Over the past few years I've posted a couple one-off threads for various little writings I've made about robotics and robot combat. I've decided to pool them all here into one thread where you can check them out and disagree with my opinions and call me an Internet fag. I've been busily combing my archives of writing and other odds and ends to bring all of these articles to Twilight Foundry's new website. I'll also update this post any new stuff I write (or find in my archives) so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Here are the articles listed chronologically (by creation date) with the newest first:
(Currently, TwilightFoundry.com is a work-in-progress and is functional but incomplete. If you really wish to celebrate mediocrity then most of RFSHQ's content library has been successfully migrated over however there is still content missing. I moved over all of the robot combat content first, though, so I could share it here. )
edit: I feel I should elaborate a bit on this Twilight Foundry business before I get anyone confused. It's not "my" site; I merely contribute to it and I have a lot of content there because I'm one of the group's inaugural members and have a ton of backlogged stuff because of it. There are other writers involved with the project plus a lot of former members and guest writers represented in the archival content. Once I am through adding the archives my involvement with the website will be mostly marginalized to an upcoming side project. Roastmaster is this website's lead writer. RFSHQ technically has nothing to do with Twilight Foundry at all but we agreed that more content is always a good thing so that's why RFSHQ's archive spontaneously shows up on the site. :P
There's an exclamation point in the URL (because the sticker on the side of the robot says "THUMP!") so it looks like it's a broken link unless you manually copy and paste it. D:
I had the privilege of toying with some Lego Mindstorms about fourteen years ago or so. I was on one of the inaugural high school teams that adopted the "Mindstorms curriculum". :P My knowledge in the field of radio controlled robotics pretty much got me a "bye" into the high school team; I had been the event organizer of a robot combat event series at the middle school so the instructor who was in charge of the Mindstorms ended up "using" me as a way to add some legitimacy to the club and to hopefully attract former competitors from my event.
The issue here is that he recruited me -- someone whose experience in the field of robotics and radio-controlled hobbies consisted entirely of combat -- to stir up interest in a robotics club that was the complete opposite: autonomous task completion.
I hated it so much, however that did not stop me from remaining with the club simply to build Lego versions of combat robots. The instructor asked for "Twilight Foundry" and he got it; it was during this period of time I built the first version of the famed "Tha Thumperizer": https://wiki.gametechmods.com/index.php?title=File:THUMP!.JPG
Unfortunately, that's the best and only picture I have of the robot. The inaugural Thumperizer was not a combat robot since the "event" it was meant to compete at did not allow combat. Instead, it was programmed by a second team member to perform some gyroscopic stunts and flips while the RCX played a hip-hop music loop that a third teammate wrote. Thumperizer was put into an open class for "show bots" and wowed the meager audience with its spectacle. I'm not going to upsell it, the first/Lego Thumperizer sucked. It only served to fuel a design I eventually wanted to pursue in actual combat but was never able to build, sadly.
The rest of my Lego robots don't have pictures, I only have stories to tell about them instead. Since this thread is for pics I won't bore you with tales of high school-aged me being a complete ass.
I thought this was a great read. I was always a bit curious as to what became of Marc Thorpe because I, like many, assumed he'd have been really into BattleBots. Contracts are terrible things in most cases. Poor guy.
It's also sad to see the competitors themselves saying that by 2002 designs were becoming too streamlined. Jesus, I look back at the fifth season of BattleBots and pine for the days when robots weren't made out of a solid piece of machined aluminum and the antweight class wasn't just 48 versions of VDD.
Wow, so contestants really DO/DID get paid, I had been wondering about this for years.
When I was a competitor at the Southwestern Alliance of Robot Combat from 2003 - 2004 I met up with the guys who built Steel Reign and they had a copy of their royalty check in their little scrapbook of photos and stuff. It was really neat, and they were paid quite a bit for the brief period of time they were on television (like $5,000 if I remember right). Derek Young (Pressure Drop, Complete Control) is/was a goon on Something Awful; he mentioned royalties (and he had toys and stuff made out of his robots) but declined to give a figure publicly. People were reimbursed pretty well and if you made it onto television you pretty much got your robot paid for in most cases. :)
I actually have a TON of these (not a complete collection sadly) as well as all of the stickers they originally came with. I was intending to write something up on them in the future. They're actually quite rare online, I've only seen them crop up on eBay a few times and when they do it's usually with a larger lot of junk and people very rarely know to identify them as "Minibots".
I do not have them with me but I intended to pick them up when I visit my family next month. I can't promise you an ETA but if you would still like some images for your project I can provide them for you plus HQ scans of the stickers that the bots came with.
I used to have a lot of dupes of these toys but I traded/sold most of them a long time ago. If I still have some dupes maybe I'll do it again here on GTM. :P
I haven't really made any new robots in a very long time. The showcases I do have are just pictures of old bots that survived multiple HDD crashes and failures. I have RA2 installed on my personal computer at home but I don't really play very many PC games anymore unfortunately. Just don't have the time while I am getting caught up on backlogged work.
Nah, part of the issue is me. I get pissy sometimes that people still get angry over years-old nonsense that should be over and done with and then I end up fueling the fire because I adopt a very "wow, really?" response to it. In fact, just by mentioning my cynicism I've already guaranteed myself to run into someone that wants to settle something with me. I've been making better use of the forum's Ignore feature though so I hope I'm in the clear.
I was really floored by it, though I have to admit it's because the first video I watched was from the 6th or so series when the production value was pretty high. Hilariously, I found the videos while searching for "Robot Wars Metal Mayhem music" on YouTube (because I was restoring this old RFSHQ article about the game). Lego Robot Wars came up as a result and I consciously processed the "I have something else I should be doing right now but yes I want to waste 40 minutes of my time watching this" -- and I'm glad I did.
I kinda want to write up something about it to be honest.
edit: Wow, the V face has ": dumb )" as a shortcut?
Your BattleBots AI pack is the thing that made me discover RA2. Are you staying?
AceUplink made the BB AI Pack. I had a hand in testing it, but I was removed from the readme file because by that point I had been kicked off of staff and banned (I think). I did make an AI pack though. It was named after me and notable for other reasons. :P
I would like to stay. I usually end up clashing with some random ghost from my past every time I come here, though, which discourages me from being a member of the community. I feel like I get celebrated for things here that I have tried very -- very -- hard to move on from and it winds up causing trouble. To be honest I can't wrap my mind around the fact that it's been two years since the last time I was here. It's believable when I take a look back at the past 2 years of my life (which were literally the worst ever) but I have a hard time actually processing the gap. I feel like I was robbed out of a year and a half or so of my life recently, and I don't just mean that as something only applicable to GTM.
Look at me crying and complaining. The more things change the more things stay the same. [Insert some random pseudo-depressing wax about me feeling regret toward doing the RA2 community a disservice and not being a decent person while I was here.]
edit: It's been two years but I am still not changing my avatar or signature. I like them too much.
Anyways, now that I am home and I have a moment to think about some more of the bots I remember from BattleBots, here's more of my rambling:
Afterthought always piqued my interest, but it never seemed to really do anything. It had that killer angled disc (and it stood up well against Ziggo) but it just never delivered that "oomph" you'd expect from a spinner of that nature. It was completely anemic in its battle with Slap 'Em Silly.
Blade Runner was another robot that was way way overhyped in BattleBots and ultimately didn't live up to it. I remember quite vividly Blade Runner visibly struggling in its fight with Scrap Daddy of all things. I mean, clearly Scrap Daddy was an easier target (and broke its saw a few seconds in), but by the end of the fight Scrap Daddy was more functional than Blade Runner was and that was after repeated hits straight to the robot's drive system from the Pulverizer. Save for that fluke one-hit KO over Bad Attitude, Blade Runner never impressed me.
Mouser Mecha Catbot. **** this thing. They gave this damned robot so much airtime and it sucked in every single fight it was ever in. I am convinced this robot was only on TV as much as it was because it looked unique. See also, Overkill.
Mobious was a robot I was really rooting for because IMO the middleweight division needed a "Ziggo" of their own. Unfortunately Mobious was subject to breaking down during fights and never got as far as I imagined it could have.
I realize this is a years-old thing, but I just stumbled upon it earlier this week at work and ended up watching the whole damned playlist in my downtime:
Videos from the first couple "series" are pretty terrible, but the production quality ramps way up (by the 7th one they've got 360 intro shots for all the bots).
I think these are incredible. I was on my high school's Mindstorms team way WAY back in the day (like 12 years ago) and this is the kind of crap I'd do that eventually got me kicked off the team. Fun fact, the Intertia robot from this series is pretty much a dead ringer for the bot I built that eventually got me the boot. :P
Twister is definitely my favorite from the series because I personally know how hard it is to build an angled spinner out of Mindstorms parts. So awesome. Whiplash is a great example of a well built vertical spinner, and Reaper is pretty much solid proof why a horizontal spinner doesn't work too well with Lego.
Every once in a while that god awful faux badass voice that Armorgedden's driver did in the robot's intro segment gets stuck in my head. That was 10 years ago. Kill me.
So like, is everyone on this forum from the UK now? There's like 8 pages of Robot Wars chatter -- am I even allowed to talk about BattleBots?
I know right? I'm like the only one that's mentioned BB here :P
Also, kind of off topic are you ever going to get the old GatorAIDS articles onto your new site? I liked reading them when I got bored.
I am actually in the process of migrating tons of old content onto the new TwilightFoundry.com domain, pretty much everything attributed to me from RFSHQ is now re-posted (approximately 100 articles), with the exception of the two BattleBots Update compilation pieces. :P GatorAIDS is also set to be moved, as are archives from the Twilight Zone (old TF site) and some other projects. The "Battle Clash" pages might be of special interest to this community, though.
It's a gradual process, and right now I am the only person working on the archival. GatorAIDS is a special case because I am no longer the owner of 100% of the website. I just provide hosting for the new folks -- but I own all the old content. XD
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I've been busily combing my archives of writing and other odds and ends to bring all of these articles to Twilight Foundry's new website. I'll also update this post any new stuff I write (or find in my archives) so keep your eyes peeled for that.
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