Dev Log #7 - Friction and WIP Anti-Roll System!
Hey Inventors!
Welcome to our 7th weekly Dev Log.
Welcome to all the new creators that have joined from the PC Gamer Beta, which you can join here: https://bit.ly/MAPCGamerBeta Plus, a robot building competition opens soon to win a high end gaming PC!
We have a developer stream tomorrow at 1PM BST which you can catch here: https://www.twitch.tv/BadYolkGames
Onto the main event...
When driving your bot around in Main Assembly you've probably more than once flipped your bot or started spinning out of control!
This Dev Log will take a deeper look at the work and progress we've had during development and the different steps that we've taken to improve the driving experience.
We've been testing several different approaches on how to handle friction to give you a great driving experience that behaves in a way that you'd expect it to.
Being able to build basically anything makes realistic friction troublesome since not every creation follows a perfect center of mass. That led us to “gamify” how friction works by trying to make it clever based on what is happening in-game.
It’s easy to get snow blind while trying to balance these things. Because of that, we've had some breaks between each new iteration during the development. Each iteration has coincidentally happened not long before each of the different Betas. By testing your Bots on the Workshop we have been given insight by viewing all the different creations.
Early on in development we used data from the Drive Motors to figure out if you were turning or not and by doing that gave you some more side friction. This didn't work very well because it solved one issue of being able to turn easily but made over-corrections, tall and fast bots were especially prone to flipping over!
That leads us to the next step and what we have in the current Closed Beta. We removed almost all Drive Motor checks and started using the speed and direction of the vehicle to figure out when to add side friction and when to start sliding. This we believe, is a step in the right direction, many bots could now drive faster and still be reasonably controllable.
The difficulty of not being able to test every bot out there we've learnt that instead of flipping over we now have more of a spinning out issue.
Leading up to Early Access we're now working on our next approach where we add more friction again but also we're using an “anti-roll” system where a very small force is being applied when turning and if your wheels are starting to leave the ground.
This helps you to make more sharp turns and hopefully lowers the chance of flipping over with your bot!
Now you are caught up to where we are currently with Friction. Moving forward there's more work to be done on this before Early Access to make your driving experience as good as possible with all different types of impressive creations!
Plus we want them to pass their safety inspections!
This is the Jet Core Race Drifter by Hairybroness which has impressive obstacle clearance alongside the option of flight and upside down driving. We'd love to see this with some added anti-roll! Well done. Be sure to comment below or get in touch with any builds you feel we should feature next week! :) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2088836433
Check it out yourselves in the PCGamer beta!
Thanks for reading inventors, we'll see you next week for dev log #8! :D
Plus, if you want to be notified on Steam you can wishlist the game for it's Early Access launch on June 11th here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1078920/Main_Assembly/
You can also keep up with Main Assembly's development on all these channels:
Main Assembly Twitter Main Assembly Reddit Main Assembly Facebook Main Assembly Discord Team17 Twitter Team17 Facebook Team17 Discord
Welcome to our 7th weekly Dev Log.
Welcome to all the new creators that have joined from the PC Gamer Beta, which you can join here: https://bit.ly/MAPCGamerBeta Plus, a robot building competition opens soon to win a high end gaming PC!
We have a developer stream tomorrow at 1PM BST which you can catch here: https://www.twitch.tv/BadYolkGames
Onto the main event...
Friction
When driving your bot around in Main Assembly you've probably more than once flipped your bot or started spinning out of control!
This Dev Log will take a deeper look at the work and progress we've had during development and the different steps that we've taken to improve the driving experience.
We've been testing several different approaches on how to handle friction to give you a great driving experience that behaves in a way that you'd expect it to.
Being able to build basically anything makes realistic friction troublesome since not every creation follows a perfect center of mass. That led us to “gamify” how friction works by trying to make it clever based on what is happening in-game.
It’s easy to get snow blind while trying to balance these things. Because of that, we've had some breaks between each new iteration during the development. Each iteration has coincidentally happened not long before each of the different Betas. By testing your Bots on the Workshop we have been given insight by viewing all the different creations.
Early on in development we used data from the Drive Motors to figure out if you were turning or not and by doing that gave you some more side friction. This didn't work very well because it solved one issue of being able to turn easily but made over-corrections, tall and fast bots were especially prone to flipping over!
That leads us to the next step and what we have in the current Closed Beta. We removed almost all Drive Motor checks and started using the speed and direction of the vehicle to figure out when to add side friction and when to start sliding. This we believe, is a step in the right direction, many bots could now drive faster and still be reasonably controllable.
The difficulty of not being able to test every bot out there we've learnt that instead of flipping over we now have more of a spinning out issue.
Leading up to Early Access we're now working on our next approach where we add more friction again but also we're using an “anti-roll” system where a very small force is being applied when turning and if your wheels are starting to leave the ground.
This helps you to make more sharp turns and hopefully lowers the chance of flipping over with your bot!
Now you are caught up to where we are currently with Friction. Moving forward there's more work to be done on this before Early Access to make your driving experience as good as possible with all different types of impressive creations!
Plus we want them to pass their safety inspections!
Community Bot Spotlight
This is the Jet Core Race Drifter by Hairybroness which has impressive obstacle clearance alongside the option of flight and upside down driving. We'd love to see this with some added anti-roll! Well done. Be sure to comment below or get in touch with any builds you feel we should feature next week! :) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2088836433
Check it out yourselves in the PCGamer beta!
Thanks for reading inventors, we'll see you next week for dev log #8! :D
Plus, if you want to be notified on Steam you can wishlist the game for it's Early Access launch on June 11th here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1078920/Main_Assembly/
You can also keep up with Main Assembly's development on all these channels:
Main Assembly Twitter Main Assembly Reddit Main Assembly Facebook Main Assembly Discord Team17 Twitter Team17 Facebook Team17 Discord