Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development

[min440303]

The latest version improves a lot, so glad to see it getting so far.
And some feedback within:

1.The axe does quite amount of damage, but needs a crashing sound, when they hit their opponents, it sounds weak and not that destructive.
2.The vertical spinner, including drums, don't have enough throwing power, In reality when they hit at the right place, their opppnents would be flipped as high as hell.
3.When bubblegum gets flipped over, it does lots of damage to itself but not the self-righting bar. It just straight up to death with the bar still functioning.
4.Two vertical spinners are throwing sparks everywhere and losing hp from the beginning. Even in the robot selecting interface, they are still throwing sparks.

[Badger]

Feedback/personal opinions on the alpha:

1) PLEASE GIVE US A MUSIC VOLUME SLIDER! Your menu music is loud by default and not exactly subtle. People who aren't into this genre of music will absolutely hate it, and even people who like it may no want it blasting full volume every time they open the game
2) The game crashed for me the first time I opened it, second time was fine but it took an absolute age to load to versus bot selection screen. In previous builds this was nearly instant for me. Are you loading all the bot models before hopping into this screen? The load time was long enough that I thought the game had crashed again
3) I have multiple copies of resolutions in the settings menus (pic attached at bottom of the post). I assume each of these corresponds to a different refresh rate (since I'm using a 144hz monitor). A separate refresh rate option would be perfect, but failing that even just displaying the refresh rate with the resolution would clear the confusion up. Also it would be nice to get an 'apply' button in the settings screen. I couldn't find a way to apply my changed resolution, so I was stuck at 1080p
4) On the versus screen, it would be nice to have P2 default to CPU (IMO). Consider how often the player will be playing local co-op vs how often they will be playing vs the CPU.
5) The bots die way too quickly with no visual damage. I would be fine with them dying quickly, but there needs to be some audiovisual feedback of them getting obliterated in a few hits if that's the route you're going down. I appreciate that this is difficult to achieve, but it's really one of the main draws of robot combat.

I didn't play it enough to give much feedback on specific bots. Hopefully the above is some value to you!

[toAst]

it's not on the poll and it might be too late to add it-- maybe you can put it as a separate checkbox to see what people's reactions are-- but i would personally like to be able to play online with other players regardless of any effective ui or a perfect framerate or what-not. i dont care if i have to type in a host's ip address like back in the days of RA1 if it means i can play against friends in real time online. even if it lags a little. or even if 'real-time' battling isnt possible, i'd at least like to maybe be able to watch our bots fight in real-time, maybe controlled by ai we write ourselves to give me a sense of having an effect on the outcome of my match.

anything along these lines even remotely possible? i dont care if it's not a part of the original release, even as a future add-on i'd be more than overjoyed. i could imagine something like this pushing back a potential release date sp again, if it's something that has to sit on the back burner for a later patch and release i'm more than happy with that.

i think i'm the only person on this forum who still wishes for a rean mano-y-mano online tournament of any type. so let me know if this is a even remotely feasible request. thank you!!

[toAst]

I don't think developers should be held hostage to ancient standards by people who refuse to upgrade to at least semi-recent software/hardware. There's no good reason to be running a 32 bit OS (or any version of Vista for that matter) in 2018.

go to hell im running xp why dont you buy me a new computer big boy

but it is 64 bit

im signing up to test

You're running on an operating system that is no longer getting security patches. This is the equivalent of living in a house with no lock on the front door. Actually, it's more like living in a house with a hole where a front door should be, with huge neon signs pointing to the hole saying "FREE STUFF IN HERE". You don't need to buy a new PC to upgrade the operating system to a newer, safe version.

Upgrade to at least windows 7 or a lightweight linux distro if you want to be supported by any software in the future. If Microsoft doesn't bother with your OS's security anymore, there's no reason why 3rd party software developers should.

it's not my computer so i can't do much of anything without permission to do so and i'd hate to screw up the man's computer trying to upgrade it to another operating system. he's big on the whole 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' philosophy, and the fact that certain things i want to do might not work isn't going to be the thing that changes his mind.

now starting the alpha version up, i got tjis error message. i imagine this is a byproduct of having an old computer and or operating system but if this is something resolvable i would ****ing kill to know how to fix it and get this running. im clicking the right thing to open it, right?

[Badnik96]

another thing i noticed is that the background music fades out whenever a sound effect plays, which is really annoying once you pick up on it.

[Thyrus]

What are your plans on the damage side of things? As I couldn't test it I can only assume from the trailer that causing damage is possible again  (like taking wheels off). You won't bring in soft body stuff tho I guess?

[cjbruce]

it's not on the poll and it might be too late to add it-- maybe you can put it as a separate checkbox to see what people's reactions are-- but i would personally like to be able to play online with other players regardless of any effective ui or a perfect framerate or what-not. i dont care if i have to type in a host's ip address like back in the days of RA1 if it means i can play against friends in real time online. even if it lags a little. or even if 'real-time' battling isnt possible, i'd at least like to maybe be able to watch our bots fight in real-time, maybe controlled by ai we write ourselves to give me a sense of having an effect on the outcome of my match.

anything along these lines even remotely possible? i dont care if it's not a part of the original release, even as a future add-on i'd be more than overjoyed. i could imagine something like this pushing back a potential release date sp again, if it's something that has to sit on the back burner for a later patch and release i'm more than happy with that.

i think i'm the only person on this forum who still wishes for a rean mano-y-mano online tournament of any type. so let me know if this is a even remotely feasible request. thank you!!

Realtime multiplayer over the internet is not in the cards for this game, and most likely never will be.  In order to do it, we would have to go to a much simpler physics simulation, a la RA3, something we are not willing to do.  However, it should absolutely be possible to send someone an robot that you have created the AI for, and have them fight on a computer.  Basically, we are looking at a streamlined version of the AI mods that have been created for RA2, but built right into the Botlab.

I don't know if this is ever going to happen, but in principle it should be possible to make an AI robot on your phone, send it to your buddy's phone, then watch as the two AI robots duke it out.  Lots of things need to fall into place to get this to work, but wouldn't it be cool? 

[cjbruce]

What are your plans on the damage side of things? As I couldn't test it I can only assume from the trailer that causing damage is possible again  (like taking wheels off). You won't bring in soft body stuff tho I guess?

Damage is a big work in progress.  We have the ability to break joints already. 

We also are playing around with impact deformation, but since the models are all low poly with high-resolution textures, it doesn't look that great.  Especially when a panel gets dented inward, causing a component on the inside to clip through the outer panel.  It looks weird, and I'm not sure how to deal with it.

I am also interested in pursuing damage decals (scratches, dents, etc that are "painted" on).  This is something that we haven't figured out yet.  I feel like Unity should have a good built-in system for this, but I haven't found it yet.  Maybe in Unity 2018.3, which should be out in the next few weeks...

[cjbruce]

another thing i noticed is that the background music fades out whenever a sound effect plays, which is really annoying once you pick up on it.

  Its interesting that you would point that out.  The music ducking is intentional, and most games do it, but the fact that you noticed it means that I screwed it up and made it too obvious.

Fortunately, we now have a professional sound designer on the team who can blame me for my rookie mistakes.

[cjbruce]

To everyone who commented -- thank you thank you thank you!

We are working hard to collect all the comments and come up with a plan of attack for the next few months.  Keep the comments coming!

[Jaydee99]

Dude this is great!
Out of curiosity, how many robots will be able to be in one match? I think everyone wanted RA2 to include more than 4 robots in one match :D

[cjbruce]

Dude this is great!
Out of curiosity, how many robots will be able to be in one match? I think everyone wanted RA2 to include more than 4 robots in one match :D

Not sure yet.  It depends on how many CPU clock cycles we can get down to, and what kind of hardware people have.  Unfortunately, Moore’s Law is no longer helping out with the latter.  CPUs aren’t getting much faster, so we will need to be careful adding more robots.  Several people are already noticing unplayably low frame rates.

[kix]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

[cjbruce]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

I hadn’t heard of Parsec.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It says that it adds 7 ms per frame, and we are already struggling to keep things under 10 ms on a strong laptop.  It might be worth a shot once we have nailed down botlab-based gameplay though.

[yugitom]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

I hadn’t heard of Parsec.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It says that it adds 7 ms per frame, and we are already struggling to keep things under 10 ms on a strong laptop.  It might be worth a shot once we have nailed down botlab-based gameplay though.

Well, it wouldn't be something you'd have to consider. It would just be a solution for those who want to play the game in pseudo-online local multiplayer if you don't actually support online multiplayer.

[cjbruce]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

I hadn’t heard of Parsec.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It says that it adds 7 ms per frame, and we are already struggling to keep things under 10 ms on a strong laptop.  It might be worth a shot once we have nailed down botlab-based gameplay though.

Well, it wouldn't be something you'd have to consider. It would just be a solution for those who want to play the game in pseudo-online local multiplayer if you don't actually support online multiplayer.

This is really interesting.  So the way it works is you take a game that already supports local multiplayer with, say, 4 Xbox controllers, and play it through a Parsec signaling server with each person having their own controller and screen?

Has anyone tried it?

[yugitom]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

I hadn’t heard of Parsec.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It says that it adds 7 ms per frame, and we are already struggling to keep things under 10 ms on a strong laptop.  It might be worth a shot once we have nailed down botlab-based gameplay though.

Well, it wouldn't be something you'd have to consider. It would just be a solution for those who want to play the game in pseudo-online local multiplayer if you don't actually support online multiplayer.

This is really interesting.  So the way it works is you take a game that already supports local multiplayer with, say, 4 Xbox controllers, and play it through a Parsec signaling server with each person having their own controller and screen?

Has anyone tried it?

Someone hosts their own PC and gives other people permission to control their PC (or just certain keys.)

I was one of the first to try it for RA2
https://gametechmods.com/forums/personal-tournaments/robot-wars-online-tournement/msg740486/#msg740486
https://gametechmods.com/forums/brackets-vids-and-awards/centauri-online-tournament-sbv/

Although it's the best option to do pseudo-online multiplayer/netplay in certain games that don't allow for netplay or online multiplayer (like RA2), it's incredibly far from ideal. Tails just mentioned it because he's a bit special

[cjbruce]

I think multiplayer could be possible with parsec

I hadn’t heard of Parsec.  Thank you for mentioning it.  It says that it adds 7 ms per frame, and we are already struggling to keep things under 10 ms on a strong laptop.  It might be worth a shot once we have nailed down botlab-based gameplay though.

Well, it wouldn't be something you'd have to consider. It would just be a solution for those who want to play the game in pseudo-online local multiplayer if you don't actually support online multiplayer.

This is really interesting.  So the way it works is you take a game that already supports local multiplayer with, say, 4 Xbox controllers, and play it through a Parsec signaling server with each person having their own controller and screen?

Has anyone tried it?

Someone hosts their own PC and gives other people permission to control their PC (or just certain keys.)

I was one of the first to try it for RA2
https://gametechmods.com/forums/personal-tournaments/robot-wars-online-tournement/msg740486/#msg740486
https://gametechmods.com/forums/brackets-vids-and-awards/centauri-online-tournament-sbv/

Although it's the best option to do pseudo-online multiplayer/netplay in certain games that don't allow for netplay or online multiplayer (like RA2), it's incredibly far from ideal. Tails just mentioned it because he's a bit special

Thanks for the links.  This actually looks super-appealing.  With the way we are using physics right now, there is no way we could do Rocket League-like online multiplayer.  I believe Rocket League game runs its physics simulation at 120 ticks per second, spending less than 1 ms per 60 Hz frame on physics.  RR2 is more like "Kerbal Space Program" -- intensely single-threaded CPU-heavy.  We are running our physics simulation at 400 ticks per second, spending 10 ms per 60 Hz frame on physics.  We don't have any room right now to do things like prediction to account for packet latency, which is what people expect in order to have a good online multiplayer experience.

The bottom line is that the only way to do online multiplayer with Robot Rumble 2 as the game currently exists is via streaming using a system like Parsec.  We need to nail down gameplay first, but fingers crossed for us to get things to the point where the streaming experience is enjoyable.

[laserpanda]

Just tried it out. Pretty fun, though there's not much visual indication of damage. It took me a while to figure out if I'd won my first match because I killed them or because time ran out.

Is deformation planned?

[8bean]

This build looks to be a really big step forward for the game. I've been playtesting recently and have found some bugs that might need some attention.
1:Attracted to pit
This bug occurs with all bots I've tested with where the AI decides to chase a spot on the pit rather than the player
2:Disappearing Screws
TR3 is the only bot I've seen do this but it does it consistently if put in this position.
3:Stuck in Ground:
This bug only seems to affect Bubblegum due to the size of its weapon. It will also do this occasionally on solid ground if it lands right.
4:Crazy Chain
If D.B MK II rotates too violently or something gets in between the chain it responds by totally freaking out.
5:Spawn Bug
This is a very specific bug that only occurs with D.B MK II and TR3 and only occurs in this arena.
Also, I haven't gone too far into depth with the botlab but the first two designs I created seemed to have the wheels clip through the floor, thus making it undriveable despite the wheels spinning.
Hopefully this information and videos below were helpful and I can't wait to see what comes in the next update