Hi, I have been working on a new game for the past week called Voxel Bots.
I am using the building system I made for another work-in-progress game.
If you’ve ever played a game called Robocraft, this game is similar to that one, but I am aiming to recreate the 2014 experience, with some of the elements of the later years.
The place link is here, and there is more information below. Please read the bold messages so that way any “gotchas” don’t happen! Feel free to leave any feedback or ideas here or via ROBLOX messages.
(EDIT: If you would like to make ships, please orient them as shown in the image below. Otherwise, the wheels will not be controllable due to a bug with the controls orientation system.
I am pretty sure the below bug was fixed, but to be safe:
The drive button works like a toggle, after test-driving your vehicle hit the drive button again to reload it instead of using the load button! Otherwise your vehicle may accidentally be overwritten after edits are made upon the next test drive!
I made this short little feature demonstration video that you can watch to find out more, or read below.
Each player can have up to ten saved vehicles. These vehicles are made out of 3x3x3 blocks on a grid of the same size, with other “active” components varying in size. Each block can have properties changed about it such as the color, material, or transparency, and when I design the blocks I can specify which parts can or can’t have specific appearance modifiers added.
Players can choose what color or material to use while in the build menu (Q)
Up to six custom colors can be saved (persists between games)
The GUI was made by firedragon2244 for another game we are making together. A lot - if not all - of the improvements and features I’ve made will be added to that game.
At drive-time, the blocks are welded to neighboring and eligible blocks, so destroying a connecting section of a vehicle would cause the two joined sections to split apart and become their own. This welding system might also allow for more elaborate designs in the future (hinges and pistons?).
Also at drive-time, all wheels (whether upright or upside-down) orient themselves according to the driver’s seat, which means that players do not need to dictate or use a configure tool to set keybinds or reverse steering/rotation. It also means that upside down wheels, if the vehicle flips, will act like normal wheels allowing for clever designs that can survive flipping.
All turrets fire with slight randomness to their accuracy, and the visible laser shot is client-side and lag-compensated, so lasers won’t appear to be firing from behind where your robot/the enemy robot is at.
The block building system also has a disconnection detection system which means that blocks not placed connected or if the connection between them is deleted, they will turn red and not spawn in at drive-time. It is not optimized yet, so larger crafts may get laggy for a second while removing blocks.
The collision detection system works well but sometimes has false-collision detections. It prevents complex components that do not adhere to the 3x3x3 voxel size from being placed inside other components. This allows for way more complex and interesting blocks to be made such as the level ten wheels or later on, larger turrets. Blocks that are colliding are highlighted neon-red.
Valid placement spot:
Invalid placement spot:
I added leaderboards for blocks placed, deleted, and joins, kinda cool!
)
I was thinking that it might be good to create a building mode similar to the classic “Build a Mech and Fight” game, where garages circle around a playing field and players can build and then test their robots right there. It would be a bit more social than the one-player garages that are in use now, and wouldn’t take a lot of modification to get working.
Opposing teams need to spawn opposite of each other after all.