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 187710 times)

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2020 on: March 03, 2020, 01:40:59 PM »
For this next build I have combined spinners into a single damageable object.  This means that the whole spinner will break off together.

My Tombclone will break off Circumvolution's spinner in a single hit every single time.  It makes for really short fights.

Ah i really love this thing you said, maybe you should enable an option to disable breaking stuff off if on an axle

Just out of curiosity. Does the multi part spinner get combined HP as a single component, or does it have the HP of the base part?

It adds up the total health of the spinner components and consolidates them into a single number.  Right now health = mass * (health per mass of the material).  More mass = more health.

Circumvolution Spinner = 250 health
Tombclone Spinner = 500 health

Tombclone can do thousands of Joules of damage on a single hit, so Circumvolution's spinner is destroyed every single time.

Tbh irl Hori would beat a vert easily. If you are uncomfortable with it you can always add a small HP multiplier

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2021 on: March 03, 2020, 05:45:16 PM »
For this next build I have combined spinners into a single damageable object.  This means that the whole spinner will break off together.

My Tombclone will break off Circumvolution's spinner in a single hit every single time.  It makes for really short fights.

Ah i really love this thing you said, maybe you should enable an option to disable breaking stuff off if on an axle

Just out of curiosity. Does the multi part spinner get combined HP as a single component, or does it have the HP of the base part?

It adds up the total health of the spinner components and consolidates them into a single number.  Right now health = mass * (health per mass of the material).  More mass = more health.

Circumvolution Spinner = 250 health
Tombclone Spinner = 500 health

Tombclone can do thousands of Joules of damage on a single hit, so Circumvolution's spinner is destroyed every single time.

Tbh irl Hori would beat a vert easily. If you are uncomfortable with it you can always add a small HP multiplier
Else lower the damage slider to let the fight last longer
« Last Edit: March 03, 2020, 06:48:42 PM by min440303 »
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Offline CyarSkirata

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2022 on: March 03, 2020, 07:19:26 PM »
For this next build I have combined spinners into a single damageable object.  This means that the whole spinner will break off together.

My Tombclone will break off Circumvolution's spinner in a single hit every single time.  It makes for really short fights.

Ah i really love this thing you said, maybe you should enable an option to disable breaking stuff off if on an axle

Just out of curiosity. Does the multi part spinner get combined HP as a single component, or does it have the HP of the base part?

It adds up the total health of the spinner components and consolidates them into a single number.  Right now health = mass * (health per mass of the material).  More mass = more health.

Circumvolution Spinner = 250 health
Tombclone Spinner = 500 health

Tombclone can do thousands of Joules of damage on a single hit, so Circumvolution's spinner is destroyed every single time.

Tbh irl Hori would beat a vert easily. If you are uncomfortable with it you can always add a small HP multiplier
Else lower the damage slider to let the fight last longer

I mean, that isn't universal, IRL it depends on the individual spinners and how they meet. In my experience, the only inherent horizontal advantage is more from the way their manoeuvres change where on the weapon's path you're meeting it, since that lets them hit the side of the vert almost every time regardless of the vert's efforts to avoid it.
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Offline BATTLEMASTER

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2023 on: March 03, 2020, 08:36:35 PM »
I'm experiencing a lot of trouble working around rims.  For an example, I'm working on a bot inspired by HUGE and am trying to attach a rod to each rim to prevent immobilization by tipping the whole bot onto its side.  However, I accidentally attached a cylinder shape to the center of the rim, and cannot remove said cylinder shape.  Every time I try to select the cylinder, the workshop selects the rim instead and tells me that I can't delete the rim with components attached to it.  It seems like an issue with bounding boxes and it doesn't matter how big the rim is (I have this issue mounting tires to the rim too).

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2024 on: March 03, 2020, 09:13:44 PM »
I'm experiencing a lot of trouble working around rims.  For an example, I'm working on a bot inspired by HUGE and am trying to attach a rod to each rim to prevent immobilization by tipping the whole bot onto its side.  However, I accidentally attached a cylinder shape to the center of the rim, and cannot remove said cylinder shape.  Every time I try to select the cylinder, the workshop selects the rim instead and tells me that I can't delete the rim with components attached to it.  It seems like an issue with bounding boxes and it doesn't matter how big the rim is (I have this issue mounting tires to the rim too).
resize the tire on one side or shift+right arrow
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Offline WhamettNuht

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2025 on: March 04, 2020, 03:09:15 AM »
I'm experiencing a lot of trouble working around rims.  For an example, I'm working on a bot inspired by HUGE and am trying to attach a rod to each rim to prevent immobilization by tipping the whole bot onto its side.  However, I accidentally attached a cylinder shape to the center of the rim, and cannot remove said cylinder shape.  Every time I try to select the cylinder, the workshop selects the rim instead and tells me that I can't delete the rim with components attached to it.  It seems like an issue with bounding boxes and it doesn't matter how big the rim is (I have this issue mounting tires to the rim too).

Unfortunately it is a collision aspect which means all the rims are essentially one solid cylinder. Unity doesn't allow for things such as hollow collisions unless you incorporate a lot of individual collision meshes into one, which cjbruce wants to avoid as it would push the number of active collisions up too high. The best way to do it is to scale parts that get in the way, or if you zoom in close enough to a part you can bypass it's collision and select parts that are inside. Unfortunately this is the only way the game can handle these parts.
Damn I should probably put something fancy in this bit huh?

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2026 on: March 04, 2020, 04:17:50 AM »
I'm experiencing a lot of trouble working around rims.  For an example, I'm working on a bot inspired by HUGE and am trying to attach a rod to each rim to prevent immobilization by tipping the whole bot onto its side.  However, I accidentally attached a cylinder shape to the center of the rim, and cannot remove said cylinder shape.  Every time I try to select the cylinder, the workshop selects the rim instead and tells me that I can't delete the rim with components attached to it.  It seems like an issue with bounding boxes and it doesn't matter how big the rim is (I have this issue mounting tires to the rim too).

Unfortunately it is a collision aspect which means all the rims are essentially one solid cylinder. Unity doesn't allow for things such as hollow collisions unless you incorporate a lot of individual collision meshes into one, which cjbruce wants to avoid as it would push the number of active collisions up too high. The best way to do it is to scale parts that get in the way, or if you zoom in close enough to a part you can bypass it's collision and select parts that are inside. Unfortunately this is the only way the game can handle these parts.

When cmt comes out, ill see if i can do some juju magig for hollow stuff

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2027 on: March 04, 2020, 05:42:47 AM »
This past weekend I had the opportunity to watch about 30 different spinners fight each other, then walk through the pits to see what damage had occurred.  The spinner robots were all around 85 pounds, and they mostly had small-ish vertical spinners.  They were only a handful of horizontal spinners in the mix.  A few observations:

1. Most of the horizontal spinners broke.  The broken ones I looked at tended to have weapon axles that were more than 8 inches apart.
2. When a spinner broke it was because the entire axle came out.  This occurred due to a combination of axle bending (long, thin axle = bad) and frame bending (warped frame = axle pops out).  A 1500 Joule spinner with an 8" long x 3/4" diameter steel axle bent and popped out every time it hit anything solid.  They lost two consecutive axles that way.
3. The spinners were driven mostly by Ampflow A28-150s or A28-400s at 24 volts.
4. Most of the horizontal spinners were larger than 12" in diameter.
5. None of the vertical spinners broke.
6. Most of the vertical spinners were less than 12" in diamater.

Some inferences:

1. Larger diameter spinners break more often.
2. Spinners with bearings farther apart break more easily.

I'm thinking of maybe trying to incorporate the "larger spinner = more dangerous to itself" idea into the game.  My Tombclone has a long bar.  Maybe it is more prone to self damage by accidentally hitting the wall or the floor?  It also tends to send itself flying.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2028 on: March 04, 2020, 06:11:22 AM »
This past weekend I had the opportunity to watch about 30 different spinners fight each other, then walk through the pits to see what damage had occurred.  The spinner robots were all around 85 pounds, and they mostly had small-ish vertical spinners.  They were only a handful of horizontal spinners in the mix.  A few observations:

1. Most of the horizontal spinners broke.  The broken ones I looked at tended to have weapon axles that were more than 8 inches apart.
2. When a spinner broke it was because the entire axle came out.  This occurred due to a combination of axle bending (long, thin axle = bad) and frame bending (warped frame = axle pops out).  A 1500 Joule spinner with an 8" long x 3/4" diameter steel axle bent and popped out every time it hit anything solid.  They lost two consecutive axles that way.
3. The spinners were driven mostly by Ampflow A28-150s or A28-400s at 24 volts.
4. Most of the horizontal spinners were larger than 12" in diameter.
5. None of the vertical spinners broke.
6. Most of the vertical spinners were less than 12" in diamater.

Some inferences:

1. Larger diameter spinners break more often.
2. Spinners with bearings farther apart break more easily.

I'm thinking of maybe trying to incorporate the "larger spinner = more dangerous to itself" idea into the game.  My Tombclone has a long bar.  Maybe it is more prone to self damage by accidentally hitting the wall or the floor?  It also tends to send itself flying.

That idea is good, however when you look at it, in HW divisions, bigger horizontal bars tend do be more dangerous to other bots if driven well.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2029 on: March 04, 2020, 08:23:07 AM »
Totally agree.

The game makes a distinction between hitting an opponent and hitting an immovable object.  It would be straightforward to increase self damage for large diameter spinners.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2030 on: March 04, 2020, 09:13:11 AM »
Totally agree.

The game makes a distinction between hitting an opponent and hitting an immovable object.  It would be straightforward to increase self damage for large diameter spinners.
Current form of self damage is the weapon falling off which happens unrealistically often and its very sensitive, id recommend more of an internal shock

Offline WhamettNuht

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2031 on: March 04, 2020, 09:32:55 AM »
Current form of self damage is the weapon falling off which happens unrealistically often and its very sensitive, id recommend more of an internal shock

Which again - goes back to my thing about the damage system being moved to the health of internal components including impact damage ;)
Damn I should probably put something fancy in this bit huh?

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2032 on: March 04, 2020, 09:43:25 AM »
Current form of self damage is the weapon falling off which happens unrealistically often and its very sensitive, id recommend more of an internal shock

Which again - goes back to my thing about the damage system being moved to the health of internal components including impact damage ;)

But how do we communicate to players that damage is accumulating?  The nice thing about something falling off is that it is very visual.

90% of the robot KOs this weekend were because the little wires that go to the receiver popped out after a hit.  It is an incredibly unsatisfying way to lose.  There is no warning, and it sucks when it happens.  Your robot stops working.

Even though losing like this is completely realistic, I don't want RR2 players to feel like every time they lost it was because of an unlucky hit.

Offline CodeSilver23

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2033 on: March 04, 2020, 09:44:17 AM »
Would it be possible to have parts warp visually based off of damage received? And maybe more total damage taken = slower spin up time and maybe motors shutting off entirely?
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Offline WhamettNuht

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2034 on: March 04, 2020, 09:52:45 AM »
Current form of self damage is the weapon falling off which happens unrealistically often and its very sensitive, id recommend more of an internal shock

Which again - goes back to my thing about the damage system being moved to the health of internal components including impact damage ;)

But how do we communicate to players that damage is accumulating?  The nice thing about something falling off is that it is very visual.

90% of the robot KOs this weekend were because the little wires that go to the receiver popped out after a hit.  It is an incredibly unsatisfying way to lose.  There is no warning, and it sucks when it happens.  Your robot stops working.

Even though losing like this is completely realistic, I don't want RR2 players to feel like every time they lost it was because of an unlucky hit.

As I had suggested, maybe doing a new version of the LED which indicates a colour according to health. And besides - we have the armour panels which can now fall off which is always good.

And to be honest I was thinking to make things fairer of maybe having 'Impact' health work a bit like a pump kind of system.... if you hit the opponent, the impact level goes up but can recover itself. The more you hit an opponent in a row (Axe, Flipper, Rammer, ect.) the less time the bar has to recover and can be pushed to the critical health level.

Just trying to think of a way to make all weapons have a fairer fighting chance rather than spinners just being the elite.
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Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2035 on: March 04, 2020, 09:54:47 AM »
Would it be possible to have parts warp visually based off of damage received? And maybe more total damage taken = slower spin up time and maybe motors shutting off entirely?
Visual warp is gonna be kinda awful to make with rigidbodies, ra2 is having one for chassis and you can see how well that works. I could see a uhh component deteriation system with scratches, dents (with bumpmapping) and uhh fractures, I like the slower spin up. Now for the wires breaking off, maybe if you could have a visible wire once the advanced wiring system exists, we could cut the wires off with the weapon in a battle? This way you wont lose to wire falling off, you would lose to wire getting cut instead

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2036 on: March 04, 2020, 09:58:57 AM »
Visual deformation looks terrible right now.  It would take a lot of work to make it subtle and probably only mediocre looking.  Not worth the time, IMO.

An LED system could work.  Maybe that is enough?  I’m not so keen on a “self healing” mechanic.  It just seems like this is so gamey and not at all representative of the real world.  I think I would be a lot more okay with hits putting a robot off balance though.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2037 on: March 04, 2020, 10:03:12 AM »
Visual deformation looks terrible right now.  It would take a lot of work to make it subtle and probably only mediocre looking.  Not worth the time, IMO.

An LED system could work.  Maybe that is enough?  I%u2019m not so keen on a %u201Cself healing%u201D mechanic.  It just seems like this is so gamey and not at all representative of the real world.  I think I would be a lot more okay with hits putting a robot off balance though.

Honestly for an axe, the stronget the armour the longer the bot lasts. I think a perfect example where a bot was axed to death was between THZ and Spawn Again where the bot just slowly died.

how does the visual deformation look like rn btw?

Offline WhamettNuht

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2038 on: March 04, 2020, 10:08:06 AM »
Visual deformation looks terrible right now.  It would take a lot of work to make it subtle and probably only mediocre looking.  Not worth the time, IMO.

An LED system could work.  Maybe that is enough?  I’m not so keen on a “self healing” mechanic.  It just seems like this is so gamey and not at all representative of the real world.  I think I would be a lot more okay with hits putting a robot off balance though.

After all - Power LEDs are required in real life robots, so might as well use this to our advantage.

And if not self restoring I like the idea of slowing down an opponent. That could also play into our previously mentioned idea about instead of just eliminating a robot on instant knockout, doing a 10 second count down. In real life competitions once a robot has been immobilised they still count it down rather than just going 'Oh your bot aint moving it's out'. Then players can dance around the arena for a bit, ect. lol. Maybe with this in mind we could make robot's less responsive as well as gradually slowing down? Twitching motors, one drive motor slower than the others, ect. ect.
Damn I should probably put something fancy in this bit huh?

Offline WhamettNuht

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2039 on: March 04, 2020, 10:09:27 AM »
Honestly for an axe, the stronget the armour the longer the bot lasts. I think a perfect example where a bot was axed to death was between THZ and Spawn Again where the bot just slowly died.

how does the visual deformation look like rn btw?

Wouldn't this be from that Mesh Deform script we currently have in the back log of the game?? Albeit I haven't played around with this feature yet for new arena props but I'm still sceptical on how they would work for them hahaha
Damn I should probably put something fancy in this bit huh?