Robot Arena 3

[TDS]

we'll see once the game is released if unrealistic, DSL-S and IRL are still possible.

As long as it makes sense, I guess, I've found DSL to be a whole bunch of nonsense roughly balanced and thrown together willynilly but that doesn't seem to be a popular opinion.  The "give everyone everything!" approach works for singleplayer, but in multiplayer it would not

That's why Ironforge exists.

You can go through the laundry list of mods, but I haven't found any that weren't a big confusing mess, a big part of ubermod and AW's mod was consolidating all of the components into categories that made something in the realm of sense, they may make sense to someone who is in depth into RA2, but the nonsense descriptions and hundreds of options for seemingly no reason compounded by all the crashing just led me to shrug and go play factorio instead, I highly prefer stuff like the modular bars and hex armor parts to the big premade plows and stuff, because not only do the come apart in chunks and are cooler and more flexible, they take up a lot less space in the awkward menu's.   I highly prefer "hey here's some shapes, go make something cool out of them" to "here's a huge part premade for you, strap it to a motor"

[dezox]

i cant see envy in this mod

[cephalopod]

we'll see once the game is released if unrealistic, DSL-S and IRL are still possible.

As long as it makes sense, I guess, I've found DSL to be a whole bunch of nonsense roughly balanced and thrown together willynilly but that doesn't seem to be a popular opinion.  The "give everyone everything!" approach works for singleplayer, but in multiplayer it would not

That's why Ironforge exists.

You can go through the laundry list of mods, but I haven't found any that weren't a big confusing mess, a big part of ubermod and AW's mod was consolidating all of the components into categories that made something in the realm of sense, they may make sense to someone who is in depth into RA2, but the nonsense descriptions and hundreds of options for seemingly no reason compounded by all the crashing just led me to shrug and go play factorio instead, I highly prefer stuff like the modular bars and hex armor parts to the big premade plows and stuff, because not only do the come apart in chunks and are cooler and more flexible, they take up a lot less space in the awkward menu's.   I highly prefer "hey here's some shapes, go make something cool out of them" to "here's a huge part premade for you, strap it to a motor"

See I really don't understand your view here and never have because Ironforge does exactly what you're saying. Literally 12 different weapons. Pretty sure Stock has somewhere near that.

[Meganerdbomb]

^it also consolidates all drive motors into one menu and in such a way that you only need two for any weight class. It gives you two basic options for extenders and armor and three for skirts and plpwo, with a clear HP vs weight trade-off, and it does include the hex plate.

[Mr. AS]

[clip]

I just downloaded this so-called "ubermod" that you usually give your canned spiel about and how it "consolidates all of the components into categories that made something in the realm of sense", and it doesn't even include the hex plates or DSL bars (which is what I assume "modular bars" refers to) that you're complaining over, where as any other mod worth it's salt does. In fact, the furthest extent of modding UM seems to have is .txt file edits and component reskins, along with some Lu-Tze components thrown in. None of the stock parts in here are even "consolidated" into categories.

Which part of the typical ironforge/DSL component description is confusing you? DP? HP? Normals?

See I really don't understand your view here and never have because Ironforge does exactly what you're saying. Literally 12 different weapons. Pretty sure Stock has somewhere near that.

Stock actually had around 18 weapons.

[TDS]

Yeah I'm not sure what you downloaded, (maybe an early version?) but the later versions had the axes, spokes, batteries, red motors, plows ect. consolidated into categories/gearing levels  It /was/ just about all reskins with a few extra components because thats all that existed back then, by the time AW started cranking out his stuff and components started coming out, I was pretty much done with it, I did run into issues when I found out that the "original" parts that were left in the game but hidden and somewhat modded so that AI bots would work turned out to be visible to certain versions of the game.

I'm not 100% sure what versions of what mods I tried last time I gave ra2 a shot but DSL was in there, it was a torrent I grabbed that had a few directories with full installed mods into them, all of which illustrated the above "there's way too much crap in here a lot of it crashes the game".  Compound that with a lot of attachment issues on the "mod" components where nothing wants to snap into place (I'm assuming this is due to my pc setup since resolution and such is finicky in ra2) and it didnt last long before I was too annoyed to continue :)

[Stigma]

Another problem I've observed with some mods is blank component slots. What I mean by this is where a component should be, there's just a blank white square, which crashes the game when clicked on (RA2 loves to crash anyway, but still)

[Mr. AS]

Yeah I'm not sure what you downloaded, (maybe an early version?)

A link to the version I downloaded is in my previous post. It seems like actual custom components were very much possible, given that there are several of Lu-Tze's components in there as well.

I'm not 100% sure what versions of what mods I tried last time I gave ra2 a shot but DSL was in there, it was a torrent I grabbed that had a few directories with full installed mods into them, all of which illustrated the above "there's way too much crap in here a lot of it crashes the game". 

There's your problem. I had a similar experience with custom components when I first found GTM. Many off-GTM RA2 downloads sometimes throw a bunch of random custom component packs into a folder, because more is better to them I guess. They don't care about how well it works, they just want it to put it on thier website/torrent page as [-=1337_bUrG3Я=-] Robot Arena 2 FULL GAME 1.420 [English] [Patched] [Lots O Components] [Gone wrong] [GONE SEXUAL] [GONE CLICKBAIT] [PLS SEED]. Problems tend to arise when you go and download those copies of RA2, weather it be similarly named files causing conflicts with one another or .txt files that lead to a nonexistent directory/model (BTW, missing preview images is what causes the white square problem). Not to mention dozens of "babby's first mod"-type components that don't even work properly on thier own, let alone with other mods installed.

The best solution here would be to go and download some mods off of this directory first. They're the least likely to crash as long as you don't put them all in the same copy of RA2. Everything in working game is standalone too, so you don't even have to install it over anything. Just unzip, click the Robot Arena 2 .exe and run. It's fine to have multiple copies of RA2, it's an abandonware game. I have something like 10 or 15 copies of RA2 myself for various mods and testing, one of which being a copy that I dump every component pack into.

[TDS]

Yeah I'm not sure what you downloaded, (maybe an early version?)

A link to the version I downloaded is in my previous post. It seems like actual custom components were very much possible, given that there are several of Lu-Tze's components in there as well.

At the time downloading a copy of solidworks(3dstudiomax? I forget what program it was) from mIrc on a 56k modem was a nonstarter dude, gotta work within your means!  Iirc Lu-Tze hadn't yet released the tools to pack components yet.

I'll give it another shot with a clean install at some point, I /was/ assuming that what people linked me to on here was the actual mods and not garbage like you say :)

[Mr. AS]

So you weren't able to actually open the .gmf with notepad and edit vertexes or anything? If so then yeah, I can imagine reskins being the fullest extent of what you could make at the time.

IDK who linked you to whatever version of RA2 you have, but if your RA2 looks something like this:



Then you might want to go and download some copies from he working game section. It'll crash a lot less, trust me. btw, DP means damage points (how much damage something does relative to other components), HP means hitpoints (how much damage something can take), feel free to ask if you get confused about anything else.

[Badger]

So you weren't able to actually open the .gmf with notepad and edit vertexes or anything? If so then yeah, I can imagine reskins being the fullest extent of what you could make at the time.

IDK who linked you to whatever version of RA2 you have, but if your RA2 looks something like this:

(Image removed from quote.)

Then you might want to go and download some copies from he working game section. It'll crash a lot less, trust me. btw, DP means damage points (how much damage something does relative to other components), HP means hitpoints (how much damage something can take), feel free to ask if you get confused about anything else.

I actually have a question, what's the difference between the piercing and concussion damage types, and why are piercing weapons usually more favourable?

[Kossokei]

So you weren't able to actually open the .gmf with notepad and edit vertexes or anything? If so then yeah, I can imagine reskins being the fullest extent of what you could make at the time.

IDK who linked you to whatever version of RA2 you have, but if your RA2 looks something like this:

(Image removed from quote.)

Then you might want to go and download some copies from he working game section. It'll crash a lot less, trust me. btw, DP means damage points (how much damage something does relative to other components), HP means hitpoints (how much damage something can take), feel free to ask if you get confused about anything else.

I actually have a question, what's the difference between the piercing and concussion damage types, and why are piercing weapons usually more favourable?

As I remember it, concussion is bonus damage to components, piercing is bonus damage to chassis, which is why popups use razors and de-weaponers are heavy in concussion... unless flails show up

[Sage]

keep on topic of RA3 please.

[Meganerdbomb]

Why bother, is all a hoax anyway. Do you guys really think Octopus Tree could be the name of a real company? On April first, it'll all be revealed as a prank.

[J]

Hey....
Hey guys....

You know what will look good on my first robot that I'm making, skin wise, when RA3 comes out?

I'll give you a hint: It starts with a "P", has an "O" and an "N" in it, and ends with an "S" :^)

[Thrackerzod]

I'll give you a hint: It starts with a "P", has an "O" and an "N" in it, and ends with an "S" :^)

Pizza toppings

[Tygron]

So you weren't able to actually open the .gmf with notepad and edit vertexes or anything?
(Image removed from quote.)

It was possible but none of us thought of doing that until Clickbeetle and Firebeetle came around. The internet was a much slower place with much much less resources. We're talking 2004-2005ish. Making stuff for RA2 became rather trivial around the time of the 1.4 patch give or take half a year. Before that it was all people who knew what they were doing.
I will say one thing against the hexplate thing and being creative with them. Sure, I saw people doing some cool stuff with them. I always found it super hard to do anything worthwhile because of the stupid seven part limit.

I don't think much can be said about the physics using what we have, both robots use car steering axles so the fact the bots have turning circles (and would seem to be sliding because we can't see the wheels underneath the chassis) has to be discarded.

So back on track, i'm gonna have to agree here after looking at the trailer again. We definitely didn't have sliding bots with car steering before, and definitely not with the speed it they seem to have in RA3 here. So if the robot is sliding while turning, it's got more physics do it than we've ever had before.

[The Red Blur]

Maybe the car steering motor will actually be decent this time around.

[Thyrus]

Maybe the car steering motor will actually be decent this time around.

... yep

[TDS]

I don't think much can be said about the physics using what we have, both robots use car steering axles so the fact the bots have turning circles (and would seem to be sliding because we can't see the wheels underneath the chassis) has to be discarded.

So back on track, i'm gonna have to agree here after looking at the trailer again. We definitely didn't have sliding bots with car steering before, and definitely not with the speed it they seem to have in RA3 here. So if the robot is sliding while turning, it's got more physics do it than we've ever had before.
[/quote]

The way the chasis seems to bebop slightly, the way the spinner appears to "push" away from the wall in a way that would not work if real, and the snappyness of the turn leads me to think its the same physics tricks as before, if you've ever driven a larger bot before, once they reach the kind of speed you see on average in RA, they operate like boats, steel floors are a son of a bitch for turning :)