Walking bot group project

[MarvinMan]

Things going through the walls/floor usually only happens with terrain hexes, which can be deleted to free the bot. At one point I had a grenade cannon that could reliably fire straight through walls.

Varying the mass of continuums on moving limbs could get messy, especially when combined with the amount of force that pistons are able to provide. You can actually make very effective engines with just a continuum on the end of a reciprocating piston. I agree that it seems like cheating to vary mass on the fly, and you may as well use hooks instead, which may let the bot walk on walls or the ceiling.

[cupid_the_conqueror]

If your worrying about balance, remember that one of the odd things about unity physics is that it LOVES the gyroscopic effect trying spinning a single contuim at 50rpm when it has 100 mass. It'll twist the crap out of whatever it is attached to!

[MarvinMan]

I don't think rawbots still uses the default unity physics. IIRC, it got replaced with the bullet physics engine.

I've not noticed anything gyroscopic happening with spinning masses before, but it could be interesting if it does work.

I built a leg on a test platform, and came up with a few observations:
>The foot must have matched the bots speed before it touches the ground, and must be lifted before the leg finishes the power stroke.
>Grenades make poor feet, and continuums work ok but aren't round.
>Small wheels make good feet, but are quite big
>The fast leg movements should use an open-loop controller, with a slow closed-loop system to tune the settings of the fast loop
>Synchronising multiple legs could be tricky, especially when reversing/steering.

[Doctor Virus]

Ah yes steering is one big issue but some pistons and hooks should do