Arena Draft Plan

[RedAce]

So, I've been thinking of making of an RA2 Arena, but I have no idea how to make one.

To start it off, here's the general area:



I know this is slightly off-center than how I would like it to be and it's not drawn to scale, but that's not the point. The light gray square is where bots where be placed. That area will be the about same size of the Combat Arena, but slightly smaller. The starting positions will be numbered where bots will start and the squares are slightly larger than the squares in the Containment Cube. The White area is the OOTA zone which be as large as the ones from the BBEANS Arena V2. The walls are as tall as the ones inside the BBEANS Arena, but will slightly wider. The Dark gray squares are solid walls and corners for in and out of the arena.

So is this just the BBEANS Arena V2 with all hazards out of sight and bigger? One would think that, but that's when the corners come in. Let's get a closer shot now shall we?



These corners will be on the walls of the arena and will feature the hazards of the arena. The dark gray box in the top right will be another wall that you can't flip over. The light gray boxes will contain diamond spikes larger than the ones in the Compressor Arena and slightly smaller than the size of the ones's in the Containment Cube and be attached on the arena wall. This will make flipping out bots a little more difficult. You also may be noticing the random circle near the corner mentioned earlier. That was intentional. This will feature a massive hammer like the Pulverizers in the Battlebox and is compared to them, they will be bigger and meaner than before. The corner hammers will NOT mess around and it will hurt.


So yeah, that's my idea for a possible arena. I don't really have a name for it yet, but one will come soon. If someone could actually create this arena to a reality, that would be awesome. However, I would also greatly appreciate it if someone who is experienced in making arenas could teach me how to make one for myself. It's like the old saying: "If you give a man to fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for life." If anyone has on minor improvements on adding to it on what would make it cooler, that would be great.

[CRP123]

Sounds like a really cool idea and a fun arena to play with. Honestly I can't make arenas so If it sounds rubbish dont laugh but, I have a question/ suggestion about the spikes. Will they be powerful enough to flip or toss a robot over or will they be made for damage over flipping power. Because my opinion is that they should flip robots over.

[RedAce]

The spikes will be static, and be attached on the wall. Forgot to specify that.

[CRP123]

Oh,ok then still sounds cool. Good Luck !

[Trovaner]

It doesn't look too difficult but you'll definitely want to break it up into baby steps.

First and foremost, you'll need to create the floor, starting points, and at least one light source. Once that's done, you'll need to create a basic Arena.py file so that you can load it into RA2 and see if anything is broken. I'd recommend looking at the Low Lag Arenas if you need something to look at. There is a way of making the floor flatter (like the Infinity Arena or BBEANS Arenas) but I recommend waiting until the end if you plan on adding it because you'll still need the other floor for skinning and it requires manually changing the compiled GMF.

Once you have the above working, I'd recommend adding one wall and, if everything still works in RA2, add the rest of them. There is a neat way of reusing an object inside of the GMF (as seen in the Online Arena) but there is nothing wrong with creating multiple objects if you find that to be easier (as seen in both of the Low Lag Arenas).

The spikes and hammers should also be done like this to avoid any unnecessary confusion and to limit the amount of errors occuring at once. The collision and display meshes for both the spikes and the hammers should probably be separate but its fine as long as performance isn't an issue.

The hammers are going to be the hardest part because they aren't static. They will require a special type of hinge inside of the GMF and handling inside of the PY. You'll also probably want to add zones for triggering the swings (similar to having a smartzone on hammer bots when you AI them).

The last thing that I would worry about doing is the skinning. This tends to have its own challenges and I find it to be easiest just to use solid colors rather than textures until everything else is finalized. The first Low Lag Arena and the Online Arena use solid colors. The second Low Lag Arena has an example of a basic texture. You can add quite a few effects using more advanced textures but that's a discussion in and of itself.

That's pretty much everything in a nutshell. I didn't really get into the nitty gritty details because I'm on my phone but, if you need help, just send me a PM or pose a question here. Writing the initial boilerplate isn't easy for beginners so don't be afraid of asking a stupid question... as long as it relates to this...