RoboCo
Play RoboCo with Lead Game Designer Luke Jayapalan & Other RoboDevelopers!
Learn more about our game at the links below!
⚙ STEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067220/RoboCo/
⚙ WEBSITE: https://www.roboco.co/
⚙ DISCORD: https://discord.gg/7d5cpKbxdu
⚙ SOCIALS: https://linktr.ee/robocogame
Play RoboCo with Community Managers Brandon Pittser and Nicole Remily!
Learn more about our game at the links below!
⚙ STEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067220/RoboCo/
⚙ WEBSITE: https://www.roboco.co/
⚙ DISCORD: https://discord.gg/7d5cpKbxdu
⚙ SOCIALS: https://linktr.ee/robocogame
OTK Game Expo Recap & Our Plans for Steam Next Fest!
All Hail OTK! - RoboCo Collabed with Twitch’s Biggest Names in The First-Ever OTK Games Expo
If you’re a regular Twitch viewer, you’ve probably heard of Asmongold. Originally a WoW superstar who now plays every fantasy game under the sun, Asmongold and his team (dubbed OTK) streamed their first-ever game expo this week, and we were a part of it! With over 126k concurrent viewers on Asmongold's channel alone (and thousands more on other channels!), the show was our biggest event of the year so far. We couldn’t be more grateful to the titans overs at OTK for allowing us to share in this historic moment! 😎
If you didn’t get the chance to watch the show live on June 8th, we HIGHLY recommend checking out the VOD below!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1498213686
However, if you did watch the stream, you may have seen something we’ve been keeping secret for a while…a brand new TRAILER! That’s right, prior to the event on Wednesday, our team was hard at work putting together an exclusive trailer for OTK, and, to be honest with you, it may be the coolest piece of RoboCo content we’ve ever created! 🍿
Play Our Demo Ahead of Steam Next Fest!
However, OTK wasn’t the only big event coming up for RoboCo! Thanks to our collaboration with FIRST Global at the UN Global Youth Summit last week, there’s a demo of RoboCo available RIGHT NOW for all players to enjoy! It includes three campaign levels (Sandwich Server, Wood and Chips, and Across the Goo) as well as our laboratory sandbox and the new RoboRepair Tutorials! Head to our Steam Page to download your copy today and share your creations with us in our Official RoboCo Discord; we’re so excited to see what you’ll create! 🤖
RoboCo’s Plan for Live Streams During Steam Next Fest!
Steam Next doesn’t just include a demo though! It will also feature TWO RoboCo livestreams, one of which is happening at 10 AM on Wednesday, June 15th and the other at 10 AM on Saturday, June 18th. Our Wednesday guests will include Lead Game Designer and fellow devblog writer Luke Jayapalan and a host of other members RoboDevelopers! Meanwhile, our Saturday event will feature our two community managers, VP of Marketing Brandon Pittser and myself! If you’ve been itching to ask our developers some burning RoboQuestions, or if you just want to watch our staff fool around and make some crazy robots, make sure to stop by and say hello! You can also watch our previous live streams at the YouTube link here!
And that’s it! Did you love the OTK Games Expo? Have you been enjoying the demo? Are you excited for Steam Next? Let us know in our Discord! Also, don’t forget to check out the OTK Twitch VOD, new trailer, and upcoming live streams! Next week, we’re revealing some prehistoric creations in a new installment of Check Out Our Robots - Dinosaur Edition! 🦖
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
Resizable Motors and More New Cosmetics!
Last week, we showcased some of our favorite pieces of RoboCo content over the last couple of months. This week, we’re revealing our re-sizeable motors and some new cosmetics!
Bigger is Better
You may have noticed in recent-ish versions of RoboCo that the servo motors and DC motors had four sizes. The bigger sizes were more powerful with a higher max torque, as tends to be the case with motors in real life. As we played the game with these four sizes, we found that we liked the core idea of bigger motors being more powerful, but we didn't like swapping from one motor size to another on our robots and losing the first motor's properties and transmitter control settings because of the swap.
As Lead UI/UX Designer Joe Horan revealed in Tools | Inside RoboCo Episode 4, we've always wanted the Resize Tool to work on more parts besides blocks, rods, and pistons. So we decided that the solution to our dilemma was to make motors resizable, increasing their size and max torque while preserving their other properties and controls.
For example, if you resize a motor to its largest possible size (3x3x3) you can achieve a max torque value of 20,000 Nm, thus allowing your robot to lift incredibly heavy objects like the one shown below!
A Classic Disguise
Speaking of cosmetics, one of our newest additions to the RoboCo cosmetic line are these slapstick glasses! Feel free to use them as a disguise or share them with your friends for a guaranteed laugh!
Filabee Achieves Its Final Form
If you’ve been following RoboCo for a long time, you may know that our developer Filament Games' mascot is a bumblebee named Filabee. While Filabee is usually busy delivering special treats and hosting events with our staff, you can also find them buzzing around their RoboCo beehive with their brand new bee wings!
Start Your Very Own Toy Store
If you’re the engineer looking for the perfect On button, then do we have the cosmetic for you! We have three different styles of buttons for you to choose from and they work with just about any robot!
Make Your Point Heard
If you feel like humans aren’t listening, make sure to use our new loudspeaker to get their attention! You may blow out their eardrums but at least your robot won’t have to worry about ever getting the wrong commands again!
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! Are you as excited about these resizable motors and new cosmetics as we are? Let us know in the comments below or in our Official RoboCo Discord! Next week, Brandon Pittser returns to break down our biggest RoboCo announcement of all time! Trust me, you won’t want to miss it!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
Did You See It - RoboCo Content Showcase #3
Last week, Luke Jayapalan talked about our plans for a RoboCo Steam Workshop. This week, we’re showcasing some amazing RoboCo content from a variety of awesome creators!
Did You See It? – YouTube Edition
From messing around in the sandbox to playthroughs of classic RoboCo challenges, here are some of our favorite videos of the last couple months!
Build a “Real” Car with Mechanical Suspension, Drive, and Steering Systems by kAN Gaming
kan Gaming has been making videos on YouTube since January 2016! He mainly plays robotics games, building simulators, and some survival games. He’s also made several RoboCo videos and has been a part of our community since our earliest demo! To learn more about him and see more of his content, check out his YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch!
The Best Coffee Robot by Yeti
One of Yeti’s main objectives is to create early access content for upcoming indie games. His “beautiful” coffee robot resulted in a unique RoboCo Coffee playthrough we didn’t see coming. To learn more about Yeti, make sure to follow him on Twitter and subscribe to him on Twitch for the live experience!
Making a Blaster Shooter So I Can Torment Customers in RoboCo by Steve’s Maker Space
Steve’s Maker Space is a wholesome gaming-focused YouTube channel that includes everything from messing around with robots to programming. Steve’s blaster shooter creations is one of the most innovative robots we’ve ever seen (and the bane of our humans’ existence). To learn more about Steve, make sure to check out his YouTube, Twitter, and Discord!
Did You See It? – RoboCo Emoji Generator
Our first piece of RoboCo fan-art EVER, the RoboCo Emoji Generator was created by RoboCo alumni Durf after accessing our latest demo. Using assets from our derpy and delightful humans, this generator allows you to create your RoboCo emojis with almost any expression you can think of. Make sure to check it out here if you’re looking for some new emojis to add to your Discord server and also watch Durf’s video on the generator below! You can also follow Durf on Twitter, Twitch, and Discord!
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! What’s been your favorite piece of RoboCo content these last couple months? Make sure to let us know in the comments down below! Next week, we’re revealing some new cosmetics as well as re-sizeable motors!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don’t forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
Full Steam Ahead!
For those who may not know, game developers on Steam can set up an online Workshop for their game that provides a place for players to upload content for other players to discover and download. It’s the perfect place to host robots for a building game like RoboCo.
Right now, we’ve set up RoboCo’s Workshop for internal testing by developers only, and the Workshop won’t be active for players until the game launches to Steam Early Access. But we thought it would be fun and informative to give a preview of how it works.
Finding Robots Made By Other Players
Step 1: Go to the Robot Save/Load menu and select Browse Steam Workshop. This will open the Steam Workshop overlay on top of the game.
Step 2: Find the robot you are interested in. Steam Workshop has lots of handy tools to help you find what you want even as the workshop fills up with more and more awesome creations. You can check out collections curated by the community or follow authors who have released robots you’ve enjoyed in the past. You can filter to your favorite robots, or to robots that match tags like Funny or Automated. You can sort by date updated or by community rating. There are far more options than we can briefly list here.
Step 3: Subscribe to a robot you like to download it onto your local machine. Subscribed robots will automatically update if the creator releases a newer version.
Step 4: The robot(s) you subscribed to will now appear in your Save/Load menu. You can filter to just Steam Workshop robots to find them easily. You can also edit a found robot and save your own version to a new save slot.
Sharing Your Robot With Other Players
Step 0 (optional): When you complete a challenge with a robot, that robot will earn a badge, like this one for “Sandwich Server.” To prevent cheating, the badge will only last as long as you don’t edit the robot, but you can always earn it again with your new robot to prove it is still capable.
Step 1: Save your robot. You will see any badges that the robot has earned from Step 1 in their Stats on the Save/Load menu.
Step 2: Make any edits to the robot’s description or tags. You can add tags for what Robot Actions the robot can do like Climbs, Transports, or Destroys; what type of Controls it has like Automated, Manual, or a Hybrid of both; and what Traits it has like Funny, Complex, or Beautiful. Some tags will be automatically applied by the game, like the challenge completion badge from Step 1.
Step 3: When you’re ready, upload your robot to the workshop. If you attached any Python scripts to your robot as described in our programming guide, these will be uploaded along with the robot. If your robot uses third-party libraries, these won’t be included, but you can put instructions into the robot description to tell users what libraries they need or how to install them.
Step 4: You can now see your very own robot on the Workshop! Other players will be able to filter to its tags, subscribe to it, and upvote it in support of what you made!
A Community of Builders
There’s so many reasons we’re excited for players to get their hands on RoboCo on Steam Early Access soon. But perhaps the number one reason is that we’ve loved to see all the robots that players have made during brief demos and user tests, and we know that having a public RoboCo Workshop is when that kind of community sharing will really take off.
Whether you want to see how other players solved the Silicon Sonata challenge, skitter around the RoboCo factory floor with a hexapod robot that you saw online, build upon another player’s Python code to make the ultimate color sensor robovac, or express your artistic side with a motor-driven moving diorama, RoboCo Workshop is a fantastic resource with the promise to help us all appreciate each other’s accomplishments and grow our engineering and design skills. And fostering a community of builders is what RoboCo is all about.
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! What’s the first robot you plan on sharing with the RoboCo community? Let us know in the comments or in our Discord! Also, make sure to check out our latest episode of Inside RoboCo where Carter Williams breaks down the physics behind RoboCo! Next week, we’re showcasing more RoboCo Content creators in a new Did You See It? – RoboCo Content Showcase!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don’t forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
Inside RoboCo Episode 5 | Physics
Last week, we interviewed RoboCo’s producer, Kenny Green, to learn more about what it’s like developing RoboCo in 2022. This week, we have a new episode of Inside RoboCo, our behind-the-scenes developer series, fresh off the YouTube presses for you to enjoy!
Hosted by Game Engineer Carter Williams, this episode takes you behind-the-scenes into the code and science behind RoboCo’s physics. If you’re curious how we translated real-world physics into RoboCo or what in-game wackiness the physics system has caused, this is the episode for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYH3245VCpM
What was your favorite moment from the episode? Make sure to let us know in the YouTube comments and in our Discord! You can also check out previous episodes of our behind-the-scenes series by clicking the link here.
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! Make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube so you don’t miss more Inside RoboCo, Check Out Our Robots, and other upcoming videos this year! Next week, we’re going full steam ahead with Lead Game Designer Luke Jayapalan to talk about our plans for a Steam Workshop!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
How We Dev in 2022
For those of you who don’t know, Kenny started working on RoboCo in 2020 after joining Filament Games in 2019. Since then, he’s helped lead the team through a global pandemic, an international robotics competition, and numerous gameplay revisions. When Kenny’s not working on RoboCo, you can usually find him playing Dungeons and Dragons, hanging out with his wife and dog, or out on the water skiing, wakeboarding, or just plain chilling!
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Nicole: Hello, Kenny! I’m so glad you could join us today to talk about what it’s like to be a producer on RoboCo!
Kenny: Hey, Nicole! Happy to be here!
Nicole: So I guess the first question I have for you is, what is a video game producer?
Kenny: It's a lot of things, but at the end of the day, a producer's job is to get stuff done. There’s a common saying amongst the community: “Great games would be made all the time without producers, but they would never ship.” My job is to remind the team that we are trying to finish the project and get it to a point where we can put it out in the world and let people enjoy this thing that we've poured our hearts and souls into.
Nicole: What do you spend the majority of your workday doing then?
Kenny: Meetings. A lot of meetings. Especially at the start of the pandemic, I had days where I'd have four hour-long meetings. I also spend a lot of time making sure that the roadmap for RoboCo is up-to-date, legible, and accessible, so that people both within and outside the project understand what’s going on and what’s happening in the future, especially if we have something come up that might shift the timeline a bit.
Nicole: What was it like translating those activities from an in-person environment to a remote environment?
Kenny: As a producer, it was quite difficult at first, especially since a lot of my job is managing communication overhead. It’s not as easy to communicate when you’re no longer able to just lean over and talk to the person sitting next to you or walk over to their desk and point at their screen. The process of setting up a Zoom meeting, for example, made things seem very formal, which is not the vibe my team and I generally go for.
Additionally, because people needed to adapt their communication styles to new remote circumstances, we ended up noticing bugs or glitches in the game later, which caused more problems down the line and made the overall development process of RoboCo much slower.
Nicole: That sounds difficult. How did you and the team overcome those challenges?
Kenny: Filament was a really big help. Once we centralized Slack and the ability to create huddles, developers felt much more comfortable with communicating issues to each other, especially when I encouraged them to think that you’re not interrupting anyone or being seen as bothersome by setting one up.
I also came up with work agreements, almost like a contract for what we wanted the communication between team members to be like. The great thing about work agreements is that nothing was added to the agreement unless the whole team agreed upon it. That way, people would feel less uncomfortable and more like their opinions were being valued.
Once we implemented both those things, communication got a lot easier. Instead of waiting to report on bugs or glitches, we started communicating them when we saw them, meaning we got to work fixing them a lot more quickly. Members of the team also felt a lot more empowered to set up meetings and talk amongst themselves on their own, which was encouraging to see.
Nicole: That’s awesome! How did you make sure that communication stayed open to people outside of the RoboCo Team?
Kenny: Filament has a Show & Tell every month, which is a cool way for producers to promote internally what projects are going on. We also, at the end of every sprint, send review and retro notes out to company management. That way, management can see what we’re working on, how things are going, what roadblocks there are, etc. Not only is this avenue of communication beneficial for people like Dan White, who doesn’t work on RoboCo every day, but it’s also beneficial to us because it helps boost the team’s morale and makes us feel like we’re getting stuff done.
Nicole: What about adding new individuals to the team? I’m sure that’s been a unique challenge.
Kenny: Absolutely. We’ve brought on several people since the project started, most of which I’ve never met in person. When you’re in an office, it’s pretty easy to be like, “All right, you're going to look over this person’s shoulder while they're programming, or while they're doing this piece of art, or while they're working in the scene in Unity.” To replicate that remotely, I’ll stick them both in all the same meetings or set up a several-hour-long call for them to chat.
Another thing I love to do with new RoboCo developers specifically is give them a piece of code to take ownership of. That way, they get to poke around and find solutions to defects we may have found in the code while still learning more about the game. I also encourage new people to reach out to more seasoned developers with questions so that they get used to working together more.
Nicole: Are there any ways you try to inject fun and lightheartedness into the team’s structure?
Kenny: I love starting meetings with a little bit of small talk. When someone comes into a meeting with me, I usually ask how their day is going, what games they’re playing, stuff like that. I also encourage that discourse amongst team members to hammer home the idea that we’re all just people and that, no matter how different we may be, we’re all on the same team working to produce an incredible game.
Nicole: Is there anything you miss about being in the office versus being remote or vice versa?
Kenny: I miss interacting with my team the most. I'm an inherently social person, so one of the things I did before I left the office every day was check in on all my team members. I would stop by their desk and ask how their day was going, if they needed my help, or if they had any questions or concerns. That ability to see what's going on through their facial expressions or body language is something I miss out on working remotely.
I don't, however, miss taking meetings in the office. My chair at home is much comfier than the one at my work desk. Plus, when working from home, I can get up for 10 minutes to pet my dog for some extra dopamine.
Nicole: What have been some personal highlights of yours when working on RoboCo?
Kenny: Our eventual collaboration with FIRST Global was one of the bigger ones. When we originally applied for the NSF grant with RoboCo, we cited FIRST as one of our biggest inspirations. Collaborating with them on The FIRST Global RoboCo Challenge was awesome because it allowed us to test and showcase the game in front of thousands of kids while working hand-in-hand with one of our biggest idols. It also led us to think more about what cooperative and competitive elements we might want to bring to RoboCo in the future.
Nicole: Final question for you, what’s been your favorite thing about working on RoboCo?
Kenny: I love helping insanely talented and creative people do their jobs as effectively as possible while still having the chance to contribute to the project myself. I also have this dream for RoboCo where I imagine a kid who previously didn’t have the opportunity to participate in real-world robotics become enamored with engineering and eventually go on to work at NASA, where they’ll help us colonize Mars. Is it a little bit of a pipe dream? Maybe. But I do feel like RoboCo has that kind of power and I love that I get the opportunity to have such a positive impact on the world.
Nicole: I couldn’t agree more, Kenny! Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to chat with us.
Kenny: No problem! Always happy to talk about RoboCo!
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And that’s it for this week’s dev blog! Did you enjoy learning more about Kenny and what it’s like being a producer on RoboCo? Let us know in the comments down below or on our Discord! Next week, we’ve got another episode of Inside RoboCo ready and waiting for you to watch, so make sure you tune in next week and subscribe to us on YouTube so you don’t miss it!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
RoboEngineer Spotlight #3
Last week, Luke Jayapalan revealed a brand new RoboCo challenge, Silicon Sonata! This week, we’re doing another RoboEngineer Spotlight!
This award goes out to a select member of our Discord community that answers questions, builds amazing robots, actively engages with our staff, and overall makes the RoboCo Discord a more welcoming place. Our previous winners, KingBR and Da Bald Eagul, exemplify these qualities and so much more and, as our community continues to grow, people like them have become more important than ever!
So, without further ado, please oil your gears and give RedPug a round of applause! 👏👏👏
RedPug has been a member of our Discord community since June 20, 2020. They’ve posted over 1,454 times and are one of the eight Discord members to be crowned a Robot Build-Competition Winner. In addition to walking people through the intricacies of RoboCo engineering, RedPug was also a heavy contributor to RoboCo’s playtests, which are playthroughs of RoboCo conducted by the Discord community to help developers improve the RoboCo gameplay experience! RedPug has also contributed several questions to our on-going Inside RoboCo series. To see some of his robotic contributions to our server, check out the video below!
If you’re interested in meeting RedPug as well as the other humans that make up our Discord community, click the invite link to our server here! Not only do members get the chance to be featured in our RoboEngineer Spotlight, they also are the first to hear about exclusive news, participate in exclusive competitions, and talk directly with our team!
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! Thank you RedPug and the rest of our community for being such wonderful humans and for continuously promoting and loving RoboCo! Next week, RoboCo’s producer, Kenny Green, is stopping by to tell us about how we dev in 2022!
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!
(C)ello from the Other Side
Last week, we went behind-the-scenes of FGRC21. This week we’re excited to share some early musical concepts for a RoboCo challenge that we are calling Silicon Sonata!
If you played RoboCo during our Closed Alpha testing in October 2020, you may recall that different groups received different challenges to test. Some of you received a challenge called Light Their Fire where you built a robot to light a candle for a couple’s romantic dinner.
After Closed Alpha, we concluded that this challenge was turning out too similar to the RoboCoffee challenge: both involved carrying an object (likely with a robot claw arm), filling / lighting the object, keeping it from spilling / snuffing out, and placing it on a table
So we thought back to our earliest prototype of the challenge, which included playing the cello as one of several ways in which you tried to make the dinner romantic. We decided to move the cello back into being the challenge’s main focus. (The candle is still around, if you know where to look.) We also decided to give your cello-playing robot a musical partner, allowing you to play a duet with another robot playing the violin.
This raised the question of what the duet would sound like. Our resident composer Josh Bartels put together some demo videos with three options to help us discover the right direction. We wanted to share these early concepts with you as a fun example of the kind of experimentation we do before we arrive at the version of the game you will play.
As these were internal demo videos, please excuse the placeholder human sound effects, the untextured violin bot, and other issues that will not be present in the final product.
Option 1: Call and Response
[previewyoutube="AA9OatWaLik;full"]
There was a call and response option, where the violin would play a riff, gesture to you on the cello, and you would respond with the same riff. A robot with machine learning could be a good mimic, so we liked how this option justified how you learn what to play. This option’s legato style of playing also matched with the longer bow movements we expected.
Option 2: Battling Strings
[previewyoutube="Hl2tad2QZeg;full"]
There was a battling strings option, where each instrument played something impressive in a vaguely Dueling Banjos-esque standoff. With this option, we liked how the RoboCo theme showed up at the end for a heartwarming finale.
Option 3: Robot’s First Recital
[previewyoutube="916N04t3G-g;full"]
Then there was the robot’s first recital option, where we were honest about your robot’s expected level of cello-playing expertise. It also reflects the kind of sounds that would come out of a cello unless it is held up and played properly. With this option, we thought it was hilarious how everyone reacted as if your playing was perfectly acceptable. We figured we could build on this and have the humans applaud like proud parents at their child’s first cello recital.
Get Your Cello Bow Ready!
In the end, we decided to combine elements of all three options into the final sequence. How did it turn out? You’ll have to play the challenge yourself to hear!
And that’s it for this week’s devblog! How do you plan on tackling this new RoboCo challenge? Let us know in the comments down below or in our Discord! Next week, we’re crowning a new Engineer of the Week, so make sure to tune in to learn more about one of our favorite Discord members.
For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!
Don’t forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!