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 187689 times)

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2300 on: June 03, 2020, 10:29:46 AM »
This build is intended to be the summer tournament build.  CodeSilver, kix, would you mind taking a look at it with an eye for how it will play on Parsec/online?

After this build we are going back into development and adding new features and breaking things. :)
Ill see what i can do
Work, mental state overall and not caring about this forum meant that RR2 has taken a backseat, by a lot actually. I still havent tested the build of the game, but ill download it in a few hours most likely
Also wouldnt it be better for the tournament to have damage on?

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2301 on: June 03, 2020, 10:45:16 AM »
Thank you!  I get it about burnout.  How would you guys feel about a parsec tournament with the developers?  We could come up with a list of improvements while we are at it.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2302 on: June 03, 2020, 10:48:50 AM »
Thank you!  I get it about burnout.  How would you guys feel about a parsec tournament with the developers?  We could come up with a list of improvements while we are at it.
It would be nice. You guys have discord? We prefer to host it there as voice chat is a godsend

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2303 on: June 03, 2020, 11:05:40 AM »
We do.  We just started using Discord last week and it has been great so far.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2304 on: June 03, 2020, 11:09:15 AM »
We do.  We just started using Discord last week and it has been great so far.
Nice, so how would we go arrangement wise? Im free this week

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2305 on: June 03, 2020, 11:25:59 AM »
My laptop gets a bit laggy when doing full-screen recording but it's ok, so yea here's the video.



And if you want bots shown in the vid
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Stuff I kinda done at

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2306 on: June 03, 2020, 11:43:18 AM »
My laptop gets a bit laggy when doing full-screen recording but it's ok, so yea here's the video.



And if you want bots shown in the vid

This is gold!  Thank you.  I haven't seen the same problems with my robots, but I suspect I'm not pushing them hard enough. :)

I will try to find and fix the bugs by Friday.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2307 on: June 03, 2020, 11:44:26 AM »
We do.  We just started using Discord last week and it has been great so far.
Nice, so how would we go arrangement wise? Im free this week

This week we are finding and fixing bugs.  Next week I'm building real-life robots.  What about two weeks from now?  That will give me time to figure out child care too.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2308 on: June 03, 2020, 12:04:57 PM »
We do.  We just started using Discord last week and it has been great so far.
Nice, so how would we go arrangement wise? Im free this week

This week we are finding and fixing bugs.  Next week I'm building real-life robots.  What about two weeks from now?  That will give me time to figure out child care too.
I might be available in 2 weeks. Yall have a server ill be able to join for the tournament?

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2309 on: June 03, 2020, 01:19:41 PM »
We do!

How many people do you think might be interested?  Due to family constraints I can only commit to three hours.  Maybe 8 robots total?  That would give us time to talk about stuff as we are going.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2310 on: June 03, 2020, 01:30:00 PM »
We do!

How many people do you think might be interested?  Due to family constraints I can only commit to three hours.  Maybe 8 robots total?  That would give us time to talk about stuff as we are going.
Yeah 8 robots is pretty great. If youre thinking of it as a proper tournament. I remember doing 32 bot tournament in few hours, single bracket wise so 16 shouldnt be a gamble, 2 bots per person. Due to timezone differences, i most likely wouldnt be able to do more than 3 hours so thats a thing. You say that youll be ready in two weeks. Any possible date? Tbh date isnt really a problem, im really more interested in time

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2311 on: June 04, 2020, 12:09:26 AM »
I still have no idea how remove plates work
 
55.png
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2312 on: June 04, 2020, 04:07:22 AM »
Uh oh.  That looks like a highlighter selection bug.  I'm assuming you are clicking on the turquoise cylinder, but a scale has been applied to it and the highlighter is not scaling correctly.

Removable plate material should work like this:
1. Click on a mesh and select the "Remove Plate" material instead of "Steel".
2. In the botlab the mesh should become invisible.
3. When you go to the test cage, the mesh is invisible and its collider is removed.

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2313 on: June 04, 2020, 04:14:24 AM »
Uh oh.  That looks like a highlighter selection bug.  I'm assuming you are clicking on the turquoise cylinder, but a scale has been applied to it and the highlighter is not scaling correctly.

Removable plate material should work like this:
1. Click on a mesh and select the "Remove Plate" material instead of "Steel".
2. In the botlab the mesh should become invisible.
3. When you go to the test cage, the mesh is invisible and its collider is removed.
Oh it was my comprehension problem. There actually is a smaller cylinder with remove plate placing through the huge cyinder.

I thought it was like placing a remove plate into a steel plate, then I can remove a part of the steel plate like digging a hole in it.

Would this be a thing in the future?
« Last Edit: June 04, 2020, 05:22:31 AM by min440303 »
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2314 on: June 04, 2020, 07:03:49 AM »
Unfortunately, no.

Boolean subtraction is crazy hard to do for arbitrary shapes.  It would be awesome to have it though! :)

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2315 on: June 04, 2020, 07:20:52 AM »
I found and hopefully fixed a crashing bug that occurred when you stalled out a spinner weapon.  It would only occur for spinner weapons.

The moment of inertia would temporarily become undefined, making physics forces undefined, making it impossible for physics to determine the state of the robot, thus crashing the game.

Does this fit what you guys are seeing for crashes?

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2316 on: June 04, 2020, 07:21:19 AM »
Unfortunately, no.

Boolean subtraction is crazy hard to do for arbitrary shapes.  It would be awesome to have it though! :)

What about making the part invisible to look like it's removed? I guess it might be the same way as how hollow cylinders are made?
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2317 on: June 04, 2020, 07:34:29 AM »
Unfortunately, no.

Boolean subtraction is crazy hard to do for arbitrary shapes.  It would be awesome to have it though! :)

What about making the part invisible to look like it's removed? I think it might be the same way as how hollow cylinders are made?

The problem with boolean subtraction is that at some point you need to make a new mesh composed of many more triangles than the number of triangles in the original meshes.

The photo below shows an extremely simple example.  The 6-sided cube starts with 12 triangles.  When you slice it with a plane, the resulting 7-sided shape now has 23 triangles.  This gets MUCH worse for more complex shapes like cylinders:



Boolean subtraction isn't impossible to do, but it is very difficult with a lot of edge cases (pun intended).  When you get it wrong you end up with invisible surfaces and shapes that break physics in unpredictable ways.

EDIT: Once the Arena Modding Tool is complete kupatec is planning to switch over to working on the Component Modding Tool (CMT).  The CMT will allow users to create meshes with arbitrary shapes in Blender, an amazing suite of free software with a complete set of Boolean Subtraction tools.  You will be able to create anything you want, then bring those shapes into the game.

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2318 on: June 04, 2020, 07:45:33 AM »
Unfortunately, no.

Boolean subtraction is crazy hard to do for arbitrary shapes.  It would be awesome to have it though! :)

What about making the part invisible to look like it's removed? I think it might be the same way as how hollow cylinders are made?

The problem with boolean subtraction is that at some point you need to make a new mesh composed of many more triangles than the number of triangles in the original meshes.

The photo below shows an extremely simple example.  The 6-sided cube starts with 12 triangles.  When you slice it with a plane, the resulting 7-sided shape now has 23 triangles.  This gets MUCH worse for more complex shapes like cylinders:

(Image removed from quote.)

Yea I kinda know that. I mean what if we make the part that's overlaps by the remove plate and steel plate invisible, the collision is still there but it just looks like it's removed.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2319 on: June 04, 2020, 07:53:53 AM »
You could make all of the surfaces invisible, or none invisible, but you can't make a portion of the surface invisible.  You have to create entirely new surfaces from scratch that conform to the shape you want to remove.  These new surfaces contain many more triangles than you started with.  This involves a lot of complicated algorithms that are really easy to mess up.

The "blur cylinder" that was much-hated and eventually removed was my first attempt at doing procedural mesh creation.  I'm out. :)  tashic's chassis and shape creator is more successful, but these are both much easier to do than boolean subtraction.  I believe it took Blender about 20 years (1998 - 2019) to get their Boolean tool to the point it is today.  The tool is pretty good, but it is still a little buggy.