one of the main issues I’ve had with the Oct 10 build is that the bot direction and AI reset every time you enter into the workshop, which makes checking tourney bots really complicated. I’m not sure if this was fixed in this new update, but I thought it would be best to bring this to your attention.
yeah. It just resets to the default AI after I look at the bot in the workshop. Also, if the front needs to be at 180 degrees, it resets to 0 whenever you go back to the workshop.
I found the source of the problem, and should be able to put out a fix today. There was some errant code in the flame pit that was directly changing the health of a component every tick, rather than going through the takeHeat() method.
We're still in the process of reworking damage, and this was a super-helpful catch. Thank you!
Aye, Happy Finals Week, Chris! Glad to see you’ve awakened from your slumber. I’ve been doing my best to keep RR2 relevant with SvL while you were away, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with over break!
I've been thinking about rollers for wheels, after my attempts to build some ate the entire frame rate
What I'm wondering is if it would be plausible to have an object that has significant friction in - say - the X axis, but none in Y or Z.
Assuming directional friction is possible in the engine, it would allow rollers on wheels - or in other places - to function without having to complicate the game's calculations with moving hinges.
It turns out that a big problem with player-made wheels was that the game was recognizing them as high-speed spinning weapons and adding Weapon_Blur_Cylinders to them. The Weapon_Blur_Cylinders are designed to correctly calculate the result of impacts when a steel bar is spinning faster than approximately 400 RPM. At this speed, the physics engine is essentially "teleporting" the spinning thing to its new location every tick.
Weapon_Blur_Cylinders do apply tangential forces, but they don't simulate friction, so driving with them is a terrible experience.
In the new build if you create a shape and set the material to "Rubber", the game will not create a Weapon_Blur_Cylinder at all. This means that the game will use its normal friction system, and the robot will drive exactly like it would if you used premade wheels.
quick question as i haven't seen it posted an di'm new af to this game, how do you add robots that others have made to the game please, i'm looking for stuff in the game folders and i can't see anything
i think I can help. When you go to files, type “%APPDATA%” and hit enter. Next, use the drop-down menu where it says AppData and select LocalLow. Then select Nerd Lab Studios and then select Robots. Your personal bot files should all be located there. When downloading other people’s bots, just copy-paste them to that folder. Hope this helps you!
When the paint system gets properly built, we need the option to make custom paint shapes and to use coordinates to place them. I'd never be able to make a paint job like this without those two things
No news or progress for the past six weeks. We have been rewriting our entire physics course curriculum, one day at a time. It has been a bit overwhelming. I'm REALLY looking forward to things calming down so I can resume work on the game.
hey so Im a huge fan of the game, but I have a few questions.
1. Are you going to make any other robots e.g. Behemoth, Magnetar, (Im choosing these 2 as they would be worthy apponents of TR3 and Manta)?
2. When can we make our own arenas?
3. Why does Bubblegum not work properly anymore?
4. Why do player-made spinner robots randomly start flying when they reach a certain RPM?
I don't mind about Q2 but I think you guys need to look at 3&4 now and maybe Q1 later on once your happy with the physics and AI and damage system. Anyway, I like how this game is in constant development *cough* robot arena 3 *cough* and I cant wait for the next update. Again, great work guys, Im a huge fan, and I cant wait to see what the next update brings.
with number 1, there are people that have actually built really nice replicas of those bots along with many other awesome bots as well! I’d recommend asking Wham over on Gametechmods to see when he’s planning on releasing his reps to the public. I’d also recommend checking out his showcase, as the bots that he’s built over the past many months are absolutely stunning! Hopefully this comment helps!
1. We don’t have any plans currently. I would like to get to the point where we can rebuild everything in the botlab first. Maybe that’sa pipe dream, but it’s my pipe dream.
2. The arena builder is still in the back of my mind. We’re working on other things at the moment.
3. I found a bug with the collider for the weapon blur cylinder. Hopefully this fixes Bubblegum. I will check tomorrow.
4. See #3. I think it will be fixed on the next build.
Not sure yet. The going has been slow. HP probably won’t even be a thing in the first few rewrites of the damage system. The idea is that if a motor or ESC takes a hit, it stops working immediately.
I’m starting with breakable armor plates. The plates will break off only if they are hit hard enough. HP as a concept isn’t necessary for this, so I am leaving it out for now.
It would be really handy to be able to set how fast a motor turns, or to have a higher limit to how big of a ratio you can set on a gearbox. My Panic Attack rep has difficulty using its forks for anything but conventional flipping, because I can't make them move slow enough despite a 10-0.1 ratio.
The latest bleeding edge build lets you make gearboxes with as much reduction as you can make the space for. 1000:1 should be no problem if you stack three 10:1 gear sets.
I've been a tad nervous about the idea of trying the bleeding edge builds for the sake of my large number of robots, but I'll back them up and have a go.
I've tried it, putting the forks on two gearboxes. The first at 10-0.1 and the second at 10-0.5. The forks move at the right speed, but they're completely useless.
If I try to lift them with any weight on them, they just go limp and fall back to the floor after about half a second.
In the Robot Workshop, look under the "Motion" tab -> Transmissions. You should find a variety of options to play with.
Once you place a pulley, select it and drag one of the arrows to pull out a belt or chain in that direction. You can make belts and chain as long as you need, and adjust the gear ratio by changing the size of the pulleys/gears.
I was just thinking, somebody with more social media stuff than me should tell NerdCubed about this, it's exactly what he's said he wants just about every time he's played a robot battler. :)
If I had to take a guess - with absolutely no experience regarding how the game might work but access to a lot of robots to observe - I think it might be in some way related to the robot not being applicable for the game's spinner mechanics.
We aren’t really focused on creating content right now. We have our hands full with the botlab and the new damage system. After that comes a rewrite of the AI system and tournament mode. Once all that is in place, we should have some time to focus on new content.
I anticipate that we won’t be thinking about any new robots for another year or two.
I've built a four-wheel drive push bot, and for some reason it handles like a shopping trolley that can't decide whether to veer left or right. Every time I start moving I just have to guess and hope.
Dude, This looks amazing so far, its like the predecessor to Robot Arena 2. You should totally get this up on steam, a multiplayer support would be amazing to see too, Cant wait to see what you do with this!
Multiplayer - We have people using Parsec for multiplayer now, but I think that is as far as we will go. Real-time dedicated multiplayer servers aren't in the cards unless we completely change the scope of the project, which would require a massive investment of time and money.
I can't give an accurate number, as I haven't done a multiplayer game before, but suffice it to say that without the support of tens of thousands of paying players every month, I doubt it would be economically viable.
I recommend checking on the RR2 forums over at www.gametechmods.com. There are lots of people over there who have been building some great heavyweight robot replicas.
In general, start with Ampflow A40-300 motors, attach some wheels, and be sure to increase the armor plate thickness in the “Materials” tab so that your robot weighs at least 100 kg. Otherwise the motors are so powerful that they will flip your robot.
Any idea if the next build will fix the issue of heavy spinning weapons coming to a sudden stop when hitting the walls or the floor (and sometimes opponents)?
This is a simplification I made to avoid having to deal with coming up with an algorithm for computing the percentage of energy lost on different hit conditions.
If you don’t mind my asking, what situation are you having where it doesn’t feel right to dump all of the spinner’s KE on the hit?
For example, a weapon spinning at a high rpm feels odd when it comes to a sudden stop against the wall or floor. It just seems a little bit more realistic if the weapons kind of bounce the bot away from the surface it struck if the bite depth wasn't great enough to exert all of the force.
1. If there is a glancing blow, the weapon will bounce off without losing speed. (DONE)
2. If there is a direct hit, the weapon will lose all of its speed, dumping all of its KE into the robots involved. (DONE)
3. There needs to be a gray area between #1 and #2. Something in between a "good hit" and a "glancing blow". (NOT DONE) Maybe the "glancing blow" situation needs to be adjusted depending on the quality of the hit such that a fraction of the speed is lost, but not all of it.
Sorry about that! We introduced a few features in rapid succession that caused the problem (see comments from 17 days ago). The fix is fairly painless. You just need to add a few things to the affected robot’s save files. Here’s a link detailing how to fix the files:
Unfortunately it isn’t currently in the budget. I did a projection a few months ago, and we estimated it would add a few hundred thousand dollars to the development costs to properly rebuild the game around online multiplayer. Our total budget is only a small fraction of that.
Awesome! Thank you! School has started, so it might be a few weeks before I get to them, but once things have normalized, I should be back in the swing.
We still have several thousand hours of work left to do, so we are pretty far out at this point. At the rate we are going, I expect it will be a few more years until the official release.
Right now we are planning continue to release updates as we go, first as free public Alpha, then as closed Beta.
I keep getting this glitch that makes my robot not work and i cant access anything, please fix this i have made 3 bots that took my over an hour and have just disappeared.
Sorry about this! We did a series of builds in rapid succession that created incompatibilities with robots created in previous builds. The fix is to edit the .RR2Bot files for the robots.
You can find a complete description and how to fix the broken .RR2Bot files on the GameTechMods website. I promise the fix isn't too painful, and feel free to ask if you have questions!
The robot workshop doesn't work properly for me. If I try copy-pasting something, I can't interact with any other part of the robot from that point on, until I click on the copy of the part. At which point the copy vanishes.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Are you planning on keeping the RR2 Twitter up to date, or is it a lost cause?
Working on it. We might be in need of a social media guru. I’ll know more soon.
one of the main issues I’ve had with the Oct 10 build is that the bot direction and AI reset every time you enter into the workshop, which makes checking tourney bots really complicated. I’m not sure if this was fixed in this new update, but I thought it would be best to bring this to your attention.
Shoot. I wasn’t aware of the issue. Is this a problem with the AI system?
yeah. It just resets to the default AI after I look at the bot in the workshop. Also, if the front needs to be at 180 degrees, it resets to 0 whenever you go back to the workshop.
Drat. I wasn’t planning to look at AI until after damage. What absolutely positively needs to be fixed to run the tournament?
Nah, man, its fine. Just a bit of a hassle is all. I just was making you aware of it is all.
I found a problem. Fire damage instantly makes all small parts fall off.
I drove a panel bot within a foot of the flame pit - not even on it - and it just collapsed in a heap.
Oh wow. I didn’t notice that! What were the panels made from? How thick? Maybe wooden panels should burn? 🙂
Steel and polycarb, all 5mm.
I found the source of the problem, and should be able to put out a fix today. There was some errant code in the flame pit that was directly changing the health of a component every tick, rather than going through the takeHeat() method.
We're still in the process of reworking damage, and this was a super-helpful catch. Thank you!
:)
Aye, Happy Finals Week, Chris! Glad to see you’ve awakened from your slumber. I’ve been doing my best to keep RR2 relevant with SvL while you were away, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with over break!
You are amazing. Thank you!
PS - The new build is up!
I've been thinking about rollers for wheels, after my attempts to build some ate the entire frame rate
What I'm wondering is if it would be plausible to have an object that has significant friction in - say - the X axis, but none in Y or Z.
Assuming directional friction is possible in the engine, it would allow rollers on wheels - or in other places - to function without having to complicate the game's calculations with moving hinges.
It turns out that a big problem with player-made wheels was that the game was recognizing them as high-speed spinning weapons and adding Weapon_Blur_Cylinders to them. The Weapon_Blur_Cylinders are designed to correctly calculate the result of impacts when a steel bar is spinning faster than approximately 400 RPM. At this speed, the physics engine is essentially "teleporting" the spinning thing to its new location every tick.
Weapon_Blur_Cylinders do apply tangential forces, but they don't simulate friction, so driving with them is a terrible experience.
In the new build if you create a shape and set the material to "Rubber", the game will not create a Weapon_Blur_Cylinder at all. This means that the game will use its normal friction system, and the robot will drive exactly like it would if you used premade wheels.
quick question as i haven't seen it posted an di'm new af to this game, how do you add robots that others have made to the game please, i'm looking for stuff in the game folders and i can't see anything
i think I can help. When you go to files, type “%APPDATA%” and hit enter. Next, use the drop-down menu where it says AppData and select LocalLow. Then select Nerd Lab Studios and then select Robots. Your personal bot files should all be located there. When downloading other people’s bots, just copy-paste them to that folder. Hope this helps you!
When the paint system gets properly built, we need the option to make custom paint shapes and to use coordinates to place them. I'd never be able to make a paint job like this without those two things
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0-showcases/cyar-skirata's-rr2-sh...
Hey! Any news or progress?
IK that you have a class to teach so yeah, no rush
No news or progress for the past six weeks. We have been rewriting our entire physics course curriculum, one day at a time. It has been a bit overwhelming. I'm REALLY looking forward to things calming down so I can resume work on the game.
Aye, man. Take your time. We can wait. At least this will give me enough time to finish my tournament.
hey so Im a huge fan of the game, but I have a few questions.
1. Are you going to make any other robots e.g. Behemoth, Magnetar, (Im choosing these 2 as they would be worthy apponents of TR3 and Manta)?
2. When can we make our own arenas?
3. Why does Bubblegum not work properly anymore?
4. Why do player-made spinner robots randomly start flying when they reach a certain RPM?
I don't mind about Q2 but I think you guys need to look at 3&4 now and maybe Q1 later on once your happy with the physics and AI and damage system. Anyway, I like how this game is in constant development *cough* robot arena 3 *cough* and I cant wait for the next update. Again, great work guys, Im a huge fan, and I cant wait to see what the next update brings.
:D
1. I doubt that they can use the bots you said because they are under the RW license, and they would need to acqure the rights which is hard
2. I honestly would like that, maybe it should work like Bot Builder?
3. Uh they will fix it most likely after the physics rework
4. I also experienced that which is weird
but behemoth and magnetar are free to use though
with number 1, there are people that have actually built really nice replicas of those bots along with many other awesome bots as well! I’d recommend asking Wham over on Gametechmods to see when he’s planning on releasing his reps to the public. I’d also recommend checking out his showcase, as the bots that he’s built over the past many months are absolutely stunning! Hopefully this comment helps!
1. We don’t have any plans currently. I would like to get to the point where we can rebuild everything in the botlab first. Maybe that’sa pipe dream, but it’s my pipe dream.
2. The arena builder is still in the back of my mind. We’re working on other things at the moment.
3. I found a bug with the collider for the weapon blur cylinder. Hopefully this fixes Bubblegum. I will check tomorrow.
4. See #3. I think it will be fixed on the next build.
When are we getting buffed HP, and no axle damage?
Not sure yet. The going has been slow. HP probably won’t even be a thing in the first few rewrites of the damage system. The idea is that if a motor or ESC takes a hit, it stops working immediately.
I’m starting with breakable armor plates. The plates will break off only if they are hit hard enough. HP as a concept isn’t necessary for this, so I am leaving it out for now.
This is actually a great idea! Cant wait for it!
Are plates gonna be KJ limited?
Like UHMW part will break off with less KJ, than Steel part?
Also White alu and steel when?
Yes, though I think UHMW will need special treatment because it is so slippery. I want to make it really difficult to bite into UHMW.
It would be really handy to be able to set how fast a motor turns, or to have a higher limit to how big of a ratio you can set on a gearbox. My Panic Attack rep has difficulty using its forks for anything but conventional flipping, because I can't make them move slow enough despite a 10-0.1 ratio.
It needs to be able to move them a good five to ten times slower to work properly.
The latest bleeding edge build lets you make gearboxes with as much reduction as you can make the space for. 1000:1 should be no problem if you stack three 10:1 gear sets.
I've been a tad nervous about the idea of trying the bleeding edge builds for the sake of my large number of robots, but I'll back them up and have a go.
Fair enough! It is probably worth following the RR2 thread on GTM to see if anyone is having problems with each bleeding edge build before trying it.
I've tried it, putting the forks on two gearboxes. The first at 10-0.1 and the second at 10-0.5. The forks move at the right speed, but they're completely useless.
If I try to lift them with any weight on them, they just go limp and fall back to the floor after about half a second.
why do you have pulleys but not chains
On the most recent builds you should find both belts and chains. They are currently identical mechanically.
Where can you find belts?
In the Robot Workshop, look under the "Motion" tab -> Transmissions. You should find a variety of options to play with.
Once you place a pulley, select it and drag one of the arrows to pull out a belt or chain in that direction. You can make belts and chain as long as you need, and adjust the gear ratio by changing the size of the pulleys/gears.
I was just thinking, somebody with more social media stuff than me should tell NerdCubed about this, it's exactly what he's said he wants just about every time he's played a robot battler. :)
when is the next update for the game
Just posted a new bleeding edge build at
http://www.robot-rumble.com/bleedingedgebuilds/
The newest build is 10October.
So... I built a heavyweight full-body spinner, with a miniscule part count for me of only 23. (Including the chassis.)
When I spin it up to speed in an actual battle, half the time the game crashes to menu on the spot.
And the other half, more often than not it crashes anyway as soon as I hit the opponent.
If I had to take a guess - with absolutely no experience regarding how the game might work but access to a lot of robots to observe - I think it might be in some way related to the robot not being applicable for the game's spinner mechanics.
Okay... Update: I'm trying it again, and this time the game is staying solid, I haven't had even one crash today.
Hmm. Any ideas what might be different?
No idea at all, but these past three days I've continued to have no problems with it.
will there be anymore robots for the game
We aren’t really focused on creating content right now. We have our hands full with the botlab and the new damage system. After that comes a rewrite of the AI system and tournament mode. Once all that is in place, we should have some time to focus on new content.
I anticipate that we won’t be thinking about any new robots for another year or two.
Will this work on windows xp?
I have no idea. It isn’t officially supported, and we don’t have an XP machine to test on. My guess is no.
i shall test it myself
Just a little irritation I've found while building some new wedge bots: it would be nice to be able to limit the travel on a hinge.
This is incredible so far! Sorry if I missed it: is there a roadmap or something accessible anywhere?
Thanks! Nothing so formal as a roadmap, but we have a pretty detailed devlog and community over on the GameTechMods forums:
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0/robot-rumble-2-0-robot-combat-s...
Can you add a feature to disable the pit or have a hazardless test arena? The AI gets stuck so often that it's getting really annoying.
We will get to it, but not for a bit. Our next priority is to completely rework the damage system. Once that is ready we can rework the AI system.
I've built a four-wheel drive push bot, and for some reason it handles like a shopping trolley that can't decide whether to veer left or right. Every time I start moving I just have to guess and hope.
Are you running the 14SEPTEMBER bleeding edge build by any chance? I tweaked friction/traction in that build.
Due to basically being protective over the large number of bots I have, I've been nervous about trying bleeding edge, so I'm still on 06August.
Gotcha. I’m hoping to put out a new stable build by Friday, which should fix the traction issue. Testers have been liking it so far over on GTM.
Sweet. I'll let ya know if the problem persists.
Thinking about it actually, would it help if I give ya the bot file?
edit: That would be so you can find out whether the bot's traction issue is the same one you're fixing.
New stable build is out! This should solve the friction problem.
Dude, This looks amazing so far, its like the predecessor to Robot Arena 2. You should totally get this up on steam, a multiplayer support would be amazing to see too, Cant wait to see what you do with this!
Steam - Definitely!
Multiplayer - We have people using Parsec for multiplayer now, but I think that is as far as we will go. Real-time dedicated multiplayer servers aren't in the cards unless we completely change the scope of the project, which would require a massive investment of time and money.
I know that this is over 50 days ago, but how much time and money do you think it would take to make multiplayer be possible?
I can't give an accurate number, as I haven't done a multiplayer game before, but suffice it to say that without the support of tens of thousands of paying players every month, I doubt it would be economically viable.
Hey can you fix the blurriness when I zoom in?
try the latest bleeding edge build if you haven't already
http://www.robot-rumble.com/bleedingedgebuilds/
I just removed Depth of Field blur in the BotLab on the latest bleeding edge build. You should be all set!
this may not be related to glitches but, can anyone give me a good tutorial of how to create a good controlling bot for a base?
P.S Robot Rumble 2.0, could you please make a hollow half circle for full body spinners?
We would like to, but this is a little more complicated than it initially sounds. I put it on our Trello board.
I recommend checking on the RR2 forums over at www.gametechmods.com. There are lots of people over there who have been building some great heavyweight robot replicas.
In general, start with Ampflow A40-300 motors, attach some wheels, and be sure to increase the armor plate thickness in the “Materials” tab so that your robot weighs at least 100 kg. Otherwise the motors are so powerful that they will flip your robot.
Any idea if the next build will fix the issue of heavy spinning weapons coming to a sudden stop when hitting the walls or the floor (and sometimes opponents)?
This is a simplification I made to avoid having to deal with coming up with an algorithm for computing the percentage of energy lost on different hit conditions.
If you don’t mind my asking, what situation are you having where it doesn’t feel right to dump all of the spinner’s KE on the hit?
For example, a weapon spinning at a high rpm feels odd when it comes to a sudden stop against the wall or floor. It just seems a little bit more realistic if the weapons kind of bounce the bot away from the surface it struck if the bite depth wasn't great enough to exert all of the force.
This is super helpful. Thank you!
Right now I'm thinking the following:
1. If there is a glancing blow, the weapon will bounce off without losing speed. (DONE)
2. If there is a direct hit, the weapon will lose all of its speed, dumping all of its KE into the robots involved. (DONE)
3. There needs to be a gray area between #1 and #2. Something in between a "good hit" and a "glancing blow". (NOT DONE) Maybe the "glancing blow" situation needs to be adjusted depending on the quality of the hit such that a fraction of the speed is lost, but not all of it.
That's exciting, this game is definitely heading in the right direction. Heck, in its current state, it's the best robot combat simulator available.
hi have done a update for the game on 29th of august
the game wont download could you help please
Weird.
Hey, I can't save robots in the latest version. Do I need to manually save it or is it just broken?
Sorry about that! We introduced a few features in rapid succession that caused the problem (see comments from 17 days ago). The fix is fairly painless. You just need to add a few things to the affected robot’s save files. Here’s a link detailing how to fix the files:
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0/rr2-the-case-of-the-missing-robots/
Is there a 32bit version of this application?
We don’t have a 32-bit machine to test on, so we weren’t planning on making one.
to test it on a 32 bit os run it in a vm.
(Win 10 is free to download and use from the microsoft website).
will you add an online mode like RA2 eventually
Unfortunately it isn’t currently in the budget. I did a projection a few months ago, and we estimated it would add a few hundred thousand dollars to the development costs to properly rebuild the game around online multiplayer. Our total budget is only a small fraction of that.
Please if you could, please make a horizontal spinner similar to carbide or tombstone, and make a new full body spinner that is actually good.
I have posted my issues on GTM, Keep up the good work tho!
Awesome! Thank you! School has started, so it might be a few weeks before I get to them, but once things have normalized, I should be back in the swing.
The game is looking fantastic as of the August 6th build. Great work!!
Thank you!
do you have a release date for the game to come out yet
We still have several thousand hours of work left to do, so we are pretty far out at this point. At the rate we are going, I expect it will be a few more years until the official release.
Right now we are planning continue to release updates as we go, first as free public Alpha, then as closed Beta.
All three of the robots I've built in this build are immune to elimination by pits and ring-outs.
Interesting. Any idea why? They should trigger an OOTA volume as soon as the chassis enters it.
I can't think of anything they all have in common besides being built in the current build.
Would you mind posting the robots over on GameTechMods? I would love to have a look...
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0-showcases/post-your-bots/msg765...
That should be them.
I'm curious, have they turned up anything useful?
When I play as bubble gum the robot keeps destroying it self it the wheels keep coming off
Sorry about that! Bubblegum's issues are something that we are planning to address as we shift focus over to creating the new damage system.
OK thanks
I keep getting this glitch that makes my robot not work and i cant access anything, please fix this i have made 3 bots that took my over an hour and have just disappeared.
Sorry about this! We did a series of builds in rapid succession that created incompatibilities with robots created in previous builds. The fix is to edit the .RR2Bot files for the robots.
You can find a complete description and how to fix the broken .RR2Bot files on the GameTechMods website. I promise the fix isn't too painful, and feel free to ask if you have questions!
Here's the link to the fix:
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0/rr2-the-case-of-the-missing-rob...
If you are interested, here's a link to a more complete discussion:
https://gametechmods.com/forums/robot-rumble-2-0/robot-rumble-2-0-robot-combat-s...
The robot workshop doesn't work properly for me. If I try copy-pasting something, I can't interact with any other part of the robot from that point on, until I click on the copy of the part. At which point the copy vanishes.
Working on it! We’ll try to have the fix ready for the next public build.