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Messages - R01
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321
« on: August 13, 2016, 01:11:38 PM »
The DSL Reborn AI for me was one of the last things I just had fun doing. The competitive scene for RA2 is just not interesting to me anymore. I might be able to crank out new bot for a tournament (or just to make something I know will be trash just for the sake of making a bot for funsies), but because you need to have wedges to make anything good anymore. When the wedge is trash, then all that effort in making an interesting robot is pretty much gone and it drains me. The last time I actually had fun building something for a tournament was my Tricycle Takedown entry since I didn't really take it seriously but it was still fun to watch it fight.
I hate to say it myself, but I think I might be retiring from RA2 if there is nothing left that I am really looking forward to most likely by the end of the year (assuming GTM lasts that long).
Sad to hear that, for me you were always one of the great almost veteran members who is still playing. My post is apparently too big to be read, so let me quote some important parts: A lot of people who originally watched Robot Wars are adults now, so are a lot that played this game.
As an adult you sadly don't have that much time anymore, but more and more have started to still play videogames. We're (hopefully) no longer in a age where people say "you're playing videogames? That's for kids" and having a adult fanbase can be a good thing as stuff can be discussed without situations like "mods, that guy made a better bot than mine, ban him", you know, we can actually act like adults and I wouldn't mind having this forum be like that.
Of course, new games allow for new things and refresh the fanbase that way, RA2 however still allows for a lot and I think all this meta stuff is part of the reason why it got killed off. Since we're adults now we know if a bot is fair or not, and I'd love seeing a tournament where people try to focus to make all kinds of different designs of bots, with them being in the same effectiveness category.
When I wrote that part about fair bots I was thinking about your AI bots, how we would have all kinds of different designs that don't all have a wedge/half sheet glued on to them. Those bots would be like FIVES. If we got advanced AI coding(everyone seems to mostly copy existing ai nowadays) or working online multiplayer(which might be possible) we could have more intelligent fights where strategy would play a important role instead of clash of wedges, whoever gets under the other bot first wins. if retooled get's finished let's do the tourney in that mod like a week after release. There would be no meta and it would be exciting. Have multiple hosts to speed up production, dedicated AI team to get through that phase quickly, and perhaps even commentary.
Putting a tournament on one person's shoulders has been the norm but really it doesn't make sense
Then it's basically who gets the best working bot first, and I feel like spinners and wedges will still be the best working thing anyways.
322
« on: August 13, 2016, 01:04:06 PM »
You probably want to check Building Styles
323
« on: August 13, 2016, 01:00:33 PM »
I think you misunderstood me there for a bit, I wasn't exactly being like "ugh, why does this need to be official", I find it great that you did this and thought that getting more people's attention to RA was part of the reason(even if it doesn't really show the building part of RA2).
Never meant that they didn't want to join the project because of us, but if someone asked me if they would be allowed to do a replica of my bot in a game, I'd happily accept and be proud that my bot is featured in it. But hey that's their decision.
I was going to write a reply about the imports but that was before I saw your replies about it and think it's just for the best if I don't post that, since this is already clear.
324
« on: August 13, 2016, 12:20:34 PM »
Was able to predict most of the winning ones. What song was used for Deathwatch vs Blender? That last fight, see, lifters can win matches. Wait what's happening now? NO I did not want to see that.
325
« on: August 13, 2016, 11:29:04 AM »
One thing people should take note of is that the average age of the fourm is probably a lot older than it used to be in 2008-11. A lot of regulars here are in their late teens or somewhere in there 20s and have more important irl stuff to deal with like work/school.
Yeah, when I joined the community, I was around 12 or 13. Now I am in my late twenties. Yick! Just as I am moving ever further away from my youth, RA2, too, is forever aging. It isn't a hot new game. Kids don't see it on the shelf at Target and think, "Cool, that's like Battlebots!" Hell, kids don't even buy PC games from Target anymore. They go on Steam. If they stumble upon Robot Arena on there, they will instead find the disappointment that is RA3.
RA3, in many ways, both built and cursed this community. It was always a hypothetical; a representation of our hope. When the game launched, hope was tarnished. Even with the resurgence of Battlebots and Robot Wars, we will never get the RA3 we wished for. We are no longer anticipating or wishing for anything.
Without a change of focus, we'll simply be a forum dedicated to a thirteen-year-old budget title, and numbers will continue to decrease.
In a perfect world, RA3: DSL would come in after RA3's hype. But we don't have that hope anymore, it's not even hypothetical at this point.
Who has the gumption to mod it? I know I've said this before. For one reason or another (and I don't mean to sound dismissive in that sense) we no longer have the DSL dream team that wrought the original DSL from iron. Sure, we still got Click, but Click put his hail mary's into DSL2.2. It's time for Click to rest- I don't mean it like "alright you're dead click get the hell out already", but I know before releasing 2.2 he definitely made a post like "I'm putting all I have left into DSL".
Who else, then? 123 dropped the mic, dabbed and backflipped off stage with Ironforge. I don't think the RA2RW team is interested in doing a TC in the same manner. Joeblo is too backed up to lash out at the aftershock of RA3, and I don't know what Naryar or AS plans to do.
That's all of the people who've done large-scale mods/retools in the last like 4 years as far as I know. Unless someone with hunger in their eyes and a fire in their heart steps up, the last of the hype trains have left, and it left like a bad orgasm with a 4/10 hooker who doesn't know a wang from a toilet brush.
I've thought about that, while that's true it doesn't have to be a bad thing. A lot of people who originally watched Robot Wars are adults now, so are a lot that played this game. As an adult you sadly don't have that much time anymore, but more and more have started to still play videogames. We're (hopefully) no longer in a age where people say "you're playing videogames? That's for kids" and having a adult fanbase can be a good thing as stuff can be discussed without situations like "mods, that guy made a better bot than mine, ban him", you know, we can actually act like adults and I wouldn't mind having this forum be like that. Of course, new games allow for new things and refresh the fanbase that way, RA2 however still allows for a lot and I think all this meta stuff is part of the reason why it got killed off. Since we're adults now we know if a bot is fair or not, and I'd love seeing a tournament where people try to focus to make all kinds of different designs of bots, with them being in the same effectiveness category. I've seen this "update=new hype and activity" before, let me take Terraria as example. Originally in that game you would end up having many weapon choices for the endgame, as time went on however it turned more and more into a game that lived on getting new updates, it turned into this "new update out, new better weapons, all your old stuff is useless now", 1.2 somewhat fixed that by adding weapon variety, but the halloween and later xmas update did the same thing again and even in it's current state the game is like that, only getting a small few updates that flesh out the game which disappoint a big part of the community. Said part is one that requires the updates to keep on playing the game(it doesn't help that the game doesn't have much variety either), so don't be surprised that the forum gets inactive over time because no such updates happen anymore. RA2 does have a lot of variety, but with only a few designs being the meta I feel like that's what caused some people to no longer be interested in building stuff. I don't know if RA2 was really known that well back then(personally I don't think so, which makes me wonder how it got it's original popularity) but one thing I noticed is that if you do a youtube search for RA2 you will find some small LP's(which never really got to good bots, even for stock ai levels) Nerd3cubed's videos and a few videos of people playing with the DSL AI, all of which are rather old, you won't find any of the tournaments because they don't have that in the name and I doubt they appear near any Robot Wars or Battlebots video. Adding Robot Arena 2 to the tags could maybe change his, of course adding Robot Wars or Battlebots shouldn't be done as it would end up showing only those videos instead of the content that the user wants(but YT seems to have a different system for this anyways), but I feel like seeing some new stuff or different creations could interest some people in this game. We might not attract many young people with this anymore, but that doesn't mean that we can't get adults to join this forum and still have fun with the game. As for RA3, Serge has actually done some stuff for it, but I doubt that we will ever see a full mod for it. I'm personally interested in modding RA2 but think it would require a lot of time of effort for a game that's really old and not exactly stable/not allowing some things to work properly due to it's mechanics. I did think about online multiplayer before and how well non hamachi multiplayer would work but I haven't had time to test that yet.
326
« on: August 12, 2016, 06:08:10 PM »
Carbide flipping itself hitting the sphere is because it gets forced downwards and the blade then hits the ground.
Also I made sure that both robot's weights add up to 10 units of mass (100 doesn't work well), and both the sphere and cube are also 10 mass.
Why does 100 not work? Also guess the objects weren't changed for this?
327
« on: August 12, 2016, 06:05:26 PM »
i want to see a match where 2 bots with drones get disabled at the same time and the drones have to fight it out.
Think it goes to the judges then(based on what happened before that) because drones count as clusterbot and as soon as more than 50% is disabled that bot is out. But having both drones fight would be fun.
328
« on: August 12, 2016, 05:29:29 PM »
The biggest problem with drones is that in order to have them fly, they need to be light enough to be lifted off the ground. Flamethrowers are probably the only thing that a drone can use "properly" (in massive quotes) cause it's light enough to carry and can attack from above the ground. Weapons like maces might not work so well as you need the weight and force to leave a huge impact. Unfortunately with the nature of flying objects like drones, they're highly likely to flop airborne and drop to the ground, rendering them useless. They're really only good for the judges for scoring active weapon points which has been here or there overall.
In other words, drones are useless.
Fire can be useful if they can keep it over a opponent for a while, Complete Control has shown that. It might not do any fancy outside damage(much like Mr Psycho's hammer) but can do stuff to the insides, that heat doesn't just disappear after all. However there are just rare situations where you can hover over the opponent like that(Hypershock having Poison Arrow pushed against the wall would've been one like that, but they had the rake instead, so putting down a magnetic barrier(what black ice did) or a grabber(chrome fly had it on their drone) might be the better choice.
329
« on: August 12, 2016, 04:22:58 PM »
Have you changed the physics? Carbide flips itself over when hitting the sphere and bounces a bit around after that(even if the blade doesn't touch the ground), nice to see original sin and it's effective wedge design. Now I want to see Sewer Snake.
330
« on: August 12, 2016, 03:54:20 PM »
I didn't mean that everyone knows this but how it was known that components could be replaced. It really makes me wonder why noone got this idea sooner :P
Good work.
331
« on: August 12, 2016, 03:51:27 PM »
oh we wanna play the million questions game huh? okay.
1. other mods have inferior quality replicas. rather they weren't mixed with rwra2. no secret.
2. we tried to get everything we could but had to get permission from every single builder who has a bot featured in the game wow i've typed this at least 600 times over the last year. we contacted a LOT of people. some of them were good, some of them didn't want to be involved, some we couldn't contact at all. that's life.
3. idk what's up with licensing but that's one of many reasons we stopped.
4. no idea we used the game rips.
5. only 2 classic house bots oh no there's like over 150 bots dude
6. we tried lots of things for sewer snake. the fact it works like the original at all is a miracle.
k?
Nah I wasn't going for this: But was more curious on a few things: 1. I can understand, but in the end people will do whatever they want, so let them just do that. 2. Wonder why some wouldn't want their robot featured or why this needed to be official. Of course it's better having built stuff with people's permission but I don't think a roboteer would go out of their way to make sure that your virtual recreation of a bot for a free game out of all things, gets taken down. 4. Thought you would be using the game rips. 5. Yeah, but who wouldn't want to take on the classic house robots?  6. I can tell that it was a pain to get that lifter setup like that(I still don't fully understand how it works but then again, haven't messed with the bot file), axle mount would make it so that you wouldn't need to move it down but would most likely clip the chassis instead unless invisible extenders started to be added, your way is probably still better.
332
« on: August 12, 2016, 03:44:47 PM »
I have returned, hopefully for more than six months too! Haha. Let’s see…
Was thinking about mentioning that in my post. I'm sure there are members here who will be here for a long time The game itself is the biggest problem I think, but the problems the game faces I think robot fighting in general suffers with as well. The majority of “good” bots in both real life and in the game are spinners, or you get some crazy niche design that really shines in real life that can’t be replicated in the game, like Razor – This issue comes down to the game not being deep enough. Perhaps an expansion of the game is needed. More parts, more possibilities. I know we have the mods, but like you say, there are still standout designs in every version that everyone can just slap together – maybe a big stock expansion pack would go a ways to help? Flails, CO2 flippers, the flamethrower, crushing arms, more burst motors, I don’t know, maybe trying to migrate everyone over to DSL would be a start instead?
True, not that much is possible. I've thought about how one would build a robot combat game, and some features would just be very complex and time consuming to add. RA2 was good for it's time(it did lack some stuff back then, but most was luckily addable via mods) but for a game from today's time it sometimes seems to lack features, like having actual chassis armor instead of a simple hp bar that finishes off your robot once it reaches zero. Some things like crushers sadly won't work well, I'm thinking about trying something out with the 180 degree beta motor, but even then it would be hard to get grip on an enemy and hold it(this is the biggest problem of crushers/clamps), dunno if tyres will help with that. Another big problem is that this game is a perfect representation of the battlebots judges, they don't care if you flipped and rammed that bot, if you didn't do damage you don't win. Via all kinds of glitches we've been able to build very damaging bots, defense on the other hand hasn't really got anything(in fact even less since DSA is the only choice). The game is just so focused on damage which is why we see so many SNS, Spinners or Popups. I personally think that people should be encouraged to try out new designs, you mentioned a stock pack(which I was originally thinking about as well) but the closest thing we have to that is DSL, which might be worth checking out. Sadly Frenzy Hammers as well as Mechavore discs are currently completely unbalanced. Doing Co2 flippers isn't really possible, I would've loved to give burst motors a co2 usage instead of electrical, so the closest you would probably have is what I did with my Atomizer series, using burst pistons on burst motors. In terms of activity, users need a buzz like you say. When a new game comes out, everyone tries everything and tests it out. This is an old game now, everything has been discovered, all the weapons have been tested, the glitches have been mastered. DSL 2.2 should have had more of an impact admittedly, but what can you do?
The original DSL as well as Ironforge were two completely new games while 2.2 was more of a balance patch with only a few small new components, so it didn't interest people as much, also the community wasn't as big as it used to be when it got released. I've heard that DSL turned a bit into what stock is, having 3 main types of bots that were just the best and I have a feeling that this resulted in many builders not being interested anymore. I wonder if limiting the weapons of spinners or certain other stuff would help, then again I wouldn't exactly want to limit creativity either. The key is to promote interest in the game, get a reason for people to play. A forum wide tournament is certainly a start, get people talking, get members seeded (custom titles based on their seeding?), get peoples reps up for exceeding expectations, get the wiki updated with new and old member profiles that are now active, where’s my wiki page? Badger? R01? Boto? Wen needs a whole site dedicated to him for Christ’s sake. Remember the BBEANS parts you would win like pre-stacked supervolts? Incentives like that should be brought back as well.
Heh, I was thinking about that, however looking at the existing members, those are old veterans, sometimes legends, and I wouldn't feel right to have a page on there. As for the prizes, I've seen them, and while they're interesting in one way, they are mostly there to remove annoying stuff(which raises the question why there isn't a mod for that anyways?) and I feel like this would cause builders to build super efficient main meta stuff again. Will post more in yugitom's part of the reply. All of this requires dedication from a group of reliable admins that will obviously be sacrificing a great deal of their time to make all this happen. It’s a lot to expect from someone, but keeping a game like this alive takes work! And I think it’s worth it… Definitely my favourite robot combat game across any format.
Quite a lot you mentioned is something that members need to do and not admins :P Of course there's still a bit of admin work requred, but the forum can be perfect, if the members just don't want to interact then it will stay quiet. I was trying to quietly run around and organise what I'm about to divulge but I guess that now is the best time as any to start working with the community on this one.
Not too long ago, I started talks with the admins and mods about a GTM tournament. This would be an official tournament in which members would receive prizes for doing well. Not only that but it would also debut a tournament ranking system. I will probably detail both of these concepts in more depth in a later post when I have the time and a keyboard.
I hate to think that, due to the state of entrant apathy at the moment, that the stature of the tournament alone wouldn't revitalise interest in most builders. So, I'd like to call to action now, and possibly at a later date in its own thread, all builders in the RA2 community to get stuck back into building and really make it clear what you expect from this official tournament and what it would take for you to join, even if it's just telling me your favourite metagame, it would be really appreciated. In return, I will promise that I will do everything I can to make sure the project will go smoothly.
The RA2 league (Kill's, not GK's) hasn't been completely abandoned but Kill has expressed his interest in helping me with this project over the league. Btw, I was on the hosting team for that but Kill was always the host.
Really hope I can help the state of the forum with the influence I have.
I'm not exactly too happy with having a tournament ranking system like that, I feel like it would only encourage more to be successful and as such lead back to the classic sns, spinner or popup designs, while I'd rather encourge more free building with completely different designs. Not too sure about the prizes either, I was thinking about doing some for my tournament idea but am not too happy about it, would much rather have stuff available to everyone. If you look at the BBEANS one, the batteries are basically ones that remove annoyance and technically would fit better in a tournament mod(where such stuff would already be added to make building easier) than being something like that. Even with just cosmetic/reskin items, are we really going to turn this into a mobile free to play where people will be like "it's just reskins"? It goes to the above point, if people really want those things they will go for the most effective designs, and honestly I think it kills off activity to see the same HS design winning every time. Nice to see that the forum-wide tourney idea isn't completely stagnant. I personally think Ironforge would work pretty well as a place to start (since it's so balanced), or DSL 2.2 (since you'll probably get more people to enter). If you need tourney prizes, just hit me up in my PMs or on the ole discord.
Bringing back playground might be something to consider. It was certainly one part of the forum where you (and a lot of other members) were able to have fun. It just kind of disappeared one day for no real reason other than Trov not liking it.
Good luck trying to build something in ironforge that doesn't flip itself over and ends up crawling up the wall while being upside down. I originally loved the mod when I got into it, it seemed like a better stock and gave you a lot of freedom with the smaller components. However the more I got into it, I started missing some things like having triangle armor pannels from DSL, caster wheels and all that stuff and building a robot that's actually stable turned out to be an impossible task. Isn't chatterbox supposed to be the playground replacement?
333
« on: August 12, 2016, 03:40:40 PM »
im just trying to find out a way that an entanglement weapon would be allowed
Sadly that would most likely rip the drone down into the blade. Also remember that bot that couldn't qualify because it was too dangerous for the arena? The producers questioned a lot if the weapon could be used as an entanglement device.
334
« on: August 12, 2016, 10:38:24 AM »
Minus the fact that you can change the component location in the .bot file I thought this was all already known?
335
« on: August 12, 2016, 10:03:04 AM »
Decided on a whim to transfer some robots from the 2013 AI pack to the RWRA2 pack.
I can only assume this is some form of trolling by the dev team.
Well played.
Thank you. Was surprised nobody pointed this out before now :)
Seem as though we can't deter people from doing stuff we didn't want them to do, I figured I'd make it awkward ;p
So why was this exactly done :P I didn't know about a 2013 pack and was a bit surprised to see some old machines not in the pack(guess it has to do with licensing?). By the way, do you know what's up with the licensing now and if Robots Live/Roaming Robots/Robot Wars still has the original music tracks? Would love to have the original ones(I know there's some game rips but they don't have everything and every version). I tried out the pack some time ago, it's very well done and I enjoy it(sadly only 2 classic house robots?), wonder if it wouldn't have been possible to use a limited hinge for Sewer Snake's top armor and to add something to help with the ground clearance(I tried to fight shunt but couldn't get under him while other bots can).
336
« on: August 12, 2016, 09:26:35 AM »
The arena floor thing is because both arenas have floors with the same skin name, so the game loads one then uses it until you close the game. In this case you must've played in the Lumazone before you went into the test lab. I've usually had it occur the opposite way around.
I see, thought that was the case. Had it happen in a different game with different file formats as well.(also DSL seems to use quite a lot of stock texture names for redone stuff such as the trophies) Hope 2.3 fixes it.
337
« on: August 12, 2016, 09:23:31 AM »
I don't even try anymore lol it has steel 10 and everything.
(Image removed from quote.)
I think the Perm is a bit too long, make that shorter, maybe pick the armored version and upgrade the drive(think TWM's could fit well into that design?). Ant batteries aren't the best unless you're using 2.1, better to upgrade to the long batteries or battlepacks. Otherwise looks good, might want to go a bit irl style and add the supports for the disc.
338
« on: August 12, 2016, 06:05:55 AM »
Guys, the battery and control board are in that gap or I'm sure he would have.
Right, that's why he said he removed the battery(guess that was snapper loaded in there?) CB is probably on top of the Snapper 2.
339
« on: August 12, 2016, 06:01:38 AM »
Decided on a whim to transfer some robots from the 2013 AI pack to the RWRA2 pack.
I can only assume this is some form of trolling by the dev team.
Well played.
 The side pannels, as well as the wings and tail are bananas, all the same? If that's the case then I guess that object is there in case one isn't found? Edit: Turns out those are actually Razer parts.
340
« on: August 12, 2016, 05:47:52 AM »
I do think that GTM has been getting a bit more active in the recent few months. To address some points: - I've noticed that there's still a lot of "he's a cool guy" kind of reputation upvotes(some upvotes also seem to be invisible?) and giving everyone the power to use it probably wouldn't be good. Having something between normal and advanced user would most likely help in this case. Funny enough, the one rep I got seems to be for a legit reason since I found out how to fix the F2 cam. Personally I don't care too much about rep but do find it nice to get some. It can possibly show that this member is just a cool guy or friendly user.
- I've been actually thinking about doing some wiki stuff, like adding my thoughts to some of the bots since I disagree with what the wiki writes there, or to add pages of other bots that took part in recent tournaments, however for one I think that this has all been established by veterans, so I would be that one new user that completely causes chaos or just adds pages of bots that aren't needed on the wiki(from what I've seen, only the big Starcore AI pack as well as only BBEANS and a few other big tournaments have pages)
- I wouldn't mind keeping those links there, sure the websites don't have your modern simple metro look(but honestly f that, it doesn't need to be modern style to look good) but they still work for what they're supposed to do.
- Don't really see anything negative in them keeping their admin titles, if it blocks new admins then simply increase the number
- RA3 is basically dead, but putting everything into one section wouldn't really work because showcases and all would be mixed, so I guess it has to be kept that way, either that or it's one section with sub sections similar to the RA2 showcase, that would work in that case.
- Hasn't gamedevelopent recently had posts with that robot combat test? While I don't see stuff ever reaching the final game state there, it can still be a nice section and give inspiration to other people, we might see something completed there some day, so keep it.
- I guess, haven't really seen anything of this section, but I thought it would be more serious than that.
- Drama isn't exactly needed. As for the forum reaction, RA2 is sadly a old game and after a while you've seen most of it. DSL3 was something completely new while 2.2 was a update. However I'd rather have a good small community than a big bad one.
- Yes that's true and it sadly limits the creativity you can do, however on the other hand people should enter bots even if they aren't the most effective things. With the recent tournaments which are easier than the older ones, you can try other stuff out, take my VS as an example, yet it still got far to 5th and 6th place. I've been thinking about a tournament which would encourage completely different build styles or if a weapon limit on popups and HS would change stuff.
@RTC True. I think if RA2 was just a bit more stable or had modding tools easier accessable then this thing would still be going on, I do have a idea about online multiplayer(but guess it will be bad anyways). If a new game happens it would be nice if most of the stuff was plain text in the files, because editing a AI .py or quickly repositioning the arena hazards is much easier than having to repack files a thousand times.
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