Robot Arena 2 : Design and Destroy

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Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy is a computer game made by Gabriel Entertainment. It is the sequel to Robot Arena. It has many new features, such as the Havok physics engine, fully 3-D environments (This includes being able to flip over other robots), and total customization of your robot. This includes chassis design, weapon placement, mechanics, and even paint. The "cheatbot" code from the original returns, this time offering a Hovercraft Engine, a Magnet, a Flamethrower, and a Cannon (Though an upgrade patch is required for the cheat to take effect). Weapons are completely customizable, including things such as mounting weapons on various attachments, such as poles, disks, and tri-bars. Although the original was not received well by players, this game has a very small (but dedicated) fanbase and small communities for the game are still active today.

Robot Arena 2 Design and Destroy.jpg

Online Tournaments

Several websites mentioned in the Communities section also ran tournaments of their own that would be played online betwween two or more users. Lag or latency in connections frequently posed problems, along with various connection issues that would prevent users from battling each other, but the majority of these negatives did not stop players from simply enjoying the spirit of the sport.

Official Robot Arena 2 Tournaments - RA2T#1 + RA2T#2

A tournament was started by Jimxorb on the official Robot Arena 2 message board with approval from staff, making it the first official tournament. There have been 2 Middle Weight tournaments set up by Jimxorb (Who had previous tournament arranging experience from his Bots4Battle days) on the official website, many people entered and the robot that won the first tournament was a robot designed by Jimxorb and Be0t, using a popup spike inside a wedge design capable of 1-3 hit KOs, power that was at the time unheard of, it was called Death Port 2.

For the second and final tournament Lu-Tze made a new arena that Jimxorb designed, it had corner grinders and low walls, to allow pushers and flippers a chance of success against spinners and hammers. The well-built arena is still the favourite arena of many players even to this day, it also had an image of Be0t's winning robot printed on the floor of the arena (Part of the prize in the original official tournament.) RA2T#2 was won by Be0t again, this time with Death Port 3 who was solely made and designed by Jimxorb this time to fit Be0t's driving style, although the robot was well built and very powerful it was now a common design. There were no more tournaments after the second one.

AceUplink Onslaught

AceUplink was the home of arguably some of the most successful tournaments in terms of registration numbers. Because of their links with the official Robot Arena 2 website, AceUplink had their foot in the door early on in the life of the game. The first three tournaments were held to a single weight class, but Tournament Four included tournaments for three weight classes, including the custom "Antweight" class created by member "MiniDJBeirne". The fifth tournament which was redubbed "The Onslaught", the first tournament to use a custom arena; a feature later copied in the community. A second Onslaught tournament was organized, but did not last long as interest in the game started fading. The meticulous organization of AceUplink's rules and brackets would later end up being a centerpiece of future tournaments from many other websites. Site staffer "Omega" later contributed rankings based on the results of all completed tournaments. At the time of AceUplink's closing, Omega was #1 ranked with 43 wins and 17 losses.

  • Tournament #1 - Lightweight Combat, Best 2 out of 3
    • Winner: Ronin2k3 (8-0 Record)
  • Tournament #2 - Middleweight Clawtop, Best 3 out of 5
    • Winner: AW (12-1 Record)
  • Tournament #3 - Middleweight Combat, Best 3 out of 5
    • Winner: TeamMaceCo (13-2 Record)
  • Tournament #4 - All Weight Combat, Best 3 out of 5, Round-robin prelim
    • Antweight Winner: MiniDJBeirne (12-2 Record, 4 ringouts)
    • Lightweight Winner: CARP 104 (12-2 Record, 6 ringouts)
    • Middleweight Winner: Omegaforce (12-1 Record, 3 KOs, 9 ringouts)
  • Tournament #5 - Onslaught (Custom Arena), Best 3 out of 5
    • Lightweight Winner: Omega (12-1 Record, 11 KOs, 1 ringout)
    • Middleweight Winner: CARP 104 (12-3 Record, 6 KOs, 3 ringouts)


AON & BBEANS

AON (managed by Alphasim) and BBEANS (managed by Clickbeetle) are two unique forms of tournaments that the creators claim "eliminates lag". This is accomplished by giving AI code to every robot that is entered and running the fights on the "official" computer. Fights are then taped and displayed online for the contenders to see how their autonomous creations did in combat. Most fights are done in a "best 2 out of 3" format in the event of an accident caused due to the various physics problems in the game. With a lack of online human players in recent months, the majority of tournaments now have shifted to this simpler form of fighting as there is no need to set up convenient times for each player.

Robots

The default robots (AKA Stock AI) are as follows. Many of the robots have real-life counterparts, usually BattleBots. These are listed in parentheses.

There are also six example robots for the player to experiment with when they start the game:

There are also three "secret" example bots that can only be seen with the "Import Robot" command.

  • Team n/a
    • Heavyweight: BarberShop Chop (Heavy Metal Noise)
    • Middleweight: Spin Bonker (Ziggo)
    • Middleweight: Tailwhip (Blade Runner)

Havoc Explosions and Glitches

One of the main reasons behind the game's relative commercial failure was the relative instability of the Havoc physics engine. Several glitches were discovered revolving around the physics engine, and various others happened randomly. The inevitable result were "Havok explosions", which often sent robots flying. Additionally, several glitches in the game itself decreased the accuracy of the game. Examples of these glitches included "overlapping", which allowed several components on a robot to take up the same space, and "the chicken glitch", which allowed extremely rapid rotation of an object. These glitches allowed complicated and powerful robots to be made, and quickly became a staple of the community. Additionally, the advent of AAM (advanced attaching method) allowed for even more complex robots. AAM is a technique in which the .gmf file of one component temporarily replaces that of another component. The other component is then placed on a robot, and the .gmf files are returned to normal. The net effect of this is that the builder can place components where it would not normally be possible due to space restrictions. This is normally frowned on by the community, as it creates unbalanced robots and is normally considered "cheating".

External links

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