Robot Arena 3

[09090901]

Online's always worked. Me and someone from the Garry's Wars group tested it a few weeks ago and it was definitely better than typical RA2 online. There's still some small lag, but from what I could tell everything worked.

every time i tried either it would never connect or the host would win instantly.

[RedSawn]

Mmm, it was jerky between me and Thyrus yesterday (this is before the patch, haven't played since) and we had a glitchy Nightmare-esque hit for no reason that threw me off the Flextop, but otherwise it does actually work. Will need to play again today or something. Probably after I get my parcel.

I'll have to look at the other motors, but the Z-Tek HPs are monsterously torquey. That 2090kg 4WD EMERGENCY has acceleration like a RA2 4WD MW bot when the torque is set to 1%, and about the same top speed when set to 100% RPM. 100% torque is just near instantaeous top speed. I put 720kg on a single HP (40kg large heavy disc + 8 85kg grinder drums) and only below around the 25% torque mark I'd say is it too slow for a real flywheel's spinup time.

More testing: 4WD Mini Motors have near instant acceleration on a 401kg bot (Just over LW) with 1% torque ... the top speed sucks, but the torque doesn't help that.
More more testing: That's interesting... wheel size actually matters now. Reversibles can actually drive pretty fast on slim wheels, but pitifully slow on micro wheels. Anything I've said about top speed previously can be taken into question.

I think if I was going to build on this update, it'd be following my own RA2 mod vision and having RPM and torque on the same scale, with torque being a trade-off for RPM and vice versa. Typically how it works, anyway. Sawblades can keep those massive RPMs and light robots with bigger motors can be lightning fast but you'll need to gear down the motor for a huge flywheel or a very heavy bot for the torque to move it. They can keep a Power % slider or something so you can trade motor performance for longer battery life. From what I'm seeing though the maximum torque of motors needs to be lowered pretty drastically across the board for weight to matter.

[goose]

From where I stand, yeah, it is. The driving physics are somewhat better with high power motors. They've opted for a system where you can change the max RPM % to spin at and max motor torque %, which I suppose adds some more fine-tuning, though why you'd purposefully put either below 100% without a serious control issue I don't know. I think the Reversible Angle motors are still getting shafted on performance (supposedly they're the 3rd heaviest spin motor behind the two Z-Teks, they should sit between the Mini and Redbird and go faster.. and have a motor sound) but otherwise you can make much faster bots. RA2-esque zero ground clearance seems to be a thing of the past if you want to drive at all as the chassis friction is overwhelming, I haven't tried a floor sitting chassis wedge though. Flying Squirrel digs into the floor hard if it tilts forward though, so probably bad news for those.

oh, when I read that I  assumed that RPM and torque  % would be connected... to add up to 100%.  like you can have 30% RPM and 70% torque. Thats "kinda" how gearing works.

[RedSawn]

Yeah... well, there's no rush to upgrade it into the sort of system I suggested above. It works, and there's other more major issues to swat.

[Thyrus]

90% of the time I ragequite the game because somethings not working again... I don't know what I am doing wrong but each of my bots clip through the floor and the steering is Fed up

[AHeapOfGames]

I'm still doing reviews! I tried Bot lab for the first time, making the same robot I made when I first reviewed RA2



I actually quite like the bot lab. However, I still find the gameplay underwhelming, even with the third update...

[Jet-speed]

I was hesitant to pick it up having seen all of the Steam reviews and the general opinion on the game, but figured sod it, something fun even if it's a mess right now. Was honestly pleasantly surprised, seems like a decent portion of the huge flaws have either been or are in the process of being ironed out.

Quite enjoying the botlab, despite the occasional camera bug that hasn't quite been fixed yet despite what they've said. I don't need to state the obvious issues but overall I've been having great fun experimenting. As Heap mentioned above me though, the actual gameplay feels a bit underwhelming right now; getting abruptly rammed to death by Emergency when it appears to have no weapons that should be capable of dealing damage is somewhat irritating.

[RedSawn]

the actual gameplay feels a bit underwhelming right now; getting abruptly rammed to death by Emergency when it appears to have no weapons that should be capable of dealing damage is somewhat irritating.

Yeah, ramplates, wedges and the plow do some amount of damage now. A surprising number in the case of ramplates. Better then the alternative, I suppose. What I really wonder is if impact velocity affects damage in any way because I haven't seen anything of the sort with sawblades and rotational speed nor have I seen hits over 250 now that spinners can go proper fast. Unity does have functions for collision force calculations.

[CodeMoose]

I have to admit, I've not even played the game all that much, I've been having too much fun poking around in the code to see how it all works.

But I do think the devs have been making a decent effort to fix the major flaws that it started with.

[ianh05]

Just woke up today, went to close Steam and noticed Robot Arena III on the front page of steam. While the reviews aren't great hopefully this will make more people aware of RA2 

[Bobyasianboy]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/363530/announcements/detail/848181885707123133

Few bug fixes and some weird cosmetic stuff added apparently. Also it's out of early access now, take that as you will.

[Badger]

> fit for full release

[Kossokei]

welp

[cephalopod]

Brace yourselves boys.

[09090901]

Can't wait to see what the steam forums will look like. Devs seem to take pretty much all of their feedback for updates from there, so I can't wait to see what dumb sh** gets added.

If I had to guess, I would assume GTM is considered the minority in their eyes.

[Mouldy]

It's now the most popular new release on Steam. Interesting.

[FOTEPX]

It's now the most popular new release on Steam. Interesting.

Holy hell, no way! That's amazingly good going for a simple robot building game!

Shame everyone's going to be disapointed.

[Probably Rob]

Popular New Releases are only decided with which game released during the day is more popular. In this case, it was more popular than the other game that was released earlier, which isn't surprising since it was a DH game

[RTC]

Well, at least it got out of the purgatory that is Steam Early Access.

[goose]

3 days before battlebots season 2.  curious timing.