Modifying bots

I'm working on a Second Life project as a polytech assignment and am wondering about how easy it is to buy and customize the appearance and animation of a human-like bot such as the Kareem bot from J&M Creations? I get the impression the several months I have would not be enough to create a human-like bot from scratch.

Quite difficult actually because even though I am not a bot creator or "runner" my self my understanding is that they are hard to code to begin with and they require a lot of upkeep to work effectively and even at all since many times when an update comes down the line the bot has to have major coding changes made to still work at all not to mention effectively. My understanding on buying bots is that if you see someone offering to sell you a working land bot or other type of bot it's probably either an outright scam or you won't be getting what you pay for because of the previously mentioned upkeep as well as the fact that current bot writers/runners have no reason to create more competition for themselves and former bot runners from my experience are so disenfranchised with bot running and in many cases sl in general that they loathe the fact of more bot runners.

I guess for land bots and other technical tasks they would require a lot of upkeep. We are intending to make a virtual tour guide that walks a set path and has _very_ simple communication with avatars. One way we could implement it is using an object bot, but if I understand you correctly, this simply won't be practical. Aren't there any reliable bot makers in Second Life?