Aerial Assist 3D Game Simulation

[RyanCahoon]

I've made up a rudimentary sandbox 3D simulation of Aerial Assist. I would like to add more features to it as the season progresses (perhaps creating an API that could be controlled by the various blind programming language simulators that have popped up recently), but figured I'd do an initial release while it might be helpful for figuring our strategies.

http://thecatalystis.com/AerialAssist/

Runs on Unity Player, so should work fine on both Macs and PCs (Linux people - try the downloadable version - let me know if it works).

More details on features are on the linked page.

[Dragonking]

This is really well done.

It seems to work fine for me on CrunchBang Linux (64-bit Waldorf) through a VirtualBox instance running windows (not exactly native support, but it works).

[chibi_mechanic]

This is an amazing resource! Thanks so much for putting this out there! I'm pretty positive my team will find this very helpful!

[Adamz_]

This is really cool, ive been playing around for a few minitues with it, and must say, quite impressive

[bEdhEd]

I remember trying a 2012 simulator that had an option to change the the mechanisms of your robot, so customization of the robot was possible. I think it was made by Diamond Bullet Studios. Do you think you can further develop this simulator to do that?

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

options to change the the mechanisms of your robot

Propose some suggestions for other mechanisms you'd like to see, and I'll do what I can.

The emphasis with this in my mind was provide opportunities for experimentation, even if things don't end up looking "official." I.e. you can pick up the red ball with the blue robot, score with balls in goals of mismatched color, etc. You can experiment with trying to catch balls by just seeing if you can get the other robot underneath the ball before it hits the ground, even if the robot won't actually catch the ball, per se.

The immediate gaps in functionality I see are the ability to change power and angle of launch, which would allow experimentation with the "Aren sweet spot" talked about in the Build Blitz. It would also allow a powered pass by just pointing the launcher straight along the ground.

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by RyanCahoon

Propose some suggestions for other mechanisms you'd like to see, and I'll do what I can.

The emphasis with this in my mind was provide opportunities for experimentation, even if things don't end up looking "official." I.e. you can pick up the red ball with the blue robot, score with balls in goals of mismatched color, etc. You can experiment with trying to catch balls by just seeing if you can get the other robot underneath the ball before it hits the ground, even if the robot won't actually catch the ball, per se.

The immediate gaps in functionality I see are the ability to change power and angle of launch, which would allow experimentation with the "Aren sweet spot" talked about in the Build Blitz. It would also allow a powered pass by just pointing the launcher straight along the ground.

Rotating intakes, hoppers, catching nets, suction cups, paddles, catapults, spring launchers, there are all kinds of options. They don't have to look pretty, they just have to give an idea of how a robot would operate with those types of mechanisms.

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

Rotating intakes, hoppers, catching nets, suction cups, paddles, catapults, spring launchers, there are all kinds of options. They don't have to look pretty, they just have to give an idea of how a robot would operate with those types of mechanisms.

A continuous (rotating) intake would be useful. I'll add it to the list of to-do's.

Can you clarify what you mean by a hopper? Since there's only one ball at a time this year, what I think of as a hopper wouldn't be of much use.

Would a ball launched by a catapult or a spring launcher behave differently than the current generic launcher? Seems like they're all just different methods of imparting energy to the ball, which then follows a roughly ballistic trajectory. The simulator is mostly useful for strategy purposes; physical prototyping is required to figure out which mechanism to use.

[xForceDee]

Very cool simulator. One thing that I think would be nice is if it worked with an Xbox controller or Logitech gamepad

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by xForceDee

Very cool simulator. One thing that I think would be nice is if it worked with an Xbox controller or Logitech gamepad

My Logitech F710 (wireless version of the F310) works fine with the game (Windows 7 64-bit; both web player and downloaded version). I don't have one to test with, but I believe an Xbox controller should work - though I'm not sure if the axis/button mapping will be optimal.

If you can't get your gamepad to work with the simulator, can you check that the joystick in the Control Panel (or equivalent on Mac/Linux) and make sure its axes and buttons are responding, and then let me know what OS and specific joystick model you're using?

Also, make sure you click on the game to focus it - this allows the game to receive input, either from the keyboard or joysticks.

Thanks,

[BrennanB]

Very fancy, had a bit of fun working with it in a few minutes. One small thing that i'm not even sure that you can change is that the sideways friction (eg. T-Boning) doesn't have as much friction as it would in real life.

Very cool!

[Emphimisey]

It is a very good game, after playing with it for about 5 minutes you have done a good job. the only problem that I have is that it is not open-source. I think if it was the general populous could actually make some nice improvements to it. But overall good job.

[thedeadlybutter]

I'm sure many of us would help out & contribute if you made it open source!

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by thedeadlybutter

I'm sure many of us would help out & contribute if you made it open source!

https://github.com/rcahoon/AerialAssistSim

The code is hopefully pretty self-documenting, but I haven't had time to comment it (kinda trying to build a robot at the moment ). Feel free to PM me with questions