monitor, the kill cam and to anyone else.
• The VR third-person orbit could visibly jitter back and forth, worse the further out you orbited or the more you moved. Two different bugs, both fixed: turning the orbit wrote your position twice in the same frame - once instantly, then again a moment later by the camera's own smoothed placement, each undoing part of the other - and the wall-avoidance check could flicker between "clear" and "blocked" as the ray grazed the edge of something at long range, snapping the camera in and out every time it did. Turning now only turns; pulling in for a wall is still instant, but easing back out once it's clear is smoothed so a graze doesn't show.

Something went wrong?

• Press F10 to get out of any ragdoll trouble.
• Look in Gorilla Tag\BepInEx\LogOutput.log. Each mod logs what it's doing, prefixed [Bots], [Ragdoll], [Bridge] and so on.
• If you open an issue, attach that log file. It usually shows exactly what went wrong.

Building from source

You need the .NET SDK. The projects reference DLLs straight from your game install, so there's nothing else to download.

cd src/NextBotsRagdoll
dotnet build -c Release -p:GameDir="C:\path\to\Gorilla Tag"

That builds all three plugins and copies them into your game's BepInEx\plugins. Add -p:NoDeploy=true to skip the copy. Each mod has its own technical README:

• NextBots: pathfinding, the bot brain, networking
• GorillaRagdoll: how the ragdoll drives GT's own avatar, and the camera modes
• NextBotsRagdoll: knockdowns, kill cam, weights, sounds (roadmap)
• Installer: the one-click installer and updater, a small .NET Framework app

Credits

Made by stridefr.

Inspired by Garry's Mod nextbots. Built on BepInEx, Harmony and Utilla.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Another Axiom or Facepunch. Mods can break when the game updates. Use them at your own risk, and only in private lobbies.

License

MIT. Use it, change it, and put it in your own mods; just keep the credit.