Multibots

2/14/2023 #thing #multibot

The robots on my website.

Four multibots in the dark, with one looking at you.
Friends
This has been an unclickable post for a very long time on my website, and now that I'm rewriting it with Markdown support, I wanna make this into an actual post. (Even then, this version of my website doesn't even support unclickable posts. Doesn't make sense to even have that the more I think about it.)

Structure

The main feature of multibots are attachments. That's what the side things on the head are: slots for attachments.
The Dabric robot model looking right. An arrow highlights the left attachment slot on the head.
Stuff like arms, guns, and so on. I don't think I've ever shown a Multibot with an attachment in one of those slots on my website before...
There's also another attachment slot at the bottom of the head, as the body is also just an attachment. So, a multibot is technically just the head; everything else is external.
The torso + tracks aren't the only type of body either; here's an (older) Dabric with a humanoid body instead:
Minecraft statue of said Dabric with a humanoid body. They're wearing a red shirt and brown pants.
Minecraft.
That's not all. Here's some more details about them:
  • Waterproof.
  • This is in the future, because not like we have sentient robots right now...
  • Uhhhh
Now onto everything else.

History

Early days

Back then (Klypank-era) I was making games. In one game, you were a robot in some facility. Here's an old and unfinished blog post about it. Later on, the game became you being some kid on a skateboard messing around outside, but that's besides the point.
The character's different in the post linked, so here's a screenshot of an earlier version of it:
A screenshot of a 2D game. A robot is in some sort of facility, with a terminal near it in the room.
The robot sprite. It's crude, and the robot has blue eyes.
2020-09-21
It's ugly, but it was the first mention of these robots, so I have some sentimental value to it.
I then made it into a 3D model using the Three.js editor:
The robot, but taller and with an antenna. The underside is also shown, with the tracks being weirdly insetted into the feet.
2020-10-21
The same robot, but in a grey metal instead of a white plastic.
2020-10-21, an hour later
Later on, I made a shorter model just as a joke.
A shorter robot with red eyes and a tilted head.
2020-10-22
Most of the time during this period I was always trying to incorporate multibots into some sort of game. This time I was making a 3D multiplayer game with them. You had battery power, and I decided to make the eyes act as a battery indicator.
  • 100%:
    Green eyes.
  • 30% - 99%:
    Blue eyes.
  • 10% - 39%:
    Yellow eyes.
  • 0% - 9%:
    Orange eyes.
Like with most of my projects during this era, it never went anywhere. Later on, I came back wanting to again make another multiplayer game with the robots and no plan. This time, I made the robots shorter, kinda like the joke model I made earlier.
The robot is now shorter and has blue eyes.
2021-03-11
I never got past collision detection for this game.
There is one big issue with multibots at this time: there is literally no way for them to interact with the environment. No arms, just tracks. This was even mentioned in that game where multibots came from:
The game, with the robot at the terminal. A dialog is open, saying "You look at the screen. It's waiting for a command. You don't have any way to type though..."
I was doing something with friends where I needed to come up with a character, and I used the robot. I quickly drew some arms on it:
The short 3D robot with red eyes with some crudly drawn on arms.
2021-07-19
Now I'm somewhat interested in multibots again. I think I started to come up with lore behind them around this time, because oh my god I want to make a game with them, just maybe this time with a more solid plan.
I remade them in Blockbench:
The robot with red eyes. It's a bit more stubby.
Okay, but you still can't interact with anything. So how about guns?
A drawing of the robot, but there's a gun shooting lasers at the top of its head.
Another drawing of the same thing, but more crude.
2021-07-17. God this is UGLYYYY
Later on, I added the attachment slots and made the feet slightly better. The attachments solved the interactivity issue.
The robot, but with attachment slots on the side of the head and tracks that aren't only at the bottom of the feet.
They got the name "multibot" on 2021-11-01. I later removed the antenna.

Dabric robot

I think this would quality as my persona? Anyway,
I wanted a new profile picture in Discord, so I just made a multibot with another face:
A multibot with yellow eyes.
2021-11-25
I used this model on my website in the past. This was rendered in Blender, but the model was still from Blockbench; this gave it the same material for everything.
Later on, my website's homepage featured an interactive 3D model of this, which kinda made me less happy with the model overtime. It was really rigid and like I said it only had one material. If you wanted to tilt the feet or head, they'll clip into the torso and introduce gaps:
The model. The head and feet are tilted, cliping into the torso and showing gaps.
Less apparent when everything is the same shade of gray, but I still didn't like knowing it was there.
I was dabbling with Blender somewhat, and I decided to remake multibots in it. Here, I fully rigged it, added some bendy bits so there wouldn't be any gaps or clipping, and had the model use several materials:
The model under a green light. Metal, plastic, and glass-like materials are used.
Look, now not everything is metal.
The model in Blender. The rig's bones are shown, with Dabric in several poses to show it off.
The head and neck also had inverse kinematics; that's what the stray bone on the right above Dabric's head is.
Here are some more renders of this model.
This model had one issue, however. When imported into Three.js, the model's edges had these small gaps:
A zoom up on the bottom of Dabric, with arrows pointing at the small gaps.
It looked like this was to do with floating point inaccuracies in the UV, so I just ended up padding everything in the texture to account for it. It felt hacky, but I have no idea what else to do.
I feel like it might be common practice. I'm not a professional modeler by any means, but when I was ripping some models from Mario Kart they sometimes had similar padding.
UV map over a texture of the Koopa Troopa model. Some of the UV is right against the edge, while others have fat outline around them.
However, with my model it's way more prominent due to the low-resolution of it.
Two textures of the multibot model. One is pretty straight-forward, while the other looks like it has more weight to it.
Before and after.
Either way, gaps are gone.
Two Dabric models side-by-side, one with the small gaps and one without.
Again, before and after.