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 188006 times)

Offline cephalopod

Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2240 on: May 26, 2020, 05:45:58 AM »
yeah i know i'm just messing around with you. all his beetles/feathers including our new joint feather are all direct drive brushless, but for game purposes i think this is the right way to go about things :)

Speaking of real life, do you have any idea what is happening with Bugglebots this year?

i know some of the team are keen to get back at it but others have been pushing for at least a year off given the amount of work needed after filming, this was even before covid kicked off.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2241 on: May 26, 2020, 06:03:53 AM »
That's awesome! And I think the A28-150G's should work perfect in that size. A few heavyweights even boldly use them. Valkyrie has always just been 2 A28-150 motors, although it's never been tasked with pushing much. Since we used the A28-400G's, we were using the same gearboxes as well, which held up fine for 6 fights at BattleBots and 3 at Robot Ruckus (in thwackbot mode). We won't be using them for 2020 (or 2021... or 2022.......), as we designed in Maytech 8085 Brushless motors. We were swapping the weapon to those motors and decided to change the drive over as well, so that all of the spares can be double-useful.

Nice!  I’m excited to see how you feel about the brushless motors vs the AmpFlows.  I felt like I was designing the brushless motor simulation in a vacuum.  We don’t use them in real life, and manufactures data is nonexistent.  In the end I assumed that torque is limited by current over most of the RPM range.  It makes the brushless motors in the game behave like constant torque devices.

1. We are putting the A28-400s in the game for the next build.   Would you be willing to build a mock-up of a certain robot in the game to see how it drives?  We have Colossus, but I was hoping to build simulations at several different weight classes to see how close we can match the real life robots.

2. Would you mind sharing the ESCs you are using in your brushless setup?  Are there any other components we are missing?

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2242 on: May 26, 2020, 09:22:54 AM »
New bleeding edge build is out (26May2020)!

[Bug Fix] Fixed crashing bug when a motor is not connected to a battery.

[Bug Fix] Fixed problem where the game tried to find a connection on motors that don't have connections when spawning for combat.

[Bug Fix] game tried to access removed components while looking though the wiring system.

[Bug Fix] sometimes the game changed all channels in the receiver when the player changed only one channel.

[Bug Fix] Arena Menu only showing 1 Custom Arena

[Added] Added A28-400 motor.  This is a bigger version of the A28-150.  Somebody, I'm looking at you! :)

[Added] Motors smoke when their temperature is greater than 115 degrees.

[Potential Bug Fix] Spinners should self-right now.  This needs to be tested across a bunch of robots.

[Tweaked] Increased speed at which the high speed collider is enabled from 30 RPM to 120 RPM. This should make things look a little more realistic.

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2243 on: May 26, 2020, 11:54:40 AM »
The smoke effect is really epic, huge credits to this.

Bots did self-right, but my bots could also self-right in the last build. And I think the main issue of spinner bite still exist, discs work like no teeth (more like teeth work like smooth cylinder, and even bars work like smooth cylinder)




Also crazy gyro.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2020, 01:00:27 PM by min440303 »
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2244 on: May 26, 2020, 12:25:12 PM »
I’m glad you like the smoke!  It was supposed to be in the last build but I accidentally disabled it right before we pushed the builds.

Spinner impacts are back on my list!  I need to look at spinner bite again now that the colliders have been reworked.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2245 on: May 26, 2020, 02:10:57 PM »
Min,

I just had a thought about gyro.  If you were driving the real-life Minotaur you wouldn't push the stick all the way left or right if you felt the robot lifting due to gyro.  You would back off the stick slightly to try to keep the robot flat.  Likewise, you would be continuously adjusting the motor speed so you weren't going full speed all of the time.

If you don't have a game controller with an analog stick at home, you can simulate this input by hooking up the drive motors to 8 or 12 volts.

If you were to try a reduced drive voltage, how does it feel when you are turning with a reduced input signal?  Is gyro controllable?

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2246 on: May 26, 2020, 07:37:44 PM »
Min,

I just had a thought about gyro.  If you were driving the real-life Minotaur you wouldn't push the stick all the way left or right if you felt the robot lifting due to gyro.  You would back off the stick slightly to try to keep the robot flat.  Likewise, you would be continuously adjusting the motor speed so you weren't going full speed all of the time.

If you don't have a game controller with an analog stick at home, you can simulate this input by hooking up the drive motors to 8 or 12 volts.

If you were to try a reduced drive voltage, how does it feel when you are turning with a reduced input signal?  Is gyro controllable?
If I set drive motors to 8 or 12 volts, its turning speed reduced as well as its linear speed, so...actually I didn't feel much difference, just like the entire bot was slower. As the turning speed reduced, surely the gyro was more controllable, but meanwhile it would be much harder to turn, so yeah.

I don't know much about physics, but as I saw in real battles, when drums like minotaur started gyroing, they would just gyro in place for self-righting.

In my cognition, gyro should be like (Feb 16th)

not like(May 26th)
« Last Edit: May 26, 2020, 08:20:06 PM by min440303 »
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Offline CodeSilver23

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2247 on: May 26, 2020, 07:47:06 PM »
Min,

I just had a thought about gyro.  If you were driving the real-life Minotaur you wouldn't push the stick all the way left or right if you felt the robot lifting due to gyro.  You would back off the stick slightly to try to keep the robot flat.  Likewise, you would be continuously adjusting the motor speed so you weren't going full speed all of the time.

If you don't have a game controller with an analog stick at home, you can simulate this input by hooking up the drive motors to 8 or 12 volts.

If you were to try a reduced drive voltage, how does it feel when you are turning with a reduced input signal?  Is gyro controllable?
If I set drive motors to 8 or 12 volts, its turning speed reduced as well as its linear speed, so...actually I didn't feel it much different, just like the entire bot was slower. As the turning speed reduced, surely the gyro was more controllable, but meanwhile it would be much harder to turn, so yeah.

I don't know much about physics, but as I saw in real battles, when drums like minotaur started gyroing, they just turn in place for self-righting.

In my cognition, gyro should be like (Feb 16th)

not like(May 26th)

Drums gyro way too much in this game, imo. If you have a standard vert with the same weight (or even more) in its weapon, it doesn't gyro as ludicrous as a drum would. I feel like there's something up with a formula you're using that is causing this.
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Offline Somebody

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2248 on: May 26, 2020, 09:27:05 PM »
That's awesome! And I think the A28-150G's should work perfect in that size. A few heavyweights even boldly use them. Valkyrie has always just been 2 A28-150 motors, although it's never been tasked with pushing much. Since we used the A28-400G's, we were using the same gearboxes as well, which held up fine for 6 fights at BattleBots and 3 at Robot Ruckus (in thwackbot mode). We won't be using them for 2020 (or 2021... or 2022.......), as we designed in Maytech 8085 Brushless motors. We were swapping the weapon to those motors and decided to change the drive over as well, so that all of the spares can be double-useful.

Nice!  I%u2019m excited to see how you feel about the brushless motors vs the AmpFlows.  I felt like I was designing the brushless motor simulation in a vacuum.  We don%u2019t use them in real life, and manufactures data is nonexistent.  In the end I assumed that torque is limited by current over most of the RPM range.  It makes the brushless motors in the game behave like constant torque devices.

1. We are putting the A28-400s in the game for the next build.   Would you be willing to build a mock-up of a certain robot in the game to see how it drives?  We have Colossus, but I was hoping to build simulations at several different weight classes to see how close we can match the real life robots.

2. Would you mind sharing the ESCs you are using in your brushless setup?  Are there any other components we are missing?

0. So I was told by someone more knowledgeable than me that brushless motors' torque curves (relevant more specifically for weapons) are non-linear. Because the voltage scales with motor speed, meaning that they are not at their peak power until they reach the top of their RPM range.

Max RPM = Max V (voltage), so P=I*Vmax, with constant I (current), yields Max P (power).

Once we have a working robot to test with, I'll be able to actually figure out if this is true or not. But we designed around that mentality. One thing worth noting is that our prior weapon motor controllers, Kelly KDS72200E e-bike controllers, also add 1-2 seconds to spinup due to a built-in soft-start system to limit motor current spikes. Helpful for keeping motors alive, but not helping for drawing apples to apples comparisons.

1. I can try! It's been quite some time since I've fiddled with RR2 so I would have to re-learn controls and whatnot. Seeing many of the things being build, I figure it can't be too impossible for me to build my big boxy robot.

Do you have any kind of controllable current limiting modeled into the game yet? Trying to make a model of HUGE that drives accurately would require current limiting due to its (bad) design in 2019. It was geared for ~26mph, and limited to anywhere between 60A and 100A depending on the fight. This was based on trying to re-use under-sized motor controllers that we already owned, and cheap off-the-shelf gearboxes. This resulted in driving characteristics that were an incredibly slow acceleration up to a high speed. For example, when fighting Hypershock, we actually drove forwards running away from them once they pushed us up to high-ish speeds, since our top speed is technically faster. They just obviously had the acceleration advantage.

2. For 2020, we will be using Trampa VESC 6 Mk.3 motor controllers. Trampa controllers were spoken of very highly by the teams that used them last year, enough so that we felt comfortable making the jump. Still plenty of testing and tuning to do!

Edit: As another thought, current limiting will help a lot in-game (as well as in reality) with motor heat management. A28-400's could never be used to run a robot up to 26mph without current limiting, they would burn up for sure. But hey, HUGE isn't a bot built to push people around haha.
I built that big robot on that TV show that time


Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2249 on: May 26, 2020, 09:47:12 PM »
Hmm.  I hadn’t thought to put a controllable current limiter into the game.  That would probably be helpful.  We don’t do it with our own ESCs, and I didn’t realize it was a thing that people do for brushed ESCs.

Right now brushed ESCs are completely unlimited.  I ended up artificially reducing the torque for drive motors to dull the initial current (and torque) spike.  Drive motors were so torquey initially that the simulation couldn’t keep up and it was causing the lighter robots to jump unrealistically around the arena.

It wouldn’t be difficult to add a current limiter to ESCs.  60-100 amps is low!  I haven’t built a drive system with the A28-400s yet, but I suspect most robots will exceed that unless they are geared down a lot.

It sounds like the brushless motor model might be reasonably close to real life.  I limited current to some suitably small value.  I can’t remember the exact number, but it is something like 25% of what the stall torque would be for a brushed motor.  You might try the brushless motors in game.  They have an insane top speed but their current limiting means they have to be geared way down.  If we can find the numbers for the motors you are using I would be happy to put them in the game for testing purposes.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2250 on: May 26, 2020, 09:53:13 PM »
RE: Gyroscopic Effects

 For this build I finally removed the “fudge factor” that was included to reduce the moment of inertia if spinners.  MOI in the February 16th build was somewhere around 10% of what it should have been.  That code has been eliminated.

I need to take a deeper look now to verify whether or not the amount of wheel lift we are seeing is true to real life.  It’s time to whip out the calculator! 🙂

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2251 on: May 26, 2020, 10:11:42 PM »
Ahh yes. Still have one thing to mention.

When I asked about turning issues for verts, you said it was because of all of the weight so far forward from the wheelbase. I tried out some weight tweaking and found it was a thing, but

I had to set the disc and the front wedges to 1mm steel, and the back chassis panel to 50mm steel, then that worked a bit better but the bot would be completely useless with a 2kg disc and 2kg wedge. So yea, something's wrong I think.


Edit: Ball casters didn't help.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2020, 06:56:07 AM by min440303 »
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Offline cephalopod

Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2252 on: May 27, 2020, 04:28:45 AM »
re: turning a bot with massive gyro, i rewatched this yesterday and sam really demonstrates how tricky turning something with a massive disc can be, literally just tapping the turn button is about as realistic as it gets
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Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2253 on: May 27, 2020, 04:48:26 AM »
re: turning a bot with massive gyro, i rewatched this yesterday and sam really demonstrates how tricky turning something with a massive disc can be, literally just tapping the turn button is about as realistic as it gets

Vertical disc spinners did have kinda realistic gyro in the new build, but drums didn't. The width of the spinner would massively increase the gyroing of a bot in this game which was unrealistic. You can see in my vids above, Poison Arrow was already gyroing insanely when the drum was only 1000~2000 rpm.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2254 on: May 27, 2020, 06:05:49 AM »
min,

That's a great observation!  A disc and a drum with the same radius and the same mass distribution (automatically true for the game because I'm lazy) will have the same MOI.

From the point of view of gyroscopic effect, the length of the drum should make no difference. 

Try the following using the Run Amok Spinner Kinetic Energy Calculator:  http://runamok.tech/RunAmok/spincalc.html

Thin Disc:
Density = 8000 kg / m^3 (approximately steel)
Thickness = 25 mm (1 inch thick)
Radius = 100 mm (8 inches in diameter)
Mass = 6.28 kg
MOI = 0.0314 kg * m^2

Thick Disc (a.k.a. short drum):
Density = 2000 kg / m^3 (approximately aluminum)
Thickness = 100 mm (4 inches wide)
Radius = 100 mm (8 inches in diameter)
Mass = 6.28 kg
MOI = 0.0314 kg * m^2

The thin disc and the thick disc have the same radius and the same mass, therefore they have the same MOI.  They should have the same gyro lift when you turn.

We can test this in the game by creating a disc weapon and adjusting its properties to maintain a constant spinning mass while varying the length of the drum.  No matter how wide you make the drum, as long as the mass and radius stay the same it should drive the same.  If the gyroscopic effect is different then that is a quirk with Unity's implementation of PhysX that needs to be addressed.

Offline min440303

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2255 on: May 27, 2020, 06:33:01 AM »
Yea it is a thing. When I made E-max (the 4WD drum bot) into a 4WD disc spinner without changing the weapon weight, the turning issue caused by gyro just disappeared.

But I think 2WD verts still have some unsolved problems. Just look at my post above.
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Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2256 on: May 27, 2020, 08:21:00 AM »
Yea it is a thing. When I made E-max (the 4WD drum bot) into a 4WD disc spinner without changing the weapon weight, the turning issue caused by gyro just disappeared.

But I think 2WD verts still have some unsolved problems. Just look at my post above.

Thanks for checking that.

As far as 2WD drivability issues, there is definitely something weird going on.  The only effective solution I have found is to put all of the weight right over the wheels.  I don’t know why this is true.  That’s the most frustrating part.

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2257 on: May 27, 2020, 09:31:21 AM »
min, I'm convinced now.

I finally had a chance to sit down and play with the incredible Poison Arrow model you created.  First off, wow!  It is amazing!  The drum is slightly underweight and you geared it a little further down than the real thing, but wow, nice job!

There is definitely a problem with the wheel lift when the drum gets up to speed.  To me it looks like the lift is occurring correctly.  The problem is that it is not setting itself back down when you reverse the condition that created the lift.  This is not physically correct at all. 

I have no idea where the problem is, but one solution is to include a script to reduce the Moment of Inertia.

Offline kix

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2258 on: May 27, 2020, 11:59:35 AM »
Finally gave the build a proper go, and not a fast check.

So about the bite. I feel like there is a delay between a spinner's tooth collides with the opponent, and when the opponent is sent flying
Gyro is ok, not the best, but im sure that it works like that in irl

Ive seen that titanium is added ingame, its all there for placeholder or? Atm It has no sparks unlike real titanium which sparks like crazy (its all about them spark effects that are melting the cpu)

I cant seem to break parts off, i assume damage is off because of the experiments with the spinner bite and gyro

Offline cjbruce

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Re: Robot Rumble 2.0 - Robot Combat Simulator - Under Development
« Reply #2259 on: May 28, 2020, 09:19:49 AM »
Finally gave the build a proper go, and not a fast check.

So about the bite. I feel like there is a delay between a spinner's tooth collides with the opponent, and when the opponent is sent flying
Gyro is ok, not the best, but im sure that it works like that in irl

For the next build I'm reducing MOI to 30% of its original value.  This should make Poison Arrow very difficult to drive at 8000 RPM, but not completely impossible.

Ive seen that titanium is added ingame, its all there for placeholder or? Atm It has no sparks unlike real titanium which sparks like crazy (its all about them spark effects that are melting the cpu)

Titanium exists, but spark and bite are still on my to-do list.

I cant seem to break parts off, i assume damage is off because of the experiments with the spinner bite and gyro

Correct.  We need to get bite working properly before we turn damage back on.  Damage is very dependent on bite.