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Messages - cjbruce
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921
« on: September 27, 2017, 06:01:37 PM »
Seems like it'd be a good loading bar as well. Though I think having the laser cut out the name would be cooler, though I understand that's more complicated
Oh... great idea! I like it! This one was done in After Effects, but I'm thinking it might be cool to recreate it in Unity to give in-game control of the animation. The straight path of the laser does seem a natural fit for a loading bar.
922
« on: September 27, 2017, 02:55:48 PM »
My apologies for the length of time between updates. We have been working on all sorts of odds and ends. @tashic is busy with the BotLab, @tomgsx is working on combat, and we might be bringing a new team member on board. Hopefully the next update will come soon, but for now, here is an animated version of the logo: 
923
« on: September 07, 2017, 03:45:51 PM »
The other one looked a million times better, but okay.
I appreciate the honesty! What was it you liked about the first logo that is missing from the new one?
New one is just some text on a black background. The other one had some character to it. It actually looked like a logo rather than something kinda generic.
Pretty much this. The other one could be an icon for the game as well as the logo so it's got a better branding rather than just some text that you don't instantly see is textured, rather than just plain grey.
Fair enough. My eye tends toward minimalism, but the broader community's opinion is the one that counts. Thanks again for the feedback, and I'll keep working on it.
924
« on: September 07, 2017, 03:10:47 PM »
The other one looked a million times better, but okay.
I appreciate the honesty! What was it you liked about the first logo that is missing from the new one?
925
« on: September 07, 2017, 02:50:26 PM »
New logo. This version is cleaner: 
926
« on: September 06, 2017, 02:31:52 PM »
Thanks for the update, the logo looks good. Glad to hear that you're tackling this in a modular manner
Can you comment on if you're taking moddability into account during development? One of this things that has kept RA2 relevant for so long is how much of the game can be modified without touching the actual source code, or in other words how little of the game is hardcoded.
We are hoping to make a system that is inherently flexible enough that modding isn't really necessary. Here are a few of the things we are exploring: Creating Custom Meshes@tashic is attempting to make a mesh builder that allows you to "cut out parts" on a virtual bandsaw and weld them together to make whatever you want. In theory it should be doable, but there are lots of gotchas along the way that could cause a lot of performance problems if we aren't careful. We haven't gotten to custom texturing yet, and frankly, we still have a lot to learn about texturing and decals in Unity. User-Built AI CodeMy other goal is to study @starcore's AI work to see if we can pull out the basic logic and expose it to the user in a much more flexible way. The vision is to have a system where players could program their robot AI, much in the same way our high school students do with their robotics kits (VEX and Lego Minstorms). To be honest, we haven't started on this yet, and I envision that it will take a significant amount of work to do. I have the basics of a system in mind for AI steering and attacking, and a conceptual framework for handling AI task priority (do I attack? run away? help my teammate? etc.), but I still have a lot more basic research to do before this begins to come together. If we can't get this working, then maybe we can make the AI modding experience similar enough to RA2 + DSL that existing players will know what to do. Whatever we can't build in, we are hoping to expose to the modding community, though it is almost as difficult to do this well as it is to build it right into the game. First things first though -- we are getting close to an updated version of @tashic's original version. I was hoping to test it with my robotics students sometime in the next two weeks, then publish it here for everyone else to try.
927
« on: September 06, 2017, 01:21:45 PM »
Howdy all, We just wanted to let you know that work is continuing. @tomgsx is in the process of building out the menu system and combat dynamics. @tashic has taken on the significant project of creating the BotLab. He has some pretty cool ideas about new ways to build robots from smaller pieces. We don't know what is going to work and be robust enough to ship yet, but hopefully some of them work well. Meanwhile, we have a website and the beginnings of a logo: http://robot-rumble.com The T-square and the welding torch were chosen to represent an emphasis on building. We are hoping to make a great robot building experience, where players can test their creations in combat, rather than focusing only on the combat.
928
« on: August 27, 2017, 03:42:42 PM »
Good news!
We are thrilled to announce that we have put together the core team for "Robot Rumble 2.0". tashic, tomgsx, and I will be working together on the project, and have set a launch date target of mid-2019. Starcore has graciously offered his guidance in the development of AI, and we are hoping to make this a big part of the game at launch.
Thank you for all of your kind words of support, and we hope to make this game something that we can all be proud of and enjoy for years to come.
-The Robot Rumble 2.0 Core Development Team
929
« on: August 19, 2017, 03:26:29 PM »
You can conceptualise and post cool ideas all day, but if you can't implement those ideas into a game it's all for nothing.
You are correct about this, of course. I hadn't mentioned yet that @tashic and I are working together. He already has a working base of a game. The physics need a lot of tweaking. We were hoping to bring @jules in, but he won't be available for this project. So far the team is just @tashic and me. We are still working on bringing in a lead Unity developer, and are hesitant to go too far into the official Unity project if there is a chance that we will bring someone on who will want to work with their own programming paradigm/style. This is why we are doing things like artwork and 2D mockups at this point. So far we have the following scope: COMPLETE OR NEARLY COMPLETE -3 different drivable robots (functional, but the physics needs a lot of tweaking -- see @tashic's thread) -2 different arenas (1 complete, 1 more on the way) -Working robot AI in a different game engine HIGH CONFIDENCE ITEMS -A complete game UI for selecting robots and playing single player or local multiplayer with game controllers / AirConsole. -iOS and Android ports of the single-player game. I have moonlit as an iOS developer for the past 5 years, and have launched an 1100-hour project for iOS. I am confident in my ability to modify this game for iOS. -A build system based entirely on predefined and pretextured models: pick a chassis, place motors, place wheels, place weapons, place sensors for AI MEDIUM CONFIDENCE ITEMS -A build system that allows a player to create their own chassis mesh, as exists in RA2/RA3. I have most of the principles figured out, and know where to borrow most of the code. -A bot-sharing server and database, where players can share their designs and download new ones. I have experience building several server-based apps, and know exactly how I would do this. LOW CONFIDENCE ITEMS -A build system that allows players to texture their chassis. I know this is doable in principle, but I haven't started investigating it yet. EXTREMELY LOW CONFIDENCE ITEMS -Online multiplayer: Unity has a pre-made signaling server, with Photon as another option. The hardest part of this is client side, and I have enough trouble wrapping my head around realtime multiplayer with something relatively simple like a top-down shooter. I don't think I could deliver a good player experience with this game.
930
« on: August 19, 2017, 11:12:32 AM »
I have been playing around with Rumble Bots on an iphone. It is well done, but it appears to be a 3D game with 2D physics. It is a smart choice, because that makes everything faster and online multiplayer much easier.
The key issue I have with online multiplayer is dealing with flipper bots and latency. If I were fighting against a flipper bot and a couple of packets were lost or delayed, I wouldn't know, and would charge at my opponent who would apparently be standing still. Meanwhile, on his screen, he might see me standing still and take advantage of the situation. I think I have just scored a good hit, then suddenly, BOOM! I am mysteriously on my back, having lost the match. Rage would ensue, because from my point of view I should have just scored big.
931
« on: August 18, 2017, 04:28:15 PM »
Robot Rumble is a game that a group of students and I released back in February for Airconsole ( www.airconsole.com). RR was a student project, and for RR2.0 I am looking to release a much more polished product.
932
« on: August 18, 2017, 03:58:43 PM »
But there is a multiplayer game worse than RA3 worse than RA2, rumble bots,
Thanks for the suggestion to check out Rumble Bots! We looked at it last year but we never tried online multiplayer. Point and click targeting isn't too bad. The code for "go to this spot" is identical to the code for "go to this target", which already exists in Robot Rumble. In Unity, I believe this means just adding a raycast from the mouse to the arena floor to find the target location. I have also done A* pathfinding before to navigate around obstacles, but doesn't Unity have this capability built in with the NavMesh system? I downloaded DSL, and still need to play around with it to get the hang of how the whole thing works. My goal is to create something simple and intuitive for beginners, but robust enough to handle a functionally infinite variety of AI designs. This might be beyond my ability, but I will start working on a 2D version of the robot builder in the next few weeks to see how it goes.
933
« on: August 18, 2017, 03:17:51 PM »
Another option I toyed with back in February was to create a point-and-click control scheme. Robots would fight with AI, but you would tell them where to go and who to attack.
This might be the worst of all worlds though: it would lack the immediacy of direct controls, would still suffer from syncing issues as robots automagically lerp() to new positions and rotations, and require someone else to be online to battle.
934
« on: August 18, 2017, 03:11:04 PM »
The only reason why we have so much AI is because online play is horrible.
Not that there's anything wrong with making it easy to AI a robot, or having AI'ing options. The Starcore AI pack robots were (IIRC) designed as sparing partners for multiplayer.
Given the choice between AI robot battles and a fun PvP online multiplayer experience with manually controlled robots, you would prefer the latter?
935
« on: August 18, 2017, 02:00:07 PM »
RA3 multiplayer is a bit of a mess. It's buggy, occasionally laggy, and you can only play with people on the same continent as you with no option to change servers.
I suspect that the same continent rule is designed to mitigate the problem of >1 second lag and lots of loss as packets travel around the planet. I probably would have made the same design choice. In a game that doesn't require as much synchronization, I think you can get away with opening players up to servers on other continents. For example, this is much simpler for a 2D game where you only have to deal with translation in x-y and a single degree of rotation, maybe with a few height values thrown in here and there.
936
« on: August 18, 2017, 01:30:16 PM »
one is the dreaded RA3. THey both had multiplayer, but they were all full of bugs.
i am voting for multiplayer.
I personally haven't tried RA3 yet. How is the online multiplayer experience? I'm afraid of underestimating how difficult it is do this well. I expect that there would be a lot of robot parts that appear to randomly teleport when a packet arrives that is delayed by 300 ms and the robots are forced to shift their positions to the new spot. Even with interpolation, there could be weirdness as robots rotate into position under the control of a linear interpolation function instead of the user's input.
937
« on: August 18, 2017, 01:21:09 PM »
If the focus of the game is multiplayer, it will die off pretty quickly due to a lack of sustainable userbase. While multiplayer functionality would be great, I think the focus should be AI combat. It should also be possible for users to make the AI control their own bots.
I agree on both counts: It takes pretty significant numbers to support online multiplayer rooms. This is pretty rare for indie developers to sustain an online multiplayer community for more than a few months, and nonexistent for part-time indie developers like me. Local multiplayer is another story, however. "Robot Rumble" averages just under 2 players per game - people are more likely to play while sitting together in the same room than they are to play single-player. I envision an improved robot building lab that is designed with AI building in mind. There should be at least one screen (maybe a tab called "AI software"???) where players can configure the AI for the robot directly inside the robot lab. It is going to take a lot of thought to get this right -- 15 years of AI development by the GTM community boiled down into one easy-to-digest screen is not going to be easy, but I think it is doable.
938
« on: August 18, 2017, 08:58:50 AM »
As the online multilayer of RA2 is non existend people had to rely on AI to host tournaments. We never really had a choice to say we prefer AI over PvP as we haven't experienced PvP in a propper way yet
Fair enough. I thought about including online multiplayer in the poll, but left it off for two reasons: 1. I'm not aware of any robot combat games that do online multiplayer. The closest thing I know of is the original Robot Rumble for AirConsole (local multiplayer) that I built, and games like Rocket League which don't have nearly as many moving parts, and have a massive development team. 2. It is *really* hard to build an online multiplayer game based on 3D physics. You have to worry about variable network latency and accurately predicting the motion of objects when each player has a physics engine that is essentially a random number generator generating different position, rotation, velocity, acceleration, etc. As it is, it scares me to even consider building online multiplayer in RR2.0. I really like the AI-only solution -- I think it is really elegant, and changes the dynamic of the game to something that is more strategic than fast-twitch-response-based. I was thinking we could still do local multiplayer running on a single screen. I have many fond memories of playing Mario Kart 64 with friends while sitting on the couch.
939
« on: August 18, 2017, 06:08:48 AM »
Full disclosure: Thanks to help from @Starcore and others on the forum, I just recently realized that AI battles are a huge part of the RA2 experience. I had assumed that people played RA2 because of PvP multiplayer (either local or online multiplayer), but realize that because of the robust AI built by the modding community, the game is now so much more than that.
This has changed my opinion of what Robot Rumble 2.0 should be. Perhaps RR2.0 should be primarily about building AI bots that battle in tournaments. AI should be an integral part of the Bot Lab, with screens dedicated to designing AI behavior. What do you think?
Is AI design important enough to make it the central focus of the game?
940
« on: August 18, 2017, 05:57:20 AM »
Now available - playable 2D mockup! Here is a link to the mockup: http://nerdislandstudios.com/rr2D8-17-17/index.htmlOver the past week I have been mocking up a new version of the game in 2D. We still intend to build a 3D version, but this 2D version will allow us to try things out and rapidly iterate before committing to an idea and building all of the 3D artwork and gameplay. Edit: The robots are controlled entirely by AI. You can drag&drop them around the screen, but I wanted to see how things would play out with AI-only robots. When the robot lab is built, you will be able to make new designs and AI rules.  
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