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Mel Bot Wars


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I don't see why not. For such simple geometry, the RBD in H7 should be good enough. The example robots on the site are real simple. You would have to keep it real simple for good performance. I wonder what Habib means by intelligence though. It could be as simple as "hit this wall then bounce" which is simple collision detection or much much more which will require complicated Mel code.

It sure smells like a marketing gimmic by Habib Zargarpour though. Habib is very closely tied to Alias. The bottom half is all concerned about the interview on TechTV. Hmmmmm. There is also a slant to purchase "Maya: Secrets of the Pros". I wonder if Alias can work in some DVD sales... Great idea none the less.

I propose Mech Wars. Have bots that not only can upturn other bots but have rudimentary intelligence, can walk and fall over, can see and identify it's surroundings and strike purposely. The Mechs themselves should be able to sustain blows where bits fly off of them and continue on. This is also possible but not that easy. 2 legged mechs, 3, 4, 6, 8, 20 + legged mechs. Imagine the fun.

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I propose Mech Wars. Have bots that not only can upturn other bots but have rudimentary intelligence, can walk and fall over, can see and identify it's surroundings and strike purposely. The Mechs themselves should be able to sustain blows where bits fly off of them and continue on.

Sounds cool but got any idea how make it? :)

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Just drink 6 pints of lager at lunch time, my logic gets pretty fuzzy after about the 3rd or 4th.....

yeahhh :) my logic is also fuzzy after some beers :) and I walk like this mel bots or rather... roll

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houdini supports rigid bodies ;)

In the online help, if you check the *objects* folder there is even an "Introduction to RBD" part, they explain in pretty much detail on how houdini's rbd's work, what options you have etc... The workflow is a bit unusual if you compare it with something like maya's rbd, but it seems that all functionality is in there.

Jens

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This would be great to model the bot components as Digital Assets and you could build up variations on robots by adding various fun components together.

I think that the current RBD might freak out, though.

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Yep, RBD currently in Houdini can give you the odd bizarre collision result but that could be that random element in the game that levels out the playing field as a enemy bot gets a rogue collision and flies off to infinity. :P

As for having robots that see, you could fire out a couple rays after omerging the entire scene and see what you hit then react on that. Using CHOPs you could smooth out the results so you wouldn't have to fire rays every frame.

You would have to have each robot's geo with a common attribute identifying itself that you could evaluate. Each robot could use rbd_unify so bits could go flying off. I could evaluate the scene then birth particles that represented each other robot then collision test against basic spheres as my bot would have an embedded partilce system or something else that gathers and processes enemy bot positions.

The beauty of it is everyone throws a robot in to a single hip at a predetermined position in the playing field then bake out the solutions. Can't have two robots in the same space. Nuclear Annihilation with RBD.

It doesn't matter if my robot takes 2 hours per frame to cook as I analyze the entire environment multiple times per frame. :lol: It is the baked out result that counts. Nothing stopping me from analyzing your robots and override certain parameters to take control. I would try to protect my parms as much as I could. The more I think about it the more I like it. :ph34r:

Obviously you would need to come up with some rules like minimum playback speed of a bot, no adding of RBD objects during play, no unlocking of other bot assets and redefining them on-the-fly, no chop overriding of references external to your bot or direct manipulation of other bot parms, specifications for each bot's RBD properties especially mass, friction and drag (can't make your bot equal to the mass of the universe wolfwood!), no scaling of any RBD objects (can't shrink your bot to the size of a pea when under attack then expand instantly to make 'em fly and yes houdini supports scaling of RBD objects), etc.

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Obviously you would need to come up with some rules like minimum playback speed of a bot, no adding of RBD objects during play, no unlocking of other bot assets and redefining them on-the-fly, no chop overriding of references external to your bot or direct manipulation of other bot parms, specifications for each bot's RBD properties especially mass, friction and drag (can't make your bot equal to the mass of the universe wolfwood!), no scaling of any RBD objects (can't shrink your bot to the size of a pea when under attack then expand instantly to make 'em fly and yes houdini supports scaling of RBD objects), etc.

Awwww... c'mon!

That gets rid of, like, *half* of my evil thoughts! :angry:

:rolleyes:

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Oh! yeah! I have already starting thinking evil :angry:

A bot which breaks up and regenerates into 2 bots everytime it's attacked which form an alliance with the original bot :ph34r: , or how about it breaks up and every part comes to life and could be used as projectile objects :D

Trying attacking those tiny nuts and bolts :lol:

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Be cool to start small; and totally rely on RBD for locomotion too. I'm thinking of a bot that consists of three Tracked Wheel assets, a MegaJump Foot asset, one Whirling Hammer asset and a Lunging Spike Of Death asset which jabs out based on proximity and a slow reload speed.

B)

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Be cool to start small; and totally rely on RBD for locomotion too. I'm thinking of a bot that consists of three Tracked Wheel assets, a MegaJump Foot asset, one Whirling Hammer asset and a Lunging Spike Of Death asset which jabs out based on proximity and a slow reload speed.

B)

you sound like a typical robot wars (uk) competitor right up till being smashed to pecies by a flipper robot, which happens every time :P

SREMECHS people, SREMECHS.

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