Robot Arena 3

[RedSawn]

$19.99, yup

[Serge]

Uhhh good luck finding steam credits in china

Steam apparently offers Alipay payments - if so, you can literally pay by going to your nearest Family Mart and using an Aladin machine. Been there done that.

[Calmarius]

Will we able to create AI teams and bots in RA3?

Maybe. Probably not at first. Remember, no-one did, or was able to do that when RA2 just came out. Are you gonna put in the required effort to reverse-engineer and mod the game to make it happen?

So does this mean the original RA2 didn't have those .py files in the AI folder? And all this stuff added to the game by reverse engineering an modding the released binary machine code in an assembler? That was indeed a really huge effort, huge respect for that!

[Calmarius]

Another question I don't remember I have seen answered: will the robots have self collision? (meaning we cannot overlay components anymore)

[The Red Blur]

Another question I don't remember I have seen answered: will the robots have self collision? (meaning we cannot overlay components anymore)

Probably not. I mean, they probably wanna keep the possibility of unrealistic building/DSL-S building

[09090901]

the bots in the latest trailer had intersecting components so I would probably say no.

[cephalopod]

they probably wanna keep the possibility of unrealistic building/DSL-S building

DSL-S doesn't allow for overlaying components.
I'd like if RA3 didn't allow collisions personally, but I don't imagine they'll implement it for spinning objects because they'd have to model everything that spins as circular, which wouldn't really work for bars etc

As for other things,
I'm pretty sure the original RA2 did have the .py files but nobody knew how to get bots actually working in the game with regards to smartzones, control naming and bindings for some time.

[RedSawn]

It'll be interesting to see how it works. I looked at the trailer again and didn't really see the intersecting components people are bringing up, but Unity does have options to allow collisions between joined objects. They only had to use their own wheel system because WheelColliders do not work inverted. They still could be using the standard Unity fixed/hinge/spring joints (hinges cover spinning motors too) with those self-collision features built in.

Wouldn't explain how everything can freely intersect the chassis with it still being solid though. Perhaps self-collision is turned off for objects attached directly to the chassis and that setting for chassis collision trickles down to anything attached to the original component (Not tested this). Maybe something else.

[TDS]

Wouldn't explain how everything can freely intersect the chassis with it still being solid though. Perhaps self-collision is turned off for objects attached directly to the chassis and that setting for chassis collision trickles down to anything attached to the original component (Not tested this). Maybe something else.

My guess is that the chasis belong to a class which specifically doesn't collide with anything else in that tree of bot parts.
However I'm fairly certain that self collision is out, since I'm pretty sure that a few of those observed robots had armor plates which the weapon passes through. (unless maybe moving objects can only pass through your own static objects)

[Serge]

So does this mean the original RA2 didn't have those .py files in the AI folder? And all this stuff added to the game by reverse engineering an modding the released binary machine code in an assembler? That was indeed a really huge effort, huge respect for that!

It did have the Python scripts for AI logic. However, that still required some revere engineering in order to understand and extend behaviour. And some understanding Component configuration files and CFL/CFZ files to enable smartzones. Then cobbling all those things together.

RA2 didn't come with a „here's what you have to edit in Python files to get your own AI bots” manual.

[Jules]

I don't understand why they haven't implemented component self collision, or whatever you want to call it.

It wouldn't be difficult to do. Unity has physics layers. That allows you to tag objects and easily modify with which layers they collide with.

For example: objects in a layer can easily be configured to collide with everything, including themselves, except for the bot's chassis which would be on a separate specified layer.

[RedSawn]

I was thinking of the Enable Self-Collision bool for Unity joints, but right, wasn't thinking of physics layers. That's what I was missing.

[Tygron]

Parts colliding with each other would prevent you from making some robot designs, and sure that would be unrealistic but that is more fun. It's a fun over realism thing here. I mean if we were going for realism then we're gonna have to get rid of the current chassis system and just let you make a bunch of bars welded together and let you put sheets of metal on them. Which would be a cool, but be harder in general for people. I'd still love to see that and depending on how some components connect to things (like if we can put batteries connected to extenders and make them external) we could just go ahead and do that. The only thing that's probably missing are the plates of metal and those could be modded in eventually.

Basically once modding is possible, I feel like one of the more realistic mods are gonna just be a bunch of different sizes of extenders, slabs of metal, batteries, and other components that we'd use to make a robot out of. Just a small chassis to place the control board or whatever equivalent is in this game and then build a frame around that. The only reason we couldn't do that in RA2 is because of the 7 chain limit, and even then some of you crafty builders did some pretty clever things with extenders and almost did just that.

[09090901]

where? It's not showing up on the steam page

[Thyrus]

where? It's not showing up on the steam page

Hum?

[09090901]

where? It's not showing up on the steam page

Hum?

you posted that the next q&a was up, and then deleted it

[Thyrus]

huh?

I said the Q&A was up. I didn't say it's the next :P

But seriously I don't think there will be another Q&A. Maybe one right before RA3 hits the digital shelfs. Octopustree just released Goliath and they will most likely spend time on that while the Gabriel guys are involved in the final touches within the game.
But it's a month since we had the last Q&A. Not that I demand it but it would be nice to hear stuff again.

[RedSawn]

Basically once modding is possible, I feel like one of the more realistic mods are gonna just be a bunch of different sizes of extenders, slabs of metal, batteries, and other components that we'd use to make a robot out of. Just a small chassis to place the control board or whatever equivalent is in this game and then build a frame around that. The only reason we couldn't do that in RA2 is because of the 7 chain limit, and even then some of you crafty builders did some pretty clever things with extenders and almost did just that.

I think that would be alleviated by the new chassis building system - we only needed shells and such for replicas because we couldn't hope to get a chassis shape that looks like a robot more complicated then Tornado.

Only time I remember people making their own shells in a serious non-replica manner are DSL disc spinners.

[Tygron]

It might be, but the only thing I was thinking for that would be to make getting at components and damaging them specifically. Now that's assuming the batteries and the like are damagable or even mountable outside the chassis. I was just kinda throwing ideas out there.

The new building system looks like it's gonna be great, so i'm excited to see what can be done with it.

[J]

Parts colliding with each other would prevent you from making some robot designs-

Isn't that a moot point anyway, since we would just end up doing stuff like-


...

Unless parts would still collide in this sort of manner, in which case, it would make bot building incredibly obnoxious.