Recently I noticed the ShrikeBot website went down with Bots United, including the downloads.

The old Tapatalk forums are still up if you need them.

There was a lot of useful information on that site, fortunately if you download ShrikeBot in the past... that website (a manual for the bot) is actually in your download.
Look in...  Your Drive:Your Folder\steamapps\common\Half-Life\dod\shrikebot and click on the shrikebot_manual_offline.html

I will make some more articles soon.

ShrikeBot downloads on Sturmbot.org...

See this new section for Installation and other downloads.

 

PLACEHOLDER May 2026... more to come soon.

Don't mind me, just some planning notes.

Some topics to explore I will tidy this up eventually...

The problem of Linux support for Shrikebot and other items.

  • A investigation into why ShrikeBot used to work on Linux and now does not.
  • Can it be fixed? If not why?
  • Also, some reasons why its better than Sturmbot and why it isn't used as much, I really don't know.

Linux. libstdc++5 compatibility

  • Some of the newer Distros may be compatible? Explore Debian 12 (best?) and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  • I have all the Linux files from bots united downloads... zip them up.

Waypoints...

  • I found 729 and put them in my download (windows zip)
  • There may be more...find them.
  • Martee has one.

Why isn't this bot used as much as Sturmbot?
I really have no idea, in some ways it was far superior for server operators, the waypoints were OK and plentiful, the bot fairly stable.
The bot balance and human to bot ratio system far superior to Sturmbot, but no one used it.

Anyway, lets look at some topics and get some data, tidy it up and get a picture of this bot.

 

Making it work with metamod and amx mod x (Listen server windows)

Already known to work, (windows) just adjust liblist.gam to open with metamod and open via a desktop shortcut with this in the target... 
Drive:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Half-Life\hl.exe -game dod +localinfo mm_gamedll dlls/shrikebot.dll

Making a Windows dedicated server (windows) already covered here.

 

Making ShrikeBot Linux work (listen server) We see a problem here.

On this page it has the older download links. 

  • Linux Tar Zip .tgz
  • Linux binary patch - This patch is for users who have libstdc++.so.6 instead of libstdc++.so.5
  • zipped package For use on fedora 3 

I have all of them and can put them in the downloads, but...tried to get any of those to run on Linux Mint (dedicated server) and it did not run.
Investigate what OS they will run on, could be Debian 12 or Ubuntu LTS with compatibility libraries, older GCC ABI behavior, 32-bit runtime environments,•libstdc++.so.5 and older glibc.

What I did to Debian 12...

  • Installed 32-bit compatibility support ... dpkg --add-architecture i386
  • Installed modern 32-bit runtime libraries... apt install libc6:i386 libstdc++6:i386
  • Installed the legacy GCC 3 runtime... apt install libstdc++5:i386 to get libstdc++.so.5
  • Verified the binary architecture, Verified runtime dependencies, Verified GoldSrc export symbols

That was as close as I could get,,, the result was It didn't run.

Test outcome on Debian 12 bookworm...

What OS likely would work? Probably something period-correct like:

  • Fedora Core 2/3/4
  • Debian 3.1 / 4
  • Ubuntu 4.10–6.06
  • kernel 2.4 or early 2.6
  • 32-bit native install
  • In other words: a true 2004–2006 Linux server stack.

Bottom line: The same if you wanted Sturmbot 1.7 to run on Linux....

  • Run the windows version under proton *see note
  • Run Marine Bot Linux (only 90 waypoints but whats there are good map support)
  • Wait for new_bot to update to Linux support (it is happening in 2026)

* Proton note, sure you may drop 5% on performance but also (if you have a AMD video card) if you install one of the latest OS distros in 2026... you may actually improve your performance.

Make ShrikeBot Linux work on a Dedicated server.

Using the debian 12 install with all the dependence installed, will the dedicated server run?

 Testing was performed on a modern Debian 12 64-bit system using the original ShrikeBot 2.3.1 Linux binaries, including full 32-bit compatibility libraries, legacy GCC runtime support (libstdc++5:i386), Metamod, and AMX Mod X.

The dedicated HLDS server successfully initialized and loaded Metamod, and ShrikeBot began loading correctly, confirming that the original .so files and installation method are still fundamentally valid.

However, the server consistently terminated with a segmentation fault during ShrikeBot runtime initialization. This suggests that while modern Linux systems can partially reproduce the original 2004 environment, the old ShrikeBot Linux binaries remain incompatible with modern Steam-era Linux runtimes and engine behavior.
For practical modern use, running the Windows version of ShrikeBot through Proton on an up-to-date Linux gaming distribution is currently the more reliable solution.
 

Bottom line: Dedicated server outcome is the same findings as the Linux Listen server. It did do better... but ultimately failed for real world use.

 

To be continued... why use this bot anyway, well there are reasons. I will explore that soon.