Intro
Welcome to the first MoSimulator (Mosim) Devlog! For those unfamiliar, MoSim is an FRC game originally developed by one person as a school project. Recently the game has been gaining traction and more developers have been brought on to keep the game fun and engaging. This thread will serve as a Devlog for the rest of 2024 and 2025.
Goals for this Devlog
This Devlog sets out to show the community a behind the scenes look of the development of MoSim.
General Information
In the future, these Devlogs will be released on Fridays. You are welcome to ask any questions regarding the game for developers to respond in this thread.
When updates are released we will make a separate post regarding that specific update.
Team Introductions
At the moment the team is made up of the following 5 people:
@MoMachine
“Hello everyone, I’m Marco. I created MoSim and used to work in Unity. I have now shifted to leading the development team and organizing the development of the game”
@ImpactTang
“Hey there, I’m Oliver, one of the developers for MoSim. I spend most of my time working on scripting and Unity tasks. My main focus is on the back end, but I also enjoy adding and improving existing robots. I also love helping to integrate everyone’s code and making sure it all works well together.”
@Akuma
“Hey I’m Aaron. I’m a Unity developer for MoSimulator. It’s my responsibilty to implement robots into the game ensuring accurate movements, animations, and overall robot performance. I spend most of my work fine tuning animations and scripts specific to each robot’s unique mechanisms. I also help fix any bugs within the game as well as outreach.”
@ryanhubbs
“I’m Ryan and I’m a Unity developer for MoSim and focus on outreach. I work on core components of the Simulator such as scoring logic and general robot mechanism code.”
@Matt.M
“Hey I’m Matthew or Matt. I’m the 3d modeler for MoSimulator. It’s my responsibility to make sure all of the 3d models in the game are optimized to improve performance, along with creation of other assets for the game. I also write our dev logs, and help with organizing development of the game.”
Active Projects
New Robots
Currently three robots are in progress. One has been brought into Unity after being optimized.
Two more robots have been brought into Blender and are being optimized.
This is a joint project between Matthew and Unity developers
New physics based drive system
Currently Ryan has been working on a new drive system, completely based on Unity’s physics engine. This will provide a more realistic feel to the game while still being fun to play.
Migrating towards “Prefabs”
More on the backend side of development, Oliver has been moving us to a new system for adding robots. This new system will allow us to add a robot without having to reference it from multiple different places.
Moving away from Git LFS
Currently we use Git LFS (Large File Storage) to help store our models which is increasing costs of MoSim which is a completely free game. To keep the game free we are moving away from the paid version of LFS. There are currently no plans to make the game paid, or have any paid content. This is a joint project between all members of the development team
Oct 18 - Oct 25
This week went quite well for the team, all though many of us where busy but here’s what we got up to:
New Robots
Lots has been happening for the New Robots this week! From optimizing new robots to getting the optimized robots into Unity and getting them working, we will have some new content coming soon.
New Physics Based Drive System
The new drive system has seen lots of work as well, this system now physically models a swerve wheel to simulate the forces on the ground.
New Visuals
We have been working on improving the visual of MoSim, this includes new robot materials, new lighting, new field materials and more.
Conclusion
Apologies for not releasing yesterday, we were having some technical difficulties with Chief Delphi. We are hoping to have some new content coming to you guys soon so stay tuned!
Oct 26 - Nov 1
Like last week, most of the team was busy. We hope you all had a great Halloween!
New Robots
One new robot has been optimized, and another has been brought into Unity and is moving!
New Physics Based Drive System
Progress has been made on the drive system, there are some roadblocks but we are working through them.
New Visuals
More research and testing has been done regarding Unity’s render pipelines to keep the game optimized while increasing graphics.
Conclusion
As this was another busy week we haven’t seen tons of progress, the team has more been discussing the future of the game. Future Devlogs will be released on Sundays.
Yes we do. At the moment, MoSimulator has 6 robots in game.
Team 1690 - Orbit
Team 930 - Mukwonago BEARs
Team 1678 - Citrus Circuits
Team 118 - Robonauts
Team 4414 - HighTide
Team 4089 - Stealth Robotics
More robots are on the way and we are open to adding more to that list. Just send a message to this account or contact one of the developers via our discord server.
Just to add to this, while the official game only contains the above list (for now), a lot more robots and games have been added through mods, including 3847’s 2024 robot in the OA+ modpack.
You can install the reactor modloader from the windows store (assuming you are on windows), and you can browse, download, and launch the mods from there.
Nov 2 - Nov 8
Like last week, most of the team was busy. We hope you all had a great Halloween!
Mod Spotlight - 2022 Rapid React
This week was pretty slow so we decided to do a mod spotlight!
A big part of what makes the MoSimulator community great is it is filled with talented people that create high quality content. This weekend we’d like to shine some light on the 2022 Rapid React mod created by @WhiteWolfy2186 . @WhiteWolfy2186 is also responsible for the OA+ Mod and the 2019 Destination Deep Space mods.
This mod served as a stepping stone for improving and creating new features some of which are making their way to the official release of MoSim. Some of these things are:
A more heavily physics-based drive system
A hybrid simulation and animation intake system that allows cargo interactions to be completely real while maintaining consistency and visual quality.
A strong core under the hood that has allowed 12 unique robots to be released over just a five-week time span.
This mod is now in it’s final release state. It is available through the git hub releases page. The source code is available through the modding documentation
To accompany the final release, @WhiteWolfy2186 has compiled a trailer to showcase the mod and many of its robots.
Conclusion
As this was another busy week we didn’t make as much progress as we had hoped, internal discussions are still ongoing as to the future of the game and are likely to continue for the next few weeks.
Nov 10 - Nov 16
Sorry for the Devlog delay! I was busy this weekend and didn’t find time to post. The dates for Devlogs have changed and will now be written starting on Sunday, and being posted on Saturday (In an Ideal world!)
New Robots
We continue to get more robots optimized for release. Due to this being a new initiative we are required to create a library of assets (Such as electronics) that are both optimized and detailed. This is one of the biggest challenges we’ve experienced.
New Physics Based Drive System
With some help from members of the community, the physics based drive system has seen lots of progress! It is now significantly more stable than before.
Conclusion
This week was not as busy as some in the past, and a decent amount of progress was made towards some new content coming to the game. If
It’s an active project of ours, we do not have an ETA at the moment as to when it will be released. We are actively working on preparing other parts of the game for multiplayer to make it easier to implement.
