Poll

What do you like doing most in RA2/RA3/robot combat games?

Building robots
Local single player battles with manually-controlled robots
Local multiplayer battles  with manually-controlled robots (PvP with controllers or a shared keyboard)
AI-only tournament battles
Other?  Please comment below.

Author Topic: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development  (Read 187626 times)

Offline powerrave

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1440 on: January 11, 2020, 02:14:49 PM »
I'll want to add that while the tool is not a bad idea, I'm not much of a fan of having to use that and Blender or whatever if I want cool looks and have a still durable component. I'm more for just doing everything in game and see where it ends.
With that I am more fond of the idea of grouping bits together in game where it'll look good and still be durable enough.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1441 on: January 11, 2020, 02:15:45 PM »
I'll want to add that while the tool is not a bad idea, I'm not much of a fan of having to use that and Blender or whatever if I want cool looks and have a still durable component. I'm more for just doing everything in game and see where it ends.
With that I am more fond of the idea of grouping bits together in game where it'll look good and still be durable enough.

Maybe also add a group function for currently built bots that use ingame components, because cmt is gonna mean that bots should be rebuilt
CMT????? What is that?

"Component Modding Tool"?


Lightning, I will trade you Rainbow Circus for the robot with the gyro dancing!  :smile:

If you look at my showcase, Takedown does the weird gyro thing. I include a download link on my showcase for the bots I post.

I just loaded up Takedown and didn't see the gyro dancing in the latest build.  Are you using the 11January bleeding edge build?

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1442 on: January 11, 2020, 02:17:32 PM »
I'll want to add that while the tool is not a bad idea, I'm not much of a fan of having to use that and Blender or whatever if I want cool looks and have a still durable component. I'm more for just doing everything in game and see where it ends.
With that I am more fond of the idea of grouping bits together in game where it'll look good and still be durable enough.

I agree that Blender is intimidating.  I would love to eventually get a lot of the tool features built into the main game, but this should be a good start.

Grouping is a pretty big undertaking.  @tashic, any thoughts on getting something like this working?  Maybe we could reuse the chassis compound collider code?

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1443 on: January 11, 2020, 02:19:40 PM »

Problem with the tool is that personally i wouldn't allow custom components for my tournament. Unless there is a way to block it. Someone could enter a bit with low weight and extremely high hp count

I was thinking that you would set a material and the tool would automatically compute the weight and hp upon creation.
Idk, setting a material not ingame is kinda eh. There can always be a chance that the modded part is better than the ingame part. Again, this modding tool is great for motors and parts like that
but for components i dont find it too good

Offline powerrave

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1444 on: January 11, 2020, 02:23:58 PM »
I'll want to add that while the tool is not a bad idea, I'm not much of a fan of having to use that and Blender or whatever if I want cool looks and have a still durable component. I'm more for just doing everything in game and see where it ends.
With that I am more fond of the idea of grouping bits together in game where it'll look good and still be durable enough.

I agree that Blender is intimidating.  I would love to eventually get a lot of the tool features built into the main game, but this should be a good start.

Grouping is a pretty big undertaking.  @tashic, any thoughts on getting something like this working?  Maybe we could reuse the chassis compound collider code?
Eventually there will be more than enough people that would rather not go through multiple programs in order to finish up a bot that looks nice, I'd think.
Kix also brings up fair points.
"Always be yourself, unless you're a loser"


Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1445 on: January 11, 2020, 03:20:17 PM »
Fair enough.  In any case we are going to need the modding tool to speed up our part-creation process, so we might as well make it available to everyone.

I have some ideas on how to do in-game grouping, but it is going to take a lot of work and troubleshooting to get things like collisionshapes, component breakage, hit points, center of mass, etc working correctly.  Basically we will need to redo a lot of the things we had to do to get a whole robot working.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1446 on: January 11, 2020, 03:25:22 PM »
I have some ideas on how to do in-game grouping, but it is going to take a lot of work and troubleshooting to get things like collisionshapes, component breakage, hit points, center of mass, etc working correctly.
Honestly:
collision shapes - Atm maybe not really necessary untill much later builds
omponent breakage - If you would group parts, i guess you would have combined HP and once it reaches 0, the whole struture falls off
hit points - Huh, thats the one thing that my knowledge is non existant.
center of mass - i guess if you did that before grouping, that wouldnt be an issue

Offline Team Lightning

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1447 on: January 11, 2020, 04:02:15 PM »
I'll want to add that while the tool is not a bad idea, I'm not much of a fan of having to use that and Blender or whatever if I want cool looks and have a still durable component. I'm more for just doing everything in game and see where it ends.
With that I am more fond of the idea of grouping bits together in game where it'll look good and still be durable enough.

Maybe also add a group function for currently built bots that use ingame components, because cmt is gonna mean that bots should be rebuilt
CMT????? What is that?

"Component Modding Tool"?


Lightning, I will trade you Rainbow Circus for the robot with the gyro dancing!  :smile:

If you look at my showcase, Takedown does the weird gyro thing. I include a download link on my showcase for the bots I post.

I just loaded up Takedown and didn't see the gyro dancing in the latest build.  Are you using the 11January bleeding edge build?
Download Red Ring of Death from my showcase, fight it versus Takedown AI, and tear a wheel off of Takedown. I am using the 11January build. My physics slider settings are 500 ticks a second, and 100 on the other two. The thing is you have to wait a little bit for it to start glitching. I built these bots in an earlier build so maybe that’s why they’re glitching.

Now can you send me Rainbow Circus? The laptop I use can run the game at more than 90 fps

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1448 on: January 11, 2020, 05:55:28 PM »
Here's Rainbow Circus 2.  Cyar, this is one of your creations, correct?

 

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1449 on: January 11, 2020, 06:00:30 PM »
Here's Rainbow Circus 2.  Cyar, this is one of your creations, correct?

  [ Quoting of attachment images from other messages is not allowed ]  
No it was made by Minthemad

Offline powerrave

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1450 on: January 11, 2020, 06:11:34 PM »
I've downloaded that circus to have a look, set tick to 500. Saw no dropping in performance at all on my PC.
"Always be yourself, unless you're a loser"


Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1451 on: January 11, 2020, 06:51:33 PM »
I've downloaded that circus to have a look, set tick to 500. Saw no dropping in performance at all on my PC.

That's a good data point.  Would you mind sharing your PC specs?

4 x Rainbow Circus, all CPU controlled is my worst-case scenario for testing.  AI Miniscript currently takes up about 8 ms per robot for me, so 4 robots automatically drops my frame rate below 30 fps no matter what my physics settings are.

After we get physics and damage sorted out, reworking the AI system is next on my list.  My first priority is to rewrite everything so it doesn't take up so darn much CPU time.

Offline powerrave

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1452 on: January 12, 2020, 05:39:16 AM »
I've downloaded that circus to have a look, set tick to 500. Saw no dropping in performance at all on my PC.

That's a good data point.  Would you mind sharing your PC specs?

4 x Rainbow Circus, all CPU controlled is my worst-case scenario for testing.  AI Miniscript currently takes up about 8 ms per robot for me, so 4 robots automatically drops my frame rate below 30 fps no matter what my physics settings are.

After we get physics and damage sorted out, reworking the AI system is next on my list.  My first priority is to rewrite everything so it doesn't take up so darn much CPU time.
Sure thing.

Intel Core i7 8700 cpu @ 3.20GHz
32GB RAM (2x 16 GB)
Nvidia GeForce 980 Ti (6GB GPU memory)

Those are the most important specs to look at I believe.
"Always be yourself, unless you're a loser"


Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1453 on: January 12, 2020, 06:52:31 AM »
New build coming today.  I finally isolated and fixed the source of the problem with the gyro dancing and unrealistic behaviors when everything is broken off an axle.

TL:DR - The mass of the remaining axle will be set to 0.00001 kg in the simulation.  This should prevent weirdness.

The full story:

[Bug Fix] Fixed a bug where the remaining mass of the axle alone was set to several kilograms when the last part attached to the axle is broken off.  This was causing robots to gyrodance and jitter unrealistically.  I also identified the source of the extra mass -- see "POTENTIAL BUG SOURCE" below.

POTENTIAL BUG SOURCE - I just noticed that the "Axle" subassemblies on motors and actuators comes with its own rigidbody.  For the Ampflow A40-300 motors, this "Axle" rigidbody has a mass of 4 kg.  I tried reducing the axle mass to something more realistic, like 1 kg.  This was a TERRIBLE change.  It made robots drive poorly, with the wheels bouncing and not gripping.  Apparently we had set this default axle mass value years ago in the very early stages of the game and completely forgotten about it.

From now on, every time we create a motor with an axle, we need to make sure that the axle has sufficient mass, maybe 4 kg for a 110 kg robot?  When everything breaks off except for the axle the mass of the axle will be set to 0.00001 kg.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1454 on: January 12, 2020, 06:55:17 AM »
New build coming today.  I finally isolated and fixed the source of the problem with the gyro dancing and unrealistic behaviors when everything is broken off an axle.

TL:DR - The mass of the remaining axle will be set to 0.00001 kg in the simulation.  This should prevent weirdness.

The full story:

[Bug Fix] Fixed a bug where the remaining mass of the axle alone was set to several kilograms when the last part attached to the axle is broken off.  This was causing robots to gyrodance and jitter unrealistically.  I also identified the source of the extra mass -- see "POTENTIAL BUG SOURCE" below.

POTENTIAL BUG SOURCE - I just noticed that the "Axle" subassemblies on motors and actuators comes with its own rigidbody.  For the Ampflow A40-300 motors, this "Axle" rigidbody has a mass of 4 kg.  I tried reducing the axle mass to something more realistic, like 1 kg.  This was a TERRIBLE change.  It made robots drive poorly, with the wheels bouncing and not gripping.  Apparently we had set this default axle mass value years ago in the very early stages of the game and completely forgotten about it.

From now on, every time we create a motor with an axle, we need to make sure that the axle has sufficient mass, maybe 4 kg for a 110 kg robot?  When everything breaks off except for the axle the mass of the axle will be set to 0.00001 kg.
Ayy the issue that has been haunting us for months has finally been resolved

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1455 on: January 12, 2020, 07:11:45 AM »
I have some ideas on how to do in-game grouping, but it is going to take a lot of work and troubleshooting to get things like collisionshapes, component breakage, hit points, center of mass, etc working correctly.
Honestly:
collision shapes - Atm maybe not really necessary untill much later builds
omponent breakage - If you would group parts, i guess you would have combined HP and once it reaches 0, the whole struture falls off
hit points - Huh, thats the one thing that my knowledge is non existant.
center of mass - i guess if you did that before grouping, that wouldnt be an issue

I'm looking at fixing 2 things with a component grouping system:

1. CPU load:  With 100+ colliders, Rainbow Circus 2 is unplayable on my computer.  I would like to be able to reduce all robots to <30 colliders so that students can play the game on school computers.  This will open the game up to schools, which I think is important.
2. Ease of building:  Modular component subassemblies could significantly reduce the time it makes to create an intricately detailed robot.

I think I'm beginning to understand why user-created components (made using a Component Modding Tool) are not ideal for anyone trying to host a tournament.  There would need to be all sorts of checks in place in the tool to make sure people don't make things that are game-breaking.  Unless such checks were reliable enough for tournament use I understand that it would be easiest to say "no user-made components are allowed".  This is not at all dissimilar to the safety impound and inspection that we have to do in real-life tournaments.  It is a pain in the neck!

The Component Modding Tool could easily solve the CPU load problem (#1 above), but only for non-tournament use by players willing to download and use Unity and Blender.  For someone skilled in Blender, the person could create something way cooler looking than anything that one could create with our rudimentary in-game tools (#2 above).  Both of these use cases for the Component Modding Tool require players who are willing to invest a lot more time and energy than a typical person.

I'm not opposed to the idea of component grouping for these reasons, but it is going to take significant time and effort to get a system working.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1456 on: January 12, 2020, 07:19:09 AM »

Ayy the issue that has been haunting us for months has finally been resolved

Don't jinx it! :)

Also, this change should only affect the builds where stuff broke off an axle.  This began with the 19December2019 Alpha build.

Finding the source of the bug does provide another thing we are going to have to carefully tweak though.  The more mass we add to the axle (currently 4 kg for the big motors), the stiffer the wheels are when they are driving, but also the more slowly they respond to motor inputs.  My plan for now is to leave the motors as they are and only change them if we need to. (I'm looking at you, beetleweights!)

Offline powerrave

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1457 on: January 12, 2020, 07:34:33 AM »
If the aim is to also have this run well on school computers (don't know what general specs for those are these days), then something like grouping would also be quite ideal.
Now I also see why you want to lessen load so much. I should probably keep an eye on how much load the game puts on my system (gave specs on previous page), given that this is a own built gaming PC. Will add that when the game is running, I do notice my fans are spinning up a lot and then keeping that constant. Even in workshop or something.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1458 on: January 12, 2020, 07:50:36 AM »
The new 12January2020 bleeding edge build is up.  This one sets the mass of the remaining axles when everything else is broken off to 0.00001 kg.

http://www.robot-rumble.com/bleedingedgebuilds/

I need to switch over to contract work to make money for the company this week.  I would like to use this build as an Alpha.  Please let me know if this is good enough to play with for a while! :)

Offline Team Lightning

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #1459 on: January 12, 2020, 08:19:19 AM »
The problem with the gyrodancing didn't go away. I'm thinking that if the motors stopped after a wheel is torn off, then the glitch will be fixed.
EDIT: The problem is fixed, apparently I mistook the gyro created by the wheels for the glitch.