My 2 cents on RA3.

[FOTEPX]

It's clear as day that we're never going to get the source code for RA2 - that much is a given. We can edit the game within the limitations of editing the UI, robots and arenas, but we'll never get around to solving the main problems of RA2 - Havoks, Rule of 7, and other things that can't be solved with the limitations of the game.

With that being said, however, I do think there is a way to design a program that would open and display .bot files, and their data - from there on out, you could develop a system that would place these .bot files in a box or some sort of enviroment, and then from there, work on changing the enviroment to support various arenas. With this, you could also surpass the "only 4 bots" thingy.

But first, you would have to work on opening and displaying .bot files as accurately as they appear in RA2. For this, and all the work that would come afterwards with designing arenas and graphics, RA3 would have to be a group effort from the community. We'd have to get multiple designers, programmers and others to all come together, ideas in tow, with some working on the .bot files, others on arenas, so on and so forth.

I'm learning Games Design, starting in about 2 weeks, from there on out, hopefully during the course, I aim to work on some form of opening up .bot files as they appear in RA2. If I -could- pull that off, theoretically speaking, it wouldn't be too hard to place those bot files in an enviroment.

RA3 is possible, yes. But not without a joint, group effort from all the talent we have currently in the RA2 community. If we simply stick with modding RA2, we can't possibly wish to make RA3 out of it, because even with software that can analyze and edit the .exe, it's nigh-on-impossible to do anything far out, such as updating the Havok engine. If there was a way to create a program that could open .bot files as they appear in RA2, however, that would be a much easier and cleaner way of doing things.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter below as well.

[cephalopod]

This is all full of good intentions but how many people here do you think are competent at the things you want them to do and would spend a LOT of time on it? As as been said a hundred times, we don't need more topics about RA3, it's just not plausible in my opinion.

[tomgsx]

It would be an easier project to rebuild from the ground up. Working backwards, or disassembling, is just more time not spent developing. Looking at vanilla RA2, the most complicated parts to re-create are the robot builder (due to results of some awkward builds with the in-game physics and robot control) and fine tuning the weapon pivot points. Honestly, the rest is rather simple. It could probably be mimicked quite well if it we're someone's full-time job in about 3 months. Also, in my opinion, the networking needs a complete revamp and brought up to date with 2014.

[FOTEPX]

I think it could easily be done with a group effort. If myself (when I gain some programming know-how), Trov, Heretic, Dalek and Tom all teamed up on it, I think we really could make something spectacular.

Keep in mind of course that, until we get some d00d's actually being willing to put time into this, it's all conceptual.

[Natster-104]

I've taken computer science for one of my GCSE's so in 3 years time you may be getting one in fact, a student who went to my school actually went on to make the app minomonsters. (Huge ripoff of pokemon) so I hope to learn a few things from the teachers who taught him

[123savethewhales]

I am very cynical about people on GTM actually caring even if you do all the work and release RA3 all by yourself.

[Resetti's Replicas]

My most immediate thought is, you're not going to be able to keep uour old bots.  If you're going about making RA3 by somehow modifying existing files, all you'll end up with is the next Ironforge (which I've been fervently studying to see what replicas I can do with it, your work has not gone unnoticed.)

You need to start from scratch, you need to make it so that those ugly monstrosities with tiny chassies and a trillion spikes are no longer the optimal design.  Some how you need to go beyond each spike incrementally increasing damage, and all robots conking out if their armor gets enough scratches.  If you want to get the community excited over a new game, you have to actually give them a new game.

[System32]

Oh look, this thread again.

[NeighImACarrot]

My most immediate thought is, you're not going to be able to keep uour old bots.  If you're going about making RA3 by somehow modifying existing files, all you'll end up with is the next Ironforge (which I've been fervently studying to see what replicas I can do with it, your work has not gone unnoticed.)

You need to start from scratch, you need to make it so that those ugly monstrosities with tiny chassies and a trillion spikes are no longer the optimal design.  Some how you need to go beyond each spike incrementally increasing damage, and all robots conking out if their armor gets enough scratches.  If you want to get the community excited over a new game, you have to actually give them a new game.

I agree with you and to expand on the new game stuff maybe instead of just having arenas if it ever actually happened their could be things like races and challenges rather than just destroy other robot.

[Meeko011]

My main quips of RA2 at the moment are all the glitches, crashes, compatibility issues, etc. Several times I'll be working on a bot then suddenly... "RA2 has stopped responding." Would be really nice to fix these issues.

[AlexGRFan97]

What needs to happen, if you're serious about this, is all of the current splinter game projects on Robot Combat have to cease production, or at least be put on the back burner. It's a hard truth, but if we've got 20 people each working on their own Unity project then we're never going to get anywhere. We need to get all of these people to combine their expertise together and work on one bona-fide, easy to use, realistic robot combat simulator. If the creator of BotApp didn't lose his code, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion right now, but we are, so that's our best hope.

[Sic]

Loading .bot files into a Unity environment? Hmm. Not a bad idea. I'm just gonna download the game and study the save files for a while.

EDIT: Alright.. Anybody got some terminology on this?

[S.T.C.]

Loading .bot files into a Unity environment? Hmm. Not a bad idea. I'm just gonna download the game and study the save files for a while.

EDIT: Alright.. Anybody got some terminology on this?
(Image removed from quote.)

You're gonna want to use Notepad+ on bot files.

[Sic]

Loading .bot files into a Unity environment? Hmm. Not a bad idea. I'm just gonna download the game and study the save files for a while.

EDIT: Alright.. Anybody got some terminology on this?
(Image removed from quote.)

You're gonna want to use Notepad+ on bot files.

Ah yes. Makes a little more sense now. But still. All that cryptic data gotta be for something

[Trovaner]

The first batch is the preview image if the bot has one (visible in screenshot) and the second batch is the chassis texture (not visible in screenshot).

[Sic]

The first batch is the preview image if the bot has one (visible in screenshot) and the second batch is the chassis texture (not visible in screenshot).

Alright, those parts we can skip. Any idea exactly how the chassis values are to be read?
We need corner point coordinates or something like that to construct the chassis

[Trovaner]

https://gametechmods.com/forums/index.php?topic=11658.0

[FOTEPX]

The first batch is the preview image if the bot has one (visible in screenshot) and the second batch is the chassis texture (not visible in screenshot).

Alright, those parts we can skip. Any idea exactly how the chassis values are to be read?
We need corner point coordinates or something like that to construct the chassis

Somebody's actually interested in doing this? Holy Smokes.

[AlexGRFan97]

Looks like we may be getting somewhere. The first big step in this whole grand idea is to make a program that can display .bot files as they appear ingame. Then the magic can begin.

[Sic]

https://gametechmods.com/forums/index.php?topic=11658.0

Perfect. I'll experiment with it monday when I get back from my weekend trip