Botbuilder beta 2

Community Showcases
1

Beta 2 is up! Most of the issues people mentioned with the first beta (probably except for Yoggy’s bumpmap bug - sorry) have been fixed or addressed:

  • Moldorma’s display bug is probably fixed
  • The camera are now on “tracks” that follow the bot around. Let me know if this is a good solution to the “we need a chase camera!” debate.
  • The bug with moving parts has been fixed
  • Drag on the robot’s body is significantly higher, which should alleviate most of the control difficulties (especially those concerned with violent rocking, etc)
  • The big one: a detailed (and skippable) tutorial for both controlling the bot and building it.

The main feedback I need is difficulty and completeness of the tutorials: is the training too easy/hard to follow? Does it give you a good handle of how to use the interface control the game?

2

Wish I could see that brick wall so I could smash it :wink: Can’t you at least make a really simple fallback? maybe make an option to simplify the particle effects? I think that is what is giving me lag.

Is it a coincidence that you are using the same font as I am in my racing game? I guess i can’t blame you as I haven’t publicly relesed it yet :stuck_out_tongue:

3

If I knew how to make ANY fallback, I would… as of right now I know next to nothing about shaders.

I’ll add a switch to turn the particle effects down in the next version.

The font’s name starts with an ‘A’… I’m guessing we both browsed the same font site until we found the first one we liked :slight_smile:

4

My display bug is fixed, but the framerate seems even slower. Could you maybe attach a PPC Build. Those are always much faster for me than web players. :smile:

5

i came as far as the part where you have to go up the steps, each time i tried the bot floated all over the place and fell back down again, perhaps make some sort of stabilise button that you can press if its all going haywire

6

fallback… i don’t know a lot on shader’s either but is it as simple as adding this right before your closing bracket in the shader?

   FallBack "Diffuse", 1

sry… haven’t had time to check the new demo…

7

If you’re having framerate or graphics issues, please include computer speed and graphics card (including VRAM if possible) details.

8

I’ve actually been looking at Yoggy’s issue and it’s a layer issue rather than a shader issue. Still trying to figure out why exactly it happens, but it shouldn’t be long.

shalow: I’ve added an option in the menu to bump up the angular velocity even more, which all but stops the rocking entirely - I can’t get it to rock even if i try. The next beta should address your problem.

9

Wow, cool effects. The menus are awesome.

I have a G4 1GHz (only 100MHz FSB), with a Radeon 9800 128MB VRAM.
I estimate about 5-6 FPS, which is a lot slower than it should be. Are you using any complex subdivisions or something on any of your models (I didn’t really see any complex models, but…) ? Maybe it’s just the particles, but my computer has done well with more complex Unity scenes in the past, with a much higher framerate.

I imagine optimizing is hard with such a new computer… Being as fast as it is 8^/

10

it does seem to be more unstable now - lots of heavy rocking. maybe you could:

-lower the center of gravity?
-add an invisible box collider with a springy material below the bot so it stays level when low to the ground?

i forgot to mention that - they are awesome. i don’t have the slightest idea how you got that all working nicely.

re image below: i’m sure this isn’t intended, but i sooo wanted to fire that sucker off - it just disappears when you enter play mode.

25734--935--$stacked_133.jpg
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This will take some more tweaking, but I think the key is with the angularDrag of the main body. I’ve bumped it up a bit since this beta, and also added an option to bump it up even more (or “Balance Assist”, as the menu calls it). With this option on, the bot stops severely rocking within a second no mater how badly you’ve mistreated it. :smile:

I appreciate it, both of you – those took a long while and a lot of code. :slight_smile:

Hmm, that’s a new one. I think it’s actually the joints breaking the instant the robot starts moving; with so much weight on the first couple joints, that wouldn’t surprise me - especially if (this seems to be the case from the screenshot) they have no trigger and therefore autofire. (in other words, odds are good that the rest of that tail is flying around the level somewhere as soon as you start :smile: ) I just did a couple of quick tests that seem to confirm that’s what’s happening.

(In fact, the parts in the construction yard behave almost exactly like the arena parts, except that the robot itself remains stationary - put too many on and fire them up, and they’ll go flying!)

I think I had a bug earlier that caused a lot of extra, unneccesary cameras to be rendered even when they weren’t visible; when I redid the camera code, my framerate jumped dramatically (from 30ish to 60ish), so I suspect you’ll all get framerate boosts in the next beta. I’ve also added a switch to the options to reduce the particle count.

12

just an fyi unity web player no longer works

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But it did work 12 years ago.

14

Lol