Hello Everyone,
Lots going on this week on the development side and some great questions from everyone. Thank you to those of you that have put RA III on their Steam wishlist. Thank you for keeping our Steam Community and the Gametechmods forums active with questions and lively debate.
Let's get to this weeks' Q&A.
>Are you planning on DLC?
One of the more popular debates the past couple weeks has been DLC, downloadable content. Paid or free, it seems that DLC is a bit of a third rail subject with lots of opinions on both sides. We haven't closed the door on having paid DLC as part of Robot Arena III down the road but we know it would have to be something special and not take the focus off the core RA III gameplay balance.
Our initial thought about any possible free DLC is that it should not be a separate thing and just be an update to the core game so it doesn't affect balance. Keeping the door open for paid DLC gives us flexibility to work with content creators who may have unique content that we can only obtain at an extra cost. We don't have plans for paid DLC today, but we don't want to close the door on it completely in cases where there's a cool piece of content that we can only obtain by supporting paid DLC.
>Do we know if there are going to be weight classes other than the old lite weight, middle weight, and heavy weight?
We are currently sticking with the LW, MW, and HW formats to keep things simple for new RA folks. Having 7 weight classes from the start can get pretty confusing for folks who are new to RA.
On our wish list we would like to add flexibility in the weight classes, and we have discussed a few approaches for that including allowing you to set an arbitrary weight class for your own single/multiplayer purposes. This is not something we will have for launch, but the game is being built in such a way that we could support multiple classes.
>Is there a limit to chaining components together, a rule of 7 components chained in a row?
There is no limit currently defined, nor do we intend to provide a limit initially. Testing every permutation and combination of components would take quite a long time and we don't want to set an arbitrary limit. We want the user to be able to experiment with the bot creation as much as possible and discover what inherent limitations there are. What does that mean? Well let's say you chain 100 components together and it works, that's awesome, if you add the 101st component and the physics fail and things fly apart, well "The more you know".
>Will there be belts or chains?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is that while we don't intend to have belts or chains for the aesthetic side of bot creation, we will have smaller motors that will attach to the end of extenders that can accomplish things similar to what a belt and chain might.
>How many bots can we have on a team, and how many teams can we have?
In RA III the player will not have multiple teams but they can have a large number (TBD) of bots under their profile. For single player mode, events will have the concept of "teams". A single player profile will be limited to one team.
We realize that this might not be the answer that some want to hear, but it's something we struggled with managing in the user interface. We felt the best approach would be to offer one profile (essentially team), with the ability to have a large number of bots of various classes.
>In the chassis shaping, can you overlap corner-points? Create a pyramid? Or do all bots have to have a flat top like RA 2?
Currently every layer has to have the same number of vertices but they can be very close together, giving the appearance of fewer vertices. As we work through the bot lab paint shop, we're trying to strike a balance between more control in customizing the look of the chassis with the flexibility to stack vertices or bring them very close together.
>Will there be elastic components that bend or are they static like RA 2?
We have looked at springy joints, but initially we are going to focus on rigid joints to start. Springy joints are possible with Physx, we just don't have the ability to get them implemented and tested properly while we are working on the rigid physics.
>Will players be able to skin components in the bot lab or will people have to apply a new skin outside of the bot lab?
Currently there are no plans to include the ability to skin components in the bot lab. We have heard this idea from a number of people however, and know that it is something that many of you would like to see in future updates if possible.
>What's in the box?
The crushed dreams of the RA III supporters if we don't get things right...the pressure.
>Will there be more screenshots and video prior to release?
Yes. What type of things would you like to see in the next batch of screenshots and video?
As you can probably tell from the responses to your questions there will be a lot of things we would like to do, but realistically won't be able to do for the launch. In our dream scenario we hope that RA III does the community proud at launch and is successful enough for us to continue to invest in larger improvements and features. We know we won't launch with all of the features that you've been asking for, but we have put a lot of thought into making a highly mod friendly game that we hope lives on as long as RA 2.
-The Robot Arena III Team