Bit of a suggestion, bit of a question -- are we able to assemble *.RR2Bot files manually? I'm thinking it would be neat to toy around with a neural network or somethin' trained to build robots. Even better if it could simulate battles, but that's far beyond the scope of this game, so I'm assuming not.
I like where you are going with this! Yes, the .RR2bot file is plain text, so it should be doable. We haven’t finalized the format yet though. We are still grappling with custom components.
As far as simulating battles, the battle themselves are simulations. They just take a while to run.
First off, I am LOVING this game already, the flipper physics are so accurate and feel like they have real weight behind them, and is by far the best part of the game on first impression. I also love the bot design, the graphics are really impressive and the bots all have strengths and weaknesses to take advantage of or exploit.
I would like to suggest a few improvements based off what I have experienced:
More bots! Understandably this is in alpha, but the reason I want to express this now is because I really want you guys to consider old and new robots being included. I'm talking the likes of Panic Attack, Behemoth, Hypno Disc, Chaos 2, etc.. If you contact the channel 'twopennymilk' on YouTube, he was part of the Push to Exit team on the newer seasons of robot wars, or as you might be aware, the same team that have ownership of famous robot: Dantomkia! I think both Push to Exit and Dantomkia would be excellent additions to the game as flippers are definitely the strong point so far!
Bigger arenas and more bots in a match. My favourite part about Robot Wars was the frenzies and rumbles they did which had up to 6 robots battling it out across the vast expanse of the arena. Having this again would be amazing, and maybe even battling in the arenas seen in various series' of robot combat shows would be insane!
Battles should be timed, and robots should have a lot more gas, power and health for the match. Some bots run out of breath way too quickly, or fall apart like paper when hit with an arena hazard. I think having a 3 or 5 minute timer on the matches would be a lot better, as well as making the damage more cosmetic. That way, if real damage is being done, the robots can suffer in more realistic ways rather than just losing health.
House robots would be another cool addition, and I would like to see the addition of a few mode types such as Gauntlet runs, Sumo and Tag Team included. It would really flesh out the game and give it content that rivals the classic games we all used to play as kids!
Last one (I promise!). Adding a commentator for the matches, just like in the Robot Wars Xbox and PS2 games, would be awesome. Although hopefully with more than just 5 repeated phrases XD I think it's a really cool way to add atmosphere to the battles and make us feel like we're actually in a TV show itself.
That's all I have for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with more ideas as I continue playing, but I hope this helps with the rest of the development, and hopefully it won't be too long before we see what content you guys have been working on. Thank you so much on behalf of Robot Combat fans around the globe for making this happen, and thank you for doing for us what Robot Arena 3 didn't even try to do!
I'm thrilled that you love it so far! It is definitely a labor of love, and we are doing our best to keep things as close to the feel of the source material (real life robot combat) as we can. Three members of our team try to compete in robot combat competitions when we can, so we all have tremendous respect for the people who do it at the highest level.
We would like to get more bots in the game, but this is, of course, time dependent. We are still working on the core game, and will add robots when we are satisfied with it.
I am pretty confident that we can do 4 robots. 6 robots should be doable too. I have a "magic mobility" physics system in testing that can handle up to 12 robots, but I would prefer to not use it, as it sacrifices fidelity and flexibility.
Timers are coming -- probably in the first closed Beta. Having timed matches is kind of key. Cosmetics will fall under the category of "last minute polish", once the rest of the game is working well. Hopefully there will be a LOT of polishing before launch.
We are working on the GDD document right now to flesh out the types of matches, and having different match types is definitely something we are thinking about.
Our audio guy perked right up when you mentioned having an in-game commentator. I'll let him run with that. :)
Thank you for all of the great feedback, and we will do our best to make you proud!
6 Robots I think would be ideal, that's enough for a really good annihilator!
Glad you love the idea of a commentator! I feel it would be a great addition to the game in terms of audio!
Can't wait to start building bots either! I can this drawing in a large community, and I'm sure many tournaments will be held.
Another cool thing to do would be to add a camera that follows behind the controlled robot, maybe even splitscreen for more than one player controlled bot? This seems like an ideal game for local multiplayer, as so many games don't offer it any more on PC.
Hey! love the game! I am personally very excited to see a good robot combat game other than RA2 hit development, Will this game have mod support in the future?
Great question. To be honest, adding mod support is really hard -- significantly harder than just making a robot fighting game. That being said, we are doing as much as we can to push in that direction:
1. Users already have the ability to create custom shapes in the BotLab, and to store and share their robots via .RR2Bot files. Since the files are text-based instead of binary, it is possible to go in and change the robots by hand, or to write tools to automate the process.
2. In addition, this week I am working on BotLab texture generation and saving. By the end of the next week or so, I am hoping to have a system in place for creating custom textures, saving them to a file, then loading the back into the game.
3. Once user-created textures are working, we are hoping to explore the ability for users to import UV-mapped .obj files in something like Blender or 3DS Max that they can bring into the game as custom shapes. If this works, a user with sufficient 3D modeling skill should be able to create parts for any robot they want, texture them in an external program, then bring them into the game.
We are DEFINITELY going to do #1 and #2.
BIG CAVEAT - #3 is entirely aspirational at this point.
I hope we can get to #3, but at this point our first priority has to be getting BotLab robots fighting each other. We are a really small team, so any hour we spend working on a modding feature is an hour not spent working on the core game. The core of the game has to come first.
The entire damage system is effectively a placeholder right now. Once we have BotLab robots fighting each other and a chance to make sure the physics feels right, we will go back and rewrite the damage system.
What you see right now is most likely going to change significantly over the course of the next 12 months.
1. We have to remove any robots that we don’t have permission to use in game. Unfortunately, Carbide, Eruption, and Original Sin are on that list.
2. We are working on getting BotLab robots fighting each other now. It is our top priority for the first closed Beta. We are hoping to have it ready by March.
We are looking to release a first closed beta by the end of March. We still have a TON of work to do between now and then. We will try to keep up with the status on Twitter as we get new features working. In case you are curious, we are currently working on a texture painting system for the BotLab, as well as getting BotLab robots fighting each other.
To be honest, the entire damage system is going to get a complete rewrite once we have nailed down BotLab physics. At the moment, we are working on getting BotLab robots to fight each other. Once this is working, the order of priority will be:
1. Make sure BotLab robot vs BotLab robot combat physics looks and feels good, with a minimum of physics "explosions". (physics)
2. Make the damage system feel good. (game design)
3. Make damage look satisfying. (art and sound)
The damage system that currently exists is effectively a placeholder -- I am expecting the final version to look and feel different.
really love the flippers physics wish you could still throw bots out the arena and if you have a updated version with the spinners working would be nice to get a test of them and if you put a timer in and point system the only long battles i have are flipper only and ends with no gas or a wipe out from the arena and is very fast compared to normal 3 min robot fighting games
Right now we are reworking BotLab physics to make everything as stable and as fast as possible. Once BotLab physics is solid, we will go back to tweak everything so that it is possible to make great spinners and flippers.
as a fan of BattleBots I love this game however theres 1 big issue I play on Mac so the normal settings run so slow
I try adjusting the settings but it just resets to default whenever I start a match it would also be nice to have a confirm button for the setting chang
Thanks for the feedback on this. We haven't put any effort into the settings interface yet -- the one in the Alpha release is just a placeholder.
I'm actually developing on Mac, so Mac performance is an issue I am sensitive to. Right now I have a 2016 MacBook Pro as my primary development machine, and am using an early 2014 MacBook Air for testing.
If you don't mind my asking, what kind of Mac are you using?
2017 Macbook pro 8gb ram intel 650 and intel i5 I found that I can I run it comfortably at low texture at the 2nd highest resolution (1070x700 I think)
Thank you for this. I hadn't considered that the game would be GPU limited, because it is CPU-limited on both the Air and my MBP. Fortunately, it is easy to tweak graphics on our end so that they look good but don't consume too many resources. We should have this worked out by launch.
Enjoy the game, however there are a few bugs in it still, but thats to be expected with an Alpha build... anyway here are the bugs i have found so far:
When playing as Bubblegum, and fighting TR3, it seems both bots get flung back, to an extent Bubblegum cant get back without killing itself in the Arena stage.
Ballerina and Thesus both have issues where whenever they move they slowly but constantly lose health, making them extremely hard to play for little reason.
Thanks for the feedback. We have both of these on list of stuff to fix, and will get to them when we can. Lots of physicsing to do over the next few months...
I really love the game so far. I have high hopes for it. I do have a few issues when playing
Ballerina overheats quickly while other robots like Theseus barely gives off any heat
In robot creation, I can barely seem to get a robot moving. And when I do, it always drives off to one side
A few suggestions I have
Try adding more than just a KO win. Having a damage point system and a time limit would make it a lot more exciting for robots that can't seem to hit with their weapons. Adding more bot durability for longer fights would also be fun.
Allow the resizing of weapons in the bot lab. The current flywheel is too big and can't be used properly
I'm looking forward to see what this game has to offer in the future.
1. Heat is something we haven't even taken a preliminary pass at -- it is pretty much a placeholder in the Alpha release.
2. Robot drivability is huge for us. We have a lot of work to do to get things to drive reliably. Most of the issue is caused by uneven friction between the left and right sides of the robot. Drivability is going to be one of our major areas of focus over the next few months.
3. I like the way you think regarding damage/points/time limits. We definitely need a few more options here.
4. We need to think about how to do resizing to keep things realistic. It might make the most sense to have "small", "medium", and "large" options for the premade components, then the ability to create and save your own. Otherwise people will be able to make things unrealistically big or small things. Then again, maybe it's okay if they are unrealistically small/big... Thoughts?
It really all depends on what people use it for. I was going for a recreation of a robot from Battlebots and the disk was too big. I do think the different sizes would work. Making our own shapes would work too once we can easily make circles. But I can't complain much given how far this game has already gone in just the open alpha. Keep up the great work!
hello i'm just wanting to leave a few comments about latest build (6-7-2018). im sure you probably have plenty of these already but here i go...
so carbides weapon is weird, the weapon just seems to always be spinning regardless of throttle(space bar) and the spinning animation never seems to change ? and its weapon is op as fuck, after 1 2 hits i can get eruptions gas ram showing and can ko eruption in 6-8 hits(about 30-45 seconds), maybe IRL that's realistic but in a game its really shit. also the dammaged carbide animation is weird, i personally don't like it wear the hub doesn't spin round the center of the hub
eruption, the new version doesn't look right when damaged , and seems to be overly fragile, i tried a fight with the drum spinner and got killed in 2 hits, also the gas seems to wear out very quickly . hell even after 40 sec into a eruption vs Db fight the flipper arm was already bent asfuck idk how much that actually affects eruption but it looks weird
original sin- so a new bug i've seen is that when a piece of the front scoop gets knocked off it still is attached to original sin. as in once its knocked off it comes off and lands on the floor 3 foot away BUT that piece follows the machine and is still attached, (as in it no longer stays on the floor where it landed and moves with the machine) "that seemed overly complex to explain in writing "
that new drum spinner is op as fuck... plz nerf a bit
bugs- there was a bug (which was in the last version) when you start the fight(during the 321 activate) the 2 bots fly into air and then don't work forcing you to restart the match, althought this has now gotten worse as now randomly the pause/menu button seems to randomly stop working causing you to restart the game again
annoyances and peeves - so i personaly fine the music during the menu and robot menu annoying its loud repetative, and im only in either of those menu's for like 10 seconds? do i really need music? - the main menu new UI looks cool admittedly good. although i thought the robot building interface from 3-28-18 version clearer and easier to use although that is personal preference
sorry if this whole comment seems overly negative? reading it back it seems like one of Gordon Ramsey's rants, its just this version dosen't seem to work as well as say 3-28-18 version. wish you the best of luck, this can't bee an easy thing to build
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Bit of a suggestion, bit of a question -- are we able to assemble *.RR2Bot files manually? I'm thinking it would be neat to toy around with a neural network or somethin' trained to build robots. Even better if it could simulate battles, but that's far beyond the scope of this game, so I'm assuming not.
I like where you are going with this! Yes, the .RR2bot file is plain text, so it should be doable. We haven’t finalized the format yet though. We are still grappling with custom components.
As far as simulating battles, the battle themselves are simulations. They just take a while to run.
What did you have in mind?
this could be the next RA2
Hey guys,
First off, I am LOVING this game already, the flipper physics are so accurate and feel like they have real weight behind them, and is by far the best part of the game on first impression. I also love the bot design, the graphics are really impressive and the bots all have strengths and weaknesses to take advantage of or exploit.
I would like to suggest a few improvements based off what I have experienced:
That's all I have for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with more ideas as I continue playing, but I hope this helps with the rest of the development, and hopefully it won't be too long before we see what content you guys have been working on. Thank you so much on behalf of Robot Combat fans around the globe for making this happen, and thank you for doing for us what Robot Arena 3 didn't even try to do!
- Steve
Steve,
I'm thrilled that you love it so far! It is definitely a labor of love, and we are doing our best to keep things as close to the feel of the source material (real life robot combat) as we can. Three members of our team try to compete in robot combat competitions when we can, so we all have tremendous respect for the people who do it at the highest level.
We would like to get more bots in the game, but this is, of course, time dependent. We are still working on the core game, and will add robots when we are satisfied with it.
I am pretty confident that we can do 4 robots. 6 robots should be doable too. I have a "magic mobility" physics system in testing that can handle up to 12 robots, but I would prefer to not use it, as it sacrifices fidelity and flexibility.
Timers are coming -- probably in the first closed Beta. Having timed matches is kind of key. Cosmetics will fall under the category of "last minute polish", once the rest of the game is working well. Hopefully there will be a LOT of polishing before launch.
We are working on the GDD document right now to flesh out the types of matches, and having different match types is definitely something we are thinking about.
Our audio guy perked right up when you mentioned having an in-game commentator. I'll let him run with that. :)
Thank you for all of the great feedback, and we will do our best to make you proud!
-Chris
6 Robots I think would be ideal, that's enough for a really good annihilator!
Glad you love the idea of a commentator! I feel it would be a great addition to the game in terms of audio!
Can't wait to start building bots either! I can this drawing in a large community, and I'm sure many tournaments will be held.
Another cool thing to do would be to add a camera that follows behind the controlled robot, maybe even splitscreen for more than one player controlled bot? This seems like an ideal game for local multiplayer, as so many games don't offer it any more on PC.
Most importantly,
THANK YOU!
:D
Hey! love the game! I am personally very excited to see a good robot combat game other than RA2 hit development, Will this game have mod support in the future?
Great question. To be honest, adding mod support is really hard -- significantly harder than just making a robot fighting game. That being said, we are doing as much as we can to push in that direction:
1. Users already have the ability to create custom shapes in the BotLab, and to store and share their robots via .RR2Bot files. Since the files are text-based instead of binary, it is possible to go in and change the robots by hand, or to write tools to automate the process.
2. In addition, this week I am working on BotLab texture generation and saving. By the end of the next week or so, I am hoping to have a system in place for creating custom textures, saving them to a file, then loading the back into the game.
3. Once user-created textures are working, we are hoping to explore the ability for users to import UV-mapped .obj files in something like Blender or 3DS Max that they can bring into the game as custom shapes. If this works, a user with sufficient 3D modeling skill should be able to create parts for any robot they want, texture them in an external program, then bring them into the game.
We are DEFINITELY going to do #1 and #2.
BIG CAVEAT - #3 is entirely aspirational at this point.
I hope we can get to #3, but at this point our first priority has to be getting BotLab robots fighting each other. We are a really small team, so any hour we spend working on a modding feature is an hour not spent working on the core game. The core of the game has to come first.
I have a question why thaeseus the vertical spinner deal more damage on it seft then he deal damage to the oponent?
and I think you need to bubblegum not so powerful when the beta come out?
Thanks for the questions.
The entire damage system is effectively a placeholder right now. Once we have BotLab robots fighting each other and a chance to make sure the physics feels right, we will go back and rewrite the damage system.
What you see right now is most likely going to change significantly over the course of the next 12 months.
why carrbide and eruption and original sin has been removed? and also why cant we play robot that we created?
Good questions!
1. We have to remove any robots that we don’t have permission to use in game. Unfortunately, Carbide, Eruption, and Original Sin are on that list.
2. We are working on getting BotLab robots fighting each other now. It is our top priority for the first closed Beta. We are hoping to have it ready by March.
I couldn't play it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uh oh! What type of a computer are you running, and what happened when you tried to launch the game?
When will the beta be released
We are looking to release a first closed beta by the end of March. We still have a TON of work to do between now and then. We will try to keep up with the status on Twitter as we get new features working. In case you are curious, we are currently working on a texture painting system for the BotLab, as well as getting BotLab robots fighting each other.
out of curiosity did you guys fix the vertical spinners because know they don't take nearly as much damage when moving and spinning as they used to
To be honest, the entire damage system is going to get a complete rewrite once we have nailed down BotLab physics. At the moment, we are working on getting BotLab robots to fight each other. Once this is working, the order of priority will be:
1. Make sure BotLab robot vs BotLab robot combat physics looks and feels good, with a minimum of physics "explosions". (physics)
2. Make the damage system feel good. (game design)
3. Make damage look satisfying. (art and sound)
The damage system that currently exists is effectively a placeholder -- I am expecting the final version to look and feel different.
thanks for the reply have you got a alpha test team yet I use unity myself as I’m learning to make games and enjoy testing pre made games
We do!
Its actually a closed Beta test team. The signup form is on http://www.robot-rumble.com. We are shooting for a first Beta release in the early spring.
really love the flippers physics wish you could still throw bots out the arena and if you have a updated version with the spinners working would be nice to get a test of them and if you put a timer in and point system the only long battles i have are flipper only and ends with no gas or a wipe out from the arena and is very fast compared to normal 3 min robot fighting games
All in good time! :)
Right now we are reworking BotLab physics to make everything as stable and as fast as possible. Once BotLab physics is solid, we will go back to tweak everything so that it is possible to make great spinners and flippers.
as a fan of BattleBots I love this game however theres 1 big issue I play on Mac so the normal settings run so slow
I try adjusting the settings but it just resets to default whenever I start a match it would also be nice to have a confirm button for the setting chang
Thanks for the feedback on this. We haven't put any effort into the settings interface yet -- the one in the Alpha release is just a placeholder.
I'm actually developing on Mac, so Mac performance is an issue I am sensitive to. Right now I have a 2016 MacBook Pro as my primary development machine, and am using an early 2014 MacBook Air for testing.
If you don't mind my asking, what kind of Mac are you using?
2017 Macbook pro 8gb ram intel 650 and intel i5 I found that I can I run it comfortably at low texture at the 2nd highest resolution (1070x700 I think)
Thank you for this. I hadn't considered that the game would be GPU limited, because it is CPU-limited on both the Air and my MBP. Fortunately, it is easy to tweak graphics on our end so that they look good but don't consume too many resources. We should have this worked out by launch.
I've played around A little more and found out that I can run it on high texture settings fine
Excellent! I was a little worried if it wasn't running well on a MBP. Thanks for this!
Enjoy the game, however there are a few bugs in it still, but thats to be expected with an Alpha build... anyway here are the bugs i have found so far:
Will update when I remember, or find more bugs
Thanks for the feedback. We have both of these on list of stuff to fix, and will get to them when we can. Lots of physicsing to do over the next few months...
I really love the game so far. I have high hopes for it. I do have a few issues when playing
A few suggestions I have
I'm looking forward to see what this game has to offer in the future.
Thanks for the feedback!
1. Heat is something we haven't even taken a preliminary pass at -- it is pretty much a placeholder in the Alpha release.
2. Robot drivability is huge for us. We have a lot of work to do to get things to drive reliably. Most of the issue is caused by uneven friction between the left and right sides of the robot. Drivability is going to be one of our major areas of focus over the next few months.
3. I like the way you think regarding damage/points/time limits. We definitely need a few more options here.
4. We need to think about how to do resizing to keep things realistic. It might make the most sense to have "small", "medium", and "large" options for the premade components, then the ability to create and save your own. Otherwise people will be able to make things unrealistically big or small things. Then again, maybe it's okay if they are unrealistically small/big... Thoughts?
It really all depends on what people use it for. I was going for a recreation of a robot from Battlebots and the disk was too big. I do think the different sizes would work. Making our own shapes would work too once we can easily make circles. But I can't complain much given how far this game has already gone in just the open alpha. Keep up the great work!
hello i'm just wanting to leave a few comments about latest build (6-7-2018). im sure you probably have plenty of these already but here i go...
so carbides weapon is weird, the weapon just seems to always be spinning regardless of throttle(space bar) and the spinning animation never seems to change ? and its weapon is op as fuck, after 1 2 hits i can get eruptions gas ram showing and can ko eruption in 6-8 hits(about 30-45 seconds), maybe IRL that's realistic but in a game its really shit. also the dammaged carbide animation is weird, i personally don't like it wear the hub doesn't spin round the center of the hub
eruption, the new version doesn't look right when damaged , and seems to be overly fragile, i tried a fight with the drum spinner and got killed in 2 hits, also the gas seems to wear out very quickly . hell even after 40 sec into a eruption vs Db fight the flipper arm was already bent asfuck idk how much that actually affects eruption but it looks weird
original sin- so a new bug i've seen is that when a piece of the front scoop gets knocked off it still is attached to original sin. as in once its knocked off it comes off and lands on the floor 3 foot away BUT that piece follows the machine and is still attached, (as in it no longer stays on the floor where it landed and moves with the machine) "that seemed overly complex to explain in writing "
that new drum spinner is op as fuck... plz nerf a bit
bugs- there was a bug (which was in the last version) when you start the fight(during the 321 activate) the 2 bots fly into air and then don't work forcing you to restart the match, althought this has now gotten worse as now randomly the pause/menu button seems to randomly stop working causing you to restart the game again
annoyances and peeves - so i personaly fine the music during the menu and robot menu annoying its loud repetative, and im only in either of those menu's for like 10 seconds? do i really need music? - the main menu new UI looks cool admittedly good. although i thought the robot building interface from 3-28-18 version clearer and easier to use although that is personal preference
sorry if this whole comment seems overly negative? reading it back it seems like one of Gordon Ramsey's rants, its just this version dosen't seem to work as well as say 3-28-18 version. wish you the best of luck, this can't bee an easy thing to build