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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 8, 2016 4:34:21 GMT
hey yall, i'm new to the crew just wanted to say hello to introduce myself o/ also, i was interested in joining this clan because, besides liking the name, one of the goals was innovation for the rc community. i have an idea that i would like to see come to life and wanted to throw it out there and see what yall thought. when i first started playing rc, which wasn't too long ago, i discovered robocraft garage. i thought the idea of the site was cool, so i joined and made project files for some of my bots. i soon discovered though that it's not what i thought it would be. first, the information is out of date, they still have pilot seats listed in their cube break down. also, i thought because it had practical and creative ratings.....people would get your bot from the store, try it out, then give a practical rating. nope. people just rate it on both, without trying it out...which seems odd to me. also now in game, it costs a lot of rp to upload compared to the amount you get per sale. in order to turn a profit, you have to sell it multiple times. the profit part i don't really care about...i have more rp than i know what to do with tbh, but it seems to me this may be important to some. so i have an idea. i want to create a site like rcg. instead of garage, call it a lab. so each user has their own robotics lab that showcases their bots with pictures, video, text, etc...much like rcg does. the user can also specify a number of bots that are required to make a sale and let you order that bot. once enough orders have been received, the user can upload the bot and inform the people that submitted an order that it's ready to to be purchased in game. this could also become a great catalyst for those that want to build custom bots for other people. i could even add collaboration features so that you can work on a bot idea with other users. so what about me making this site for this clan? it could easily integrate with these forums too, making it seamless, isn't hard at all. each clan member can have their own lab to showcase their bots, work on a bot idea with other users, maybe get some help building custom bots for people and use the order feature so that they don't waste rp uploading them. also, if it's just clan members, we could use this strategically. make a dream team of bots to platoon up with by searching all the bots in the clan, for example bring up all the clan smg hovers, etc. so dayum, that's one long winded hello, huh?  welcome to the world of ether, ha ha! let me know what you think. cheers! |
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Post by NGnius on Feb 8, 2016 22:42:58 GMT
Welcome to the forums!
Glad to see someone is busy coming up with cool robocraft ideas. A few ideas of my own that spawned from yours:
I would suggest against making it only for the clan - in case this isn't super apparent, not many of the members on our list are actually active, so that limits the users to like ten people. This would limit the market considerably, which is something I would hate to see anyone to do willingly (Apple doesn't solely market iPhones to 40 year old nerds just because that's what the company is made up of)
A community run RCG with a more modern update sounds like a great idea! - RCG is dated, partially because Robocraft keeps launching updates that change things and RCG just doesn't seem to have the ability to keep up. I also haven't seen any way to contribute to the development of RCG, which seems like a smart thing to do with an Early-Access game website. Would love to see something to remedy RCG's flaws.
A lot of your idea seems to be things that RCG should have/sort of has - While I don't have a problem with people making similar products with a few differences, I feel people will stick with RCG simply because it is the more popular option. I would suggest trying to find a way to get the RCG crew (idk who they are) to listen to your ideas, etc. since your ideas seem like something, that with RCG's base, could create a really good website.
RCHQ - While I won't claim to have any real knowledge about the site, I did aid a bit in its development. Tommyfoxy2 seems eager to get his hands on anything pertinent to put onto the website; maybe you could team up with him to make a true headquarters for everything Robocraft.
Wow, I had a lot of thoughts about that. Now for my final thought in response to this thread's title:
Adios, Bye, Aurevoir, Hasta la vista!
EDIT: Just realized an accidental assumption from me: I assumed you had about the same amount of Web development experience as me, which may or may not be correct (I have very little, and I sometimes over-estimate how much work a website takes, and underestimate other people's skills in website making)
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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 9, 2016 2:15:24 GMT
hey again!
so yea i guess i should have explained myself better. i'm a software developer. i used to specialize in server side software too. this would be something i'm gonna do for myself anyways. kinda like a portfolio of my robocraft stuff. i didn't know if anyone else would like to use it too, as it's not so much that it's more work to make it multi user, but just a different approach. either way, i'll use existing open source software...so the workload is super simple either way...multi or single user.
i hear what your saying about not making it clan exclusive. maybe that other clan could be included....atlas core? reason being...if the goal was to make a commercial site like rcg...you would need to start with a small test group anyways. also, for a commercial site of that nature, there's more cost involved. if this was gonna be multi user, i would prefer to keep it to a small group. for example i would imagine that multiple people would have the server access info. that way if i'm hit by a bus, it could still keep going. with a commercial site...maybe down the line....but i don't really see that happening tbh.
the remedy for rcg being out of date is to communicate with freejam. the way rcg is built, it's manually updated, which as you pointed out is quite a task to keep up with the many updates involved with a alpha game. fj may have some sort of api that could be used (doubt it, but possible) which would be ideal. at the very least database dumps would work. in fact the first step of this project would be to contact fj and see what's possible from them.
you are right, a lot of it is, very much like rcg and if i just wanted a tool that offers these enhancements, then sure yea, totally i would contact rcg. but development is my hobby now...i'm retired from the corporate world. so projects like this are fun for me. oh and another thing i forgot to mention was i want to showcase my paint jobs too. i don't know if you've seen my bots, but i'm all about the paint jobs lol. i call paint jobs mixes and each of my bots have a name and a mix name too. when i get bored of the paint job/mix, i change it, not really even changing the bot. so i want a way to capture each paint job/mix i go through.
as far as rchq and Tommyfoxy2...awesome! i'm totally up for checking into that. what is rchq? where do i find tommy?
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Post by rollercoaster123 on Feb 9, 2016 11:46:31 GMT
as far as rchq and Tommyfoxy2...awesome! i'm totally up for checking into that. what is rchq? RCHQ=Robocraft HQ It's a site: www.robocrafthq.com/Tommyfoxy2 can just be found randomly going through the forums, or if you're lucky, you can meet him in-game, probably T10(mk10, 25k ranking), not sure about that though. So, sorry for my late "hello, aloha, hallo", but better late than never, right ?xD |
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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 9, 2016 17:02:48 GMT
better late than never...yup, for sure. it's called fashionably late, just means you got style cool site. they should prolly work on their seo as i couldn't find that and maybe list it in rc's fan site list, but i like it! thanks for pointing me in the right direction. i'll go stalk tommy now, lol |
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Post by NGnius on Feb 9, 2016 17:08:57 GMT
Software developer? Cool. Seems like it wouldn't be as much of a chore as I thought, so that points gone. Being a test group would be really cool, as I'm sure the rest of the clan members would agree. I basically do that for anything I think up of first (Dictionary). It's your vision/idea, so I can't really say that it a bad idea to not make it commercial, but you might be able to market it to clans instead of individual players if you want to expand from the test group while still having decent quality guaranteed for posts. FJ does not own or run RCG - robocraftgarage.com/page/about-robocraft-garageIt's just some young guy who is a Web developer. That's why the development is so slow/outdated - he prioritises money making projects over it because money. I'm actually tempted to say to try and get in touch with the RCG founder and ask to get involved, but that will probably take time to gain his trust and stuff, so it might be actually easier/faster to make your own site. RCHQ is what rollercoaster said. You can also friend Tommy on steam if you want - I think he accepts mostly everyone, and its probably the best way to get in touch with him. |
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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 12, 2016 13:48:40 GMT
yea i know fj doesn't run rcg. however to keep cube information up to date, you need data from them. there's many ways this can be done, but essentially you automate the process so that it doesn't end up like rcg. i'm not focusing on this part too much right now though. after our discussions here i've decided to focus the site on clans and build collaboration. it will still have bot portfolios (which i'm calling a lab) like rcg, but i figure cube inventory would best be implemented as an update, upon the request of the user test group. it will also have a place to showcase paint jobs and clan challenges. i'll let yall know when i have something ready to test. i bought the domain the other day in fact, robocraftlabs.com/ |
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Post by NGnius on Feb 12, 2016 17:25:44 GMT
yea i know fj doesn't run rcg. however to keep cube information up to date, you need data from them. there's many ways this can be done, but essentially you automate the process so that it doesn't end up like rcg. i'm not focusing on this part too much right now though. after our discussions here i've decided to focus the site on clans and build collaboration. it will still have bot portfolios (which i'm calling a lab) like rcg, but i figure cube inventory would best be implemented as an update, upon the request of the user test group. it will also have a place to showcase paint jobs and clan challenges. i'll let yall know when i have something ready to test. i bought the domain the other day in fact, robocraftlabs.com/ :D Exciting! I wonder if it's possible to find a way to "steal" the garage data straight from RC servers so that you don't have to manually make blueprints, paintjob stuff. But that's something to look into after everything is up and working. Maybe even do this for the cube info... but either one would probably take a hacked client... I just endorsed hacking! Ban me now! |
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Post by rollercoaster123 on Feb 12, 2016 22:22:49 GMT
yea i know fj doesn't run rcg. however to keep cube information up to date, you need data from them. there's many ways this can be done, but essentially you automate the process so that it doesn't end up like rcg. i'm not focusing on this part too much right now though. after our discussions here i've decided to focus the site on clans and build collaboration. it will still have bot portfolios (which i'm calling a lab) like rcg, but i figure cube inventory would best be implemented as an update, upon the request of the user test group. it will also have a place to showcase paint jobs and clan challenges. i'll let yall know when i have something ready to test. i bought the domain the other day in fact, robocraftlabs.com/ Exciting! I wonder if it's possible to find a way to "steal" the garage data straight from RC servers so that you don't have to manually make blueprints, paintjob stuff. But that's something to look into after everything is up and working. Maybe even do this for the cube info... but either one would probably take a hacked client... I just endorsed hacking! Ban me now! The only way i can see this be done, is use the CRF and the data it sends to the client, the bots, save it, and use it on the site. There are two main flaws to this: 1. In order to do this we need to either :
- Use a legit client and insert a process in it to download the data... BUT EAC is monitoring it and will most likely shut down the client.
- Or modify a client in order to make EAC ignore this, BUT EAC is most likely doing a hash check on the client when it starts up, it might not be true though, if that's the case, then we would have to keep said client running on the server itself, EtherBunny might find an alternative to this though, since the robocraft client itself uses a lot of resources... well, i guess we could strip the client of unnecesary stuff.
2. This would be quite hard to do, without any C##, or C++ coder around, and to my knowledge, none of us, except EtherBunny , he might know it.
Also: Can't wait to see if we can do it, it would be really nice ^^
EDIT: Now that i think about it RC might be written in JS or java
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Post by NGnius on Feb 13, 2016 0:12:04 GMT
Unity has built in C#, so I'm assuming that's what RC is written in. I know just about nothing about any C language, but I may be able to decipher the basics... But I'm used to Python
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Post by rollercoaster123 on Feb 13, 2016 1:24:32 GMT
Unity has built in C#, so I'm assuming that's what RC is written in. I know just about nothing about any C language, but I may be able to decipher the basics... But I'm used to Python Unity also has JS (JavaScript) built in. And i belive it's written in C. |
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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 13, 2016 7:35:16 GMT
well the proper way to retrieve any data you need for a site is to request the data from fj. there's all sorts of ways to this...api keys, database queries, or hell even database dumps. you don't however want to try extract any information yourself. results and success rate can be very inconsistent...there's too many factors outside your control. plus, the whole point really is to automate the process. i knew i saw this banner somewhere.... ac.reddit.com/r/RobocraftCRF |
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Post by rollercoaster123 on Feb 13, 2016 14:07:16 GMT
well the proper way to retrieve any data you need for a site is to request the data from fj. there's all sorts of ways to this...api keys, database queries, or hell even database dumps. you don't however want to try extract any information yourself. results and success rate can be very inconsistent...there's too many factors outside your control. plus, the whole point really is to automate the process. i knew i saw this banner somewhere.... ac.reddit.com/r/RobocraftCRFThat is the proper way yes,but we weren't talking about the proper way  or at least i wasn't... still, i don't think the API is coming anytime soon unfortunately. |
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Post by EtherBunny on Feb 13, 2016 15:34:56 GMT
That is the proper way yes,but we weren't talking about the proper way or at least i wasn't... still, i don't think the API is coming anytime soon unfortunately.oh damn are they not? obviously that was my first choice/hope i had figured it was possible to not have any api yet but i knew if it wasn't, as a modern mmo, it would be on a to do list somewhere. too bad that list doesn't sound like it's on the refrigerator, more like it's in the bottom cabinet drawer  oh well, still good to know, thanks. |
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Post by NGnius on Feb 14, 2016 17:04:05 GMT
There's some api functionality with Overwolf and RC, just not sure what you can get from it, or how easy it is.
I still think hacking would be easier, because bugging FJ about giving us access to that stuff would take too much of there time, have little gain for them and would take pretty long in general.
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welcome to the world of ether, ha ha! let me know what you think. cheers!
or at least i wasn't... still, i don't think the API is coming anytime soon unfortunately.
oh well, still good to know, thanks.