next »

[hamburger]

Hi everyone! I'd like to share with you a Flash game I've been working on in my spare time for the past 6 weeks or so.

You can play the work in progress here.

The game is completely functional at the moment, but there's not a lot of content in yet. I apologize in advance for the ugly visuals and total lack of sound in there at the moment. I also apologize for the total lack of directives to explain what the hell you're doing.

Here's a gameplay overview:

• Program the robot with If-Then statements, by dragging cards into the slots at the center of the screen.
• Once you've finished your programming, hit the Start button to set your robot free.
• The robot will evaluate his programming at each square, and perform the first command that evaluates as true. If none of the Ifs is true, the robot will move forward.
• Remember that the higher-up commands always supersede the lower ones - only the top-most true command is executed at any given spot.

And here are some screenshots:

Front Screen:

Level Editor:

Gameplay:

Look What You Earned!


In addition to anything and everything, here are a few of the things I'd really love to hear back from you all:

• First impressions.
• Any ideas for environmental tiles or programming cards that you think would be cool! There's very little in there at the moment.
• General feedback about what worked and did not work for you, what you did and did not enjoy as a player.
• Things you feel could have made the game mechanics clearer or the interface friendlier.
• Anything at all you build with the level editor. When you click Save, the game will dump a string of characters to your clipboard which you can conveniently post here!

Personally, I am very excited about the puzzle mechanic in this game. It was a lot of fun to prototype the gameplay on paper (or to be precise, with a Scrabble board and an assortment of board game detritus). Of course this game resembles a lot of other programming games, all of which I love, primarily the wonderful board game RoboRally. In my view the important difference here is the use of If-Then cards evaluated repeatedly, rather than a list of commands executed sequentially. In prototyping I learned that this structure allows for a ton of puzzle variety and a very minimalistic feel. However it can get infuriatingly frustrating for the average player, so I need to work really hard at constructing a gentle learning curve. A few of the things I am not happy with at the moment are the visuals, (lack of) sounds, (lack of) flavor, and (lack of) content.

Lastly, here's a rough list of my plans for the game:

• Add narrative. I actually have a bit of a story planned out, to situate within and between the levels. The narrative involves concepts of fate and autonomy, of course. The fact that no semblance of this narrative is currently present in the game indicates a severe error in my design & dev process.
• Get final art and sound, of course.
• Add a wider variety of tiles and cards. I want to keep things minimal, but there's room for more.
• Add a lot more levels with more polish and a nice progression.

I want to be done in about 4 weeks or so, at which point the plan is to share with Flash portals, maybe look for a sponsorship.

Thanks very much, everyone! I hope you have some fun.

[5parrowhawk]

Interesting. I'm not sure it's really all that novel as AI games go, but there's certainly room for it to grow. The interface is not bad but you might want to make the "I am evaluating this rule" highlights more prominent.

If anything, I felt like the more open areas such as the one in your gameplay screenshot (below) were kind of a headache and not much fun. I actually trial-and-errored my way through the one in the screenshot. By contrast, the tight corridor areas made it easier to predict the results.

Additions:
The most obvious thing to add is a switch-and-gate system. This can make for some fiendish puzzles if the switches are toggles.
Another one is a teleporter, or timed gates which close and open at regular intervals (relative to the robot's steps).
And, of course, the classic environmental hazards (stomping blocks, etc).
The introduction of such things would probably necessitate an additional command: WAIT (1 turn). You could also have a condition for environmental hazards or switches.

You could do a "World of Goo" thing where each group of levels has a different theme and associated mechanics. For instance, "Darkness" might start the whole level dark (invisible), but give you a "flashlight" command to see what's in front of the robot. Of course, there will be things that react well or badly to light.

[hamburger]

Hey, thanks a lot for the feedback!

Yeah, I would agree that this game is not fundamentally different from other AI games. I am just happy that the use of if-thens allows the player to avoid a lot of the tedium that comes with sequential commands - the counting of squares, the dragging of numerous cards around one by one, etc. Also, the thought process has a unique flavor. If you compare Autonomy's structure to a sequential structure like Light-Bot, for instance, you'll probably experience a different (and more satisfying to me) sort of thought process. Of course the flip side of the if-thens is another sort of tedium - the need to evaluate your commands all over the board when you are planning them out. When levels are really large or open (as you pointed out), this process can get both tedious and overwhelming, so I've learned that I need to keep things simple.

Thanks for your environmental ideas. I'm trying to settle on a small set of tiles that create the most variety, so I'm messing around with a lot of those things right now. I hadn't thought about doing themed level groups (apart from the gradual introduction of new elements). That's a really interesting idea.

[Cymon]

I love programmable games. Nostalgia draws me more towards games like gate, but RoboRally has recently become a favorite of mine.

I don't like the graphic style, tho. Just my opinion based on the screen shots.

I don't think we need AI programming games to be fundamentally different from each other. In fact if anything, I think these sort of games need to be cloned more. Otherwise we ned up with only one new one every blue moon, or so.