Robot Rumble 2 - Dev Diary: DocDoyle!

Hey hey hey! its the veggiest, the greenest, the doc brocc himself! My real name is Youri, but much better known as DocDoyle, I hail from the Netherlands where I work as a Mechatronics and Robotics engineer for the Dutch Navy. I make stuff pretty much all of the time! And... well... uh... destroy allot of stuff too! Mostly 3D printers and ruggedized electronics really.

Oh and something with robots, fighting robots?

Wayfarer and Spider Mite battle it out in the Eye of the Storm Arena! Both bots built by @wowitspaul in the RR2 Discord.

Epic dramatic backstory: It was probably around 2004 when I first saw Battlebots on TV, I absolutely loved it, but my parents thought that I was too young. That didn't matter, the memory was set. And then, some good time later, around 2014, it popped up on my YouTube: Robogames, Combots and FRA/Robo Challenge. Within a month or so, an obsession was born. And then in 2015, very convenient: Battlebots dropped a reboot! The young Doyle, initially big into chemistry and biology but not entirely sure what to do in life, suddenly turned it all around: "How do I make these things!!!!? Id better become an engineer!!!" Easier said then done, but it worked out great!

This obsession changed my life: I watched every show, every fight on YouTube, every "how to build a robot" video out on the internet, bought the Riobots Combat Robot book, scavenged for scrap metal to tape something together, broke countless of Lego pieces trying out different designs, tearing RC cars apart and attaching metal bars on the ends: the wall in my childhood room quickly became an absolute mess. All to learn how these things are built, and how to build them best.

One difficult part was actually making something good: tools and funds where not really abundant but there was a cheaper solution: Robot Combat Games! I must have tried them all, RW AOD, BB D&D, RA2, Gmod, Scrap Mechanic, even a handful of mobile games. It was one of them in particular that stood out to me: Besiege.

This wacky looking, medieval style building game proved itself quite well for fighting robots and I soon ended up in handful of lovely communities with friends all over the globe. In 2018, from one of these communities, a rough gem appeared: Robot Rumble 2. It was very basic at this moment in time, a handful of robots from my favourite eras and shows. There was talk about this "Botlab" coming soon and I thought to myself: "Id better check this out regularly."

Fast forward slightly, and I was utterly obsessed with Robot Rumble 2. I also still played a lot of Besiege, for which I had created a handful of mods. In 2019 I had saved up quite a bit of money after a stressful and tough 2018: I went for a jump into the great unknown: one 16 hour flight to LA and 20 sessions of Battlebots recording! This was the most amazing trip of my entire life, ive never withnessed anything like it! I made some friends and lived off foodtrucks while sleeping in a small BNB next to Longbeach airport. Friends and family called me a madman, going to LA for two weeks to spend 8-10 hours inside a hangar filled with the smell of burnt electronics, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Then 2020 hit, and lockdowns provided me with a gap year during my graduation year of Uni: this only meant one thing: fighting robots!!! Well... in games, because lockdowns... oh well... Then Robot Rumble suddenly asked for people wanting to join the project. I was very hesitant at first: "Will I still enjoy my favourite game when I'm a developer of it?" Well... I did, if anything, it made it much worse!

Recoil sends Z Type flying. Recoil built by @larsteampainfullyobvious and Z Type by @la_machine.

VeggMaster Additions: Now, 5 years later, after being lead dev for a while, after the assembling of the current dev team, after a Steam release, after a bit of a hiatus while I moved into a house of my own with my lovely girlfriend and now fiance: I really just made a mess of this game:

• 53 new motors, cluttering all the menus;
• 13 new ESC's, making everyone crazy about amps and volts;
• 180 logical motor combinations, overwhelming players with choice;
• 39 new batteries, causing headache trying to not have my motors overvolt;
• 9 new materials, causing pain and suffering for everyone trying to get their bot within weight;
• 23 new shapes, cluttering even more menus;
• 9 real electronics brands, sneaking ads into the game that people spread voluntarily;
• 4 made up electronics brands, thinking I would one day be some kind of CEO swimming in gold;
• 42069 new bugs, telling everyone they are features;
• 3 or so fixed bugs, making everyone's gaming experience feel like early access alpha bleeding edge straight-from-the-compiler;
• 1 mostly functioning weld damage system, noobstomping every new player when their unsupported components fall off;
• 8 "custom" spinner test builds, all to be scrapped a week later;
• 63 new game builds (according to my google drive, I suspect that's about 60% since it has been full forever), hopefully not triggering peoples antivirus downloading these shady zips;
• An uncountable number of spinner tweaks, nerfing verts and making horizontal spinners the only feasible option. (I wish);
• Uncountable physics optimisations, making sure everyone's bots will be broken in about a week or so.

...perhaps not such a mess after all!

And as a direct effect of the game I now cope with:

• 636 robots (there will be some duplicates but I'm not going to sort that out);
• Roughly 158000 placed robot parts;
• 11.5GB of robots and arenas;
• 1 filled google drive;
• 44003 discord messages (not counting privates or other servers);
• A whoooooole bunch of amazing people!

In case people didn't know, I am an absolute spinner caveman and obsessed with putting out ridiculous power. I'll take this spotlight to show off some of my bots, to hopefully inspire other peeps to make the epic life choices I made!

(Click to Expand)

Spikey and Jagged | Paprika Pressure | Undead Frogg and Buzzer | Deuteranopia and Maul Party | Kaneelbroodje and Jagged

What is next? Well much more programming, bug fixing and adding new features! Also I am definitely making a "serious" IRL bot, to hopefully actually meet some of you some day! I'm already looking forward to this!

The coming build will feature some small tweaks to spinners that I have been brewing on for a bit, it should bring spinners to a finally acceptable level that I might actually start working fully on other things! Some things in the works by me are: New pneumatic components, improved gyro, improvements to weld damage, improvements to hammer damage and perhaps... some more visual damage...? Money update?

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and if anything comes up, let me kn... tell kupa_ to fix it. I love to joke around a lot, but I hope to inspire people with my passion, just like how I was inspired by someones passion!

Well, that's it from me for this dev diary, see you later!

DocDoyle Robot Rumble 2 https://discord.gg/RobotRumble2

Twinzer V4 and Citrus Charge collide in a shower of sparks! Both bots built by @skyariaviolet on the RR2 Discord.

This updates header features BROCC built by myself and Oppresive built by @larsteampainfullyobvious fighting it out in the popular fan Wreckbots Arena available from the RR2 Discord.

Oh, why the broccoli you say? Well... that's a funny story really. So, somewhere in middle school, working in shared google docs with a handful of classmates, you wouldn't have to wait long till someone pulled something dumb in the document. To retaliate, a friend and me made a script that would loop spam a picture into the document, to the point where google docs would be completely unable to open it. This picture happened to be this beautiful broccoli you all know and love. (yeah you do.) This became known as The Broccoli virus, but it didn't stop there. We took it way further and compiled it into an actual virus, nuking several school PC's with our dumb broccoli spammer causing memory leaks, full storage and whatnot. Now, in case you are wondering, this is illegal, don't do it, it will get you in trouble haha. But the picture stuck with me ever since.

Also don't tell anyone I told you this.