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[Deraj]

In Cyber Coliseum, you program simple robots to battle using JavaScript. Here's a link to play on itch.io (the game runs in your browser; tested on Chrome and Edge):

https://jaredkrinke.itch.io/cyber-coliseum

Does this sound interesting? Would you play such a game? Or is it too much like work?

If you tried it, what did you think? Would you be interested in more challenges or competing against other players?

To play, you write JavaScript code to control your robot and have it shoot and destroy the enemy robot. Battles are always 1-on-1; first robot to 10 hits wins (assuming both robots aren't destroyed at roughly the same time).

The in-browser code editor uses the Monaco Editor from VS Code, including auto-complete with documentation.

Currently, this game is a just a prototype to see if there is interest for this sort of programming game. At present, there are only a few challenges and you always fight against the computer. Future expansion could include allowing players to upload their code so that others could compete against them, ideally including some sort of leaderboard of the best robots.

Thanks in advance for feedback!

Cover image (showing a battle):

[Teearr]

This game sounded interesting but I lost interest quickly because there was a lack of tutorials and engaging way of introducing me to this game.

Having to look up math in Google for this game didn't feel very fun either.

I suggest finding a way to simplify the amount of effort and decision making the player needs to do to "experience the fun of programming or problem solving".

[DarkGran]

The idea of making robots and forcing them to fight each other is simply awesome.

But I must admit, I don't see myself playing this for fun - It would be great if the robots were programmed through some kind of interface instead of plain coding, because this way it's more like a really fun homework/lesson in java+math than a game. Nice experiment though!

I actually played something similar (rather prototype as well), the bots were not really programmable but there were several kinds, you could spawn as many of any kind as you wanted, and there were many "sliders" that adjusted their attributes (eg. movement speed) and some things in their behaviour: some bots were "swarmers", so for those you could adjust the "flow of the swarm", other were "predators" and these had hunger (i think) etc.
It did not really have any point besides watching big things eat little things, but it had its charm (partially visual, especially the swarms), which was fully enjoyable because it had an easy-to-control interface.

edit:
I do like the idea of "players posting bots", reminds me of how bots for MMOs are made (but here the goal is much more honorable ;)). Maybe make some "set of basic functions" for the player to drag and drop around without the need to actually write anything, with the option to edit these functions? Just an idea.

[JGalecki]

There will be a certain type of person who's intrigued by the 'code-wars' concept. I used to do some work with Robocode, a similar "program tanks to fight each other" game, but with Java. You should take a look and see what you think - what could be improved on, etc.

You might be able to do something with a flow-chart-like visual coding, with standardized and swapable "blocks" doing standard robot functions, like "shoot at enemy", "move towards enemy", "calculate where enemy will be", etc. At higher levels, these functions could be customized by the player. This could be presented as a "learning to code" game, which would attract a different audience than a normal game.

For the UI, you should have some way to differentiate which tank is which during the actual battle. The game flashed the tank names at the beginning, but I would've liked to see those names during the battle too.

The final string "You Win" was compressed and the 'i' and 'n' at the end overlapped each other.

[Eyon]

Hello,
the idea is awesome! BUT, I played 10 minutes, I got how to make my robot fire but not how to make it move. I imagined all the answers will be in the tutorials but didn't find anything. So I never got to beat the boss.
I tried a self.move randomly and saw it existed. Good, but I never managed to get my robot moving properly.

- I'd say that the tutorial is a little bit long and doesn't explain me how to manipulate code at all.
  It could be like a w3school tutorial where you explain "hey try to modify this", and you do it and it's fun.

- The two first screen don't make we want to play, they are not attractive. I'd like to jump directly into it.
Keep working on it, I'd like to manage to bit the IA someday, if the game teaches me how =]