Comments on: YoYoGames Competition #4

By: FredFredrickson

FredFredrickson — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:06:35 +0000

Sounds fine to me!

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:55:10 +0000

So do you think that a game of saving the world from a huge, unreal threat would be okay? Because my game is about meteors and saving the world from them. Because the name is “save the world” or something like that. Do you think this is acceptable?

By: kc lc

kc lc — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:41:34 +0000

“Entropy wins again!”
– xot

You’re thinking too big. Think small. Really small. It doesn’t always win.

Anyway, I made a robot game once too. The player selected a set of “actions” and then turned it loose. It wasn’t very good but it was fun to watch for a while.

By: Requiem

Requiem — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:54:29 +0000

The three rules of thermodynamics: You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.

By: xot

xot — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:32:04 +0000

As a great friend of mine is fond of saying: “Entropy wins again!”

By: Yourself

Yourself — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:59:35 +0000

“Too cynical?”

Ever heard of the second law of thermodynamics?

By: xot

xot — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:34:53 +0000

Ha, I was reminiscing so much, I forgot to answer the question. I want to enter the competition, but if history is my guide, I won’t. I’ve wanted to enter all of them but can’t quite make the time. I have a great idea that fits the theme perfectly, but it has an old school arcade game outlook on life: it can’t be won. Too cynical?

By: xot

xot — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:20:28 +0000

I always wanted to make something like this. I have a pretty large design file for a game with similar mechanics that I’ve been working on longer than any other — over 20 years. I was inspired by the classic Robot War by Silas Warner. It was one of the biggest inspirations for me to become a programmer. Of course the Apple II that I ran it on was so approachable and open it was possible for a ten-year-old kid to teach himself programming with that alone.

A pair of games from a bit later in the era I found much later in life are fantastic. The first is called Rockey’s Boots. It’s an educational game for the Apple II, and a really good one. It was written by Warren Robinett of Adventure (Atari 2600) fame and works very similarly. But instead of slaying monsters and traversing mazes, you are assembling digital logic circuits in various forms to sort parts on a conveyor belt.

But adventure wasn’t far behind with the far more ambitious is Robot Odyssey. What you are working on sounds a lot like it. Robot Odyssey is built with an extended version of engine that runs Rocky’s Boots. Various robots in the game world have different powers and sensors. The player builds logical circuits as a brain for the robots. The object is to make your way through an underground city, getting past obstacles with your programming ability. You should check it out if you haven’t. All games mentioned are for the Apple II (and others).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotwar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky's_Boots
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey
http://www.droidquest.com/

By: Yourself

Yourself — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:27:21 +0000

It reminds me of that game EricDB made forever-ago. You programmed a little fighting robot by dragging tiles onto a circuit-board. I had so much fun watching the code execution pass from one tile to another.

Also we’ve been learning this LabView software in our Aerospace lab classes. Apparently it’s a compiler but the language isn’t an actual language but a bunch of elements you connect together with wires. It’s actually pretty cool. Way back when I made something similar but it was only for logic circuits. You could place inputs, outputs, and various logic gates and connectors. I used it to build a miniature computer (that could add integers).