Robot Arena 3

[Badger]

It's using the Unity engine

Did some poking. I did not know much about unity. I assumed  it was like unreal where  you use different  physics engine extensions, but unity has its own physics engine

Unity uses PhysX and as far as I know it isn't difficult to switch to other physics systems and continue to use Unity.

For example, the Bullet Physics System, which is thought to be better by many can be easily implemented

Easy is relative. We're talking about no component collision box chassis devs here.

[Tygron]

Alright i'll probably end up buying the game again this weekend. I was waiting to see what they would say.

[t35t3d]

It's using the Unity engine

Did some poking. I did not know much about unity. I assumed  it was like unreal where  you use different  physics engine extensions, but unity has its own physics engine

Unity uses PhysX and as far as I know it isn't difficult to switch to other physics systems and continue to use Unity.
For example, the Bullet Physics System, which is thought to be better by many can be easily implemented

Indeed, Bullet Physics can be easily implemented. There is existing code examples.

However there is no reason to switch from PhysX.
What I've seen from streams it seems that there is no real problem with PhysX, but there is problem with game – it barely uses PhysX... wheels seem to be fake, chassis - single convex mesh, forces of weapons do not seem to be important for damage calculation.


I'd like to analyze possibility of modding RA3, however I do not own it. Could anyone send me single .dll file via PM from RA3 called: "Assembly-CSharp.dll" (should be somewhere in C:/program files/steam/steamapps/common/Robot Arena 3/RobotArena_Data/managed/Assembly-CSharp.dll)

Edit:  I've got file now. I'll report my findings later!

[RFS]

I think it's fantastic what you are looking to do, t35t3d, but I think I speak for quite a few people when I say we're going to feel pretty upset if we find out that one guy who isn't even on RA3's payroll can fix their game. That'll either speak incredibly highly of your skills as a programmer/engineer, or very poorly of RA3's dev team's skills. Or both, I don't know.

That said, I'm still eager to see if a modding/patching community develops around this game.

[RedSawn]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/249201544490293273

Update is out. 21.0mb. Makes sense as the changes revolve around fixes rather then new content.

First checks (will be updated):
Snapping can be enabled for everything. Chassis grid snap has been reduced to each minor gridline (0.04) and without snapping is as you'd expect. Component snapping works with the buttons - components rotate 22.5 degrees when using the rotation buttons. My test component, a Supervolt still spawns through the chassis floor (I guess it's more a fault with the mesh coordinates now as I can move it halfway through the table before it stops, contrary to what they say. That'll be difficult to put right since changing everything will misalign every bot). Should be less of an issue now though that we have better control over positioning. Disabling component snapping uses the old system.

They removed the useless in-game Options menu button. There's still that botlab skin bug where it takes the skin of another robot you've edited and plasters it over your other bots until you re-edit the skin of that bot.

Weapons seem to be doing a lot more damage except for saws, which seem to do half as much (My Hypnodisc replica did 50 damage on first contact with a string of 1s, now it's 25 with a string of 1s). Bots still freeze in place when destroyed. After each Exhibition match the AI bots are unloaded (judging by their removal from the opponent selection screen), which seems to solve the botlab camera issues.

[LiNcK]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/249201544490293273

Update is out. 21.0mb. Makes sense as the changes revolve around fixes rather then new content.

It seems a little jarring that they didn't fix the biggest issues. Nonetheless, looking forward to hearing from people whether the game is playable now or not.

[Avalanche]

I'm personally just impressed in a list of 14 fixes they left out number 7. Fills me with hope for RA3 being fixed, in the same way that the idea of Donald Trump being shot in the head would be sad.

[Badnik96]

Good to see they're delivering on their promises. I was worried for a bit that they would take their money and run.

[RedSawn]

It seems a little jarring that they didn't fix the biggest issues. Nonetheless, looking forward to hearing from people whether the game is playable now or not.

They seem to have fixed the issue with leaked inputs from the AI bots outside of matches, so the camera issues in the botlab are no more. That's pretty major. Not physics major, but still.

[kill343gs]

Proves that they are working, and fixing some bits and pieces. It's a start.

[FOTEPX]

Proves that they are working, and fixing some bits and pieces. It's a start.

Give it half a year, and maybe it'll be playable!

Ayoooooooo

[TDS]

Edit:  I've got file now. I'll report my findings later!

Thanks for looking into it, TBH I haven't really looked into this sort of thing since the ra2 beta, but I have a feeling there is not an insignificant amount of cut and pasted code, and the invisible spring constraints on all moving parts to try and simulate things are just setup way, way wrong (and are a stupid idea in this day and age anyway)

[Naryar]

seen the updates, bot lab seems improved a bit.

dunno if you can build in it easily though. so maybe not buying the game back yet.

[RedSawn]

Adding components is a LOT less fiddly.

Seems I was wrong about the botlab camera fix - fought The Rail Man, won once, lost once but it keeps happening. Does the thing with the menus too.

[t35t3d]

I think it's fantastic what you are looking to do, t35t3d, but I think I speak for quite a few people when I say we're going to feel pretty upset if we find out that one guy who isn't even on RA3's payroll can fix their game. That'll either speak incredibly highly of your skills as a programmer/engineer, or very poorly of RA3's dev team's skills. Or both, I don't know.

That said, I'm still eager to see if a modding/patching community develops around this game.

I was able to decompile the main file (Before the first update).
Here is source C# file list: http://oi65.tinypic.com/149weg.jpg
And some statistics: lines of code written by developers 42.137 (322 source files). BTW I have excluded all unity plugins/examples from these numbers.
These numbers might say nothing. So, for example The Forest(latest version, [Unity]) game has 151.988 lines of code (1529 files). Yet Another Zombie Defense(old version, [Not Unity]) – 16.500 lines of code in 125 files.
AutoCraft (very old version, [Unity]) 28.712 lines of code in 328 files.
Developers have used lots of unity store plugins (That's not bad nor good). However there are many code files from tutorial examples in the source code. This indicates inexperience with Unity and rush to make game as fast as possible.

Modding possibilities might be endless. Well I wasn't able to recompile the code at the moment, but others might succeed in doing that. People have completed such feats with other Unity games: 7DTD, KSP... However game is not worth modding/fixing at the current state. I hope developers will take their time and finish the game.

I do not understand why they rushed this game, they knew they are releasing not nearly finished game... but wanted to release it as finished game... and also this network plugin? Game seems to be using default unity networking and steamworks framework for networking and no additional plugins (I might be wrong). I hope this instant 2 week early access thing wasn't intentional.

Also I do not believe that game developer is still same team. Some key people must have changed.

The best thing about Robot Arena 3 is that it is now being fixed by developers

[TDS]

I do not understand why they rushed this game, they knew they are releasing not nearly finished game... but wanted to release it as finished game... and also this network plugin? Game seems to be using default unity networking and steamworks framework for networking and no additional plugins (I might be wrong). I hope this instant 2 week early access thing wasn't intentional.

I dont understand how updating a 3rd party plugin could cause a game delay, its easy, you just "dont update it" for now, assuming it worked to begin with.

Breaking it down

42,000 lines of code, 8 people, 3 months @ 5 days a week 58.3 lines of code per day, or 7.29 per hour
working hard(?)

[t35t3d]

I do not understand why they rushed this game, they knew they are releasing not nearly finished game... but wanted to release it as finished game... and also this network plugin? Game seems to be using default unity networking and steamworks framework for networking and no additional plugins (I might be wrong). I hope this instant 2 week early access thing wasn't intentional.

I dont understand how updating a 3rd party plugin could cause a game delay, its easy, you just "dont update it" for now, assuming it worked to begin with.
Breaking it down
42,000 lines of code, 8 people, 3 months @ 5 days a week 58.3 lines of code per day, or 7.29 per hour
working hard(?)

I think it is 1-2 coder project. Other 6-7 worked on other things...

I used to develop flash games (programming, level desing and other stuff except art design and sound/music). My most complex project was 30k lines of code flash game. Some code was used from my previous game and there were comment stuff. So lets say I've written 20k lines of code, designed lots of complex levels, tested game again and again.. and did other complex stuff. Whole project took me 500hours. So it was like 40lines of code per hour  I think If I was programmer only then it would have been more like 100-200 lines of code per hour. People might say that flash is easy... but nah... its like Unity.

[RedSawn]

If they had as much trouble as me trying to get their robot gameobject hierarchy to cooperate with PhysX and get any sort of bot working, let alone with accurate physics, I can't really blame them for a low LPH...

(Been trying myself with a box chassis, motors with hingemotor axles and wheels, joints are never stiff enough even with the solver at 100, using rotational locking, anything)

[t35t3d]

(Been trying myself with a box chassis, motors with hingemotor axles and wheels, joints are never stiff enough even with the solver at 100, using rotational locking, anything)

I agree, working with physics is hard and consumes lots of hours to make simple things. They never work as you'd like and there are frustrating amount of settings that are very important.
Anyway here is what I was able achieve with Unity PhysX:

 
Maximum is about 22 wheels (hingejoint for rotation & configurable joint for spring). Adding more than 22~24 wheels break physics.

[Serge]

Anyway here is what I was able achieve with Unity PhysX:

 
Maximum is about 22 wheels (hingejoint for rotation & configurable joint for spring). Adding more than 22~24 wheels break physics.

Do these wheels work when upside-down? Can you disable suspension? Can you just create one wheel, not pairs? I vaguely remember these being a problem that the developers outlined with the default wheel physics model.

As a reminder - the wheels in RA2 were also... weird. Instead of using the stock Havok hkVehicle physics model (geared towards cars and racing games), the devs threw together a model where wheels had a larger-than-collision friction mesh that would short circuit force creation based on angular speed of the motor the wheel was attached to, when intersecting with another rigid body. It didn't use the seemingly logical path of two rigid bodies creating friction against each other.