This page contains answers to questions we frequently get. Game play, tournament, purchasing, hardware, general information and related questions are covered. If you do not find the answer to your question here, please post your question to our Forums. Is building a Robot difficult? Not at all! When you first start you can use the wizard to customize a robot "template" to your specifications. You can create a robot ready to fight within minutes. You can color it, texturize it and set it loose on the competition. You learn by watching how it fights, where its weak points are, and then fine tune it. Once you get the hang of it you can then delve deeper into building more complex designs and more sophisticated AI (Artificial Intelligence). How many robots can I make? You can have a virtual "garage" of as many robots and prototypes as you like, limited only by your available disk space. Do I have to be online to play Roboforge? No. You can fight against several "test" robots that come with the game. Each robot represents a higher level of difficulty. Once you have mastered them all, you are ready to take on other player's robots from around the world (for which you will need to be online). How different can I make my robot? You are limited only by your imagination. Roboforge is a full 3D robotic construction environment. You build robots by simply clicking different components together. Every component has a number of connect points to which you can connect any other type of component. It's as simple as pointing and clicking. What can I use to build my robots? We have several different styles of robot. Components from any of these can be combined and used. There are no rules. Components can be of different types, which define their function on the Robot. We have sensors, shielding, weapons, energy packs, controllers, joints (servos) etc. Please read the introduction section for more detail. Do I have to be a programmer to change the AI? Not at all. The AI is declarative (which is similar to the way we think). It works along the lines of "if my opponent is in front of me and within 3 metres then do my king-hit move". With the AI you can get a lot more sophisticated if you want to. The wizard builds a fairly comprehensive AI that should suit most needs. Complex AI will not necessarily win a fight. Good structural design and great moves are just as important. How does a robot win a fight? Robots win by inflicting more damage than they take within a 3-minute fight (or by completely destroying the opponent - a knock out). When components collide, damage is calculated on a component-by-component basis. The direction and force of the impact is used to calculate the damage inflicted on both parties. Weapons and shielding have special damage inflicting and absorbing properties, which are taken into account. Is the fighting realistic? You bet! We do accurate collision detection (down to individual polygon intersections - so limbs don't look like they are bouncing off some invisible force field), realistic torque calculations (so the performance/speed of a joint is accurately calculated based on the weight and the extension of the limb it is moving), limb recoiling (limbs recoil back due to the force of impact) and accurate inertial damage calculations (damage results from the inertia of the impact and the attributes of the components involved). To do all this takes some heavy duty calculations (especially the collision detection). Why are there no projectile weapons like rocket launchers? We thought long and hard about this. Projectile weapons would render any actual 3D design redundant and tactics are pretty much point-shoot-evade. We wanted a game where the design of the robots has just as critical a role as the tactics. We also wanted the fights to be fun and entertaining (which they are with melee-style combat). How many different types of robots are there? We intend to release the game with 12 basic robots from 6 manufacturers (ie. 2 per manufacturer). From these an almost unlimited amount of different robots can be built by reusing bits from all of the different robots. We intend on introducing new manufacturers (with new technologies) and robots in the near future. Can I fight against one of my friends' robots? In addition to large pre-planned tournaments, we have challenge rooms where players can chat and challenge each other to duels. You can also fight any of your own robots offline (or your friends robot - if they email it to you). How can I buy parts for my Robot? The way it works is that everyone has access to all of the parts, and you can build any style of robot you like. The limits come in only when you enter a tournament. The total cost of a robot is a similar concept to a boxer's weight, where a tournament will be run for robots who fall under a certain cost-to-build. This is where the designer has to balance components, as more expense on one type of component will mean less expense on another. We are also introducing unique items, which will be able to be won in certain tournaments. These items can only belong to one designer at one time. They will have special properties that will make them highly desirable. The rules and regulations around unique items will be thrashed out during the public beta testing phase, but at this stage we will run it so that if you bot gets knocked out in a fight (fight ends before the scheduled time - TKO), you lose one unique item to the victor if your robot is sporting one. What sort of tournaments are available and how often do they occur? Roboforge is run like a professional sport circuit. It is an international circuit and all the designers are real people from all over the world. When you first start you can enter the amateur tournaments that are free to enter, and may have prizes that can be won. If you want to win some serious money, then you can enter the Roboforge Professional Circuit. These tournaments are pay-to-enter (usually only US$5 per tournament). Huge cash and prizes can be won at these tournaments. There is a full ranking system, which culminates in an invitational tournament at the end of each season, where massive prizes can be won by a select few. Please visit the Tournament Rules page for more detailed information. How do I enter a tournament? Tournaments can be viewed online within the game itself. You simply choose the tournament you want, select the robot you wish to submit to the tournament and press the Submit button. If it is a professional tournament, and you don't have enough funds in your account, you will be prompted to make a payment at that point. How much money can I make if I win a Tournament? An indication for a 1,000 entrant limit tournament would be about US$1,000 first prize. Likewise for a 10,000 entrant limit tournament, the first prize would be around US$10,000. We expect the size of tournaments to increase over time. The classification of tournaments and prize money will be advertised prior to the running of the tournament. We have structured the prize distribution so that there is about a 25% (1 in 4) chance of actually winning a prize. The classification system and prize distribution details can be found in the Tournament Rules page. Can I play online for free? Yes. We have an amateur tournament system where there is no entry fee. Small sponsored prizes (could be quite cool depending on the size of the tournament) can be won. We envisage things like game consoles will be a common type of prize. Can I watch my fight as it happens? When testing your robot, yes, you can see the action as it happens. For tournaments, we are looking at possibly streaming the semi-finals and finals at prescribed times (to be confirmed), but the bulk of the tournament fights will be run in the background on our servers. Once the tournament is finished you will be able to view all of your fights, and the semi-finals and finals (regardless of whether you made it that far or not). Can I watch other robots fighting? Yes. You can check out the top robots fighting for any recent tournament. We are making the semi-finals and finals available for viewing to anyone who is interested (as well as featured fights - cool fights nominated by other players). How will I get paid? We use the Pay Pal™ system for paying out prize winnings. When you win a fight with prize money, it gets credited to your account (details are visible within the game). You can withdraw money at any time from your account. For more details on the Pay Pal system, please go here. When can I buy the game? Roboforge is not currently for sale. Stay tuned at the forums for more news on this situation What hardware platforms do you support? Roboforge is developed in Java, with the intention of being as platform independent as possible. As hardware/operating system suppliers support the Java 2 platform (including Java 3D) our game will be made available for those platforms. Currently our game can run on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and NT. We are likely to support Linux, Solaris and several other UNIX variants that have ported the Java libraries (see the Sun Java 3D site for up to date details). Although Apple were involved in the specification of the Java 3D API they have yet to provide a port (sorry). At this stage we do not know what their intentions are. What is the minimum specification PC I can run the game on? The minimum specification is a Pentium 233 with 64MB RAM and a 8MB 3D Graphics Card (the graphics card must fully support OpenGL or DirectX 8). You will also need a minimum of 100Mb free disk space and a 28.8k modem. What is the recommended specification I should have? We recommend a Pentium III with 128MB of RAM and a late-model graphics card. RAM is probably the most critical factor in improving the performance of the game (for a minimum spec machine). Can I capture images from a Battle and send them to my friends? Yes. The battle player has a button, which lets you take a photo at any point in the fight. Who are you guys? I've never heard of you! Liquid Edge Games is a small game development company whose goal is to develop entirely new gaming concepts and deliver them in an affordable way to gamers. By providing games directly over the Internet, and thus breaking the conventional mould of game publishing, we provide quality games at less cost to the game playing public.