new to online play

[cam7x]

i purchased robot arena 2 several years back and havent downloaded any of the new mods or updates that i know of and i have 3 friends that have downloaded the version you host on your forum. i have hosted a few matches with hamachi and it works ok but ive noticed a few problems. everyonce in a while my bot will take off on its on or glitch to other parts of the arena. is that normal? and is hamachi the best way to host matches and connect to eachother?

also.. i was building a bot last night and i had a large basic square. with four sliding actuators connected to each other on one side of the bot, when i tried to mirror that to the opposite side i got 2 actuators placed , as soon as i put number 3 on  the whole right side of my bot disappeared in all screens, and the testing arena went black

[Resetti's Replicas]

Unfortunately there are some issues with the physics engine that cause the game to glitch out when you do certain things. Motors breaking off is the most common cause, so you should only attach motors to the baseplate, unless absolutely necessary to do otherwise.  Motor-to-motor connections as you probably guessed, are even more unstable.

[Trovaner]

i purchased robot arena 2 several years back and havent downloaded any of the new mods or updates that i know of and i have 3 friends that have downloaded the version you host on your forum. i have hosted a few matches with hamachi and it works ok but ive noticed a few problems. everyonce in a while my bot will take off on its on or glitch to other parts of the arena. is that normal? and is hamachi the best way to host matches and connect to eachother?

Multiplayer can be a little laggy especially when you aren't the host. However, what you are describing sounds more like a havok explosion.

Hamachi and/or GameRanger are currently the best options for multiplayer.

also.. i was building a bot last night and i had a large basic square. with four sliding actuators connected to each other on one side of the bot, when i tried to mirror that to the opposite side i got 2 actuators placed , as soon as i put number 3 on  the whole right side of my bot disappeared in all screens, and the testing arena went black

Pistons are the most temperamental components in RA2. Attaching pistons inline like that will often cause the bot to launch itself out of the arena at high speeds. If this happens, you can detach the most recent component by hitting the pause button before switching in and out of the the Practice Arena.

[cam7x]

are there certain arenas to download for the best online play ? i tried online arena but didnt have any luck with it. it only let us battle with 2 players

[MassimoV]

The online arena is designed to minimize any lag in online play, that's why it's so minimal. I think the Empty Arena in Clickbeetle's Hammer of Justice pack might work well for online play but I'm not 100 percent sure. Here's the dl link anyways.
http://beetlebros.gametechmods.com/files/HoJ.zip

[Trovaner]

Made this between some of my other mods...

The walls are low enough that spinners don't get disrupted when they get too close and they are raised high enough that wedged bots don't get stuck (or flip themselves out of the arena by hitting a wall).

It gets 31% more FPS than the Low Lag Arena, 32% more FPS than the Low Lag 2 Arena, and 30% more FPS than the Infinity Arena. The baseline was an average of 651 FPS when using Dense2 in both slots.

If higher FPS is what you are looking for, the Online Arena is currently the best. According to my quoted post, the second best is the Infinity Arena followed by the Low Lag Arena followed by the Low Lag 2 Arena. You'll probably still experiences lag in Multiplayer but that will most likely be caused by the bots since they are all marked as movable (meaning more information must be sent across the internet in order to sync them).