BinaryBot (a work in progress)

Okay. For the first time in my life I am actually trying to write something and see it through to completion.

So here it is so far. 2D in Blitz3D.



Based on the old pipe type games, in this you must rotate pieces of circuit bard to guide the BinaryBot to the 0s and 1s he must collect and return to the CPU.

Mouse left/right buttons rotate left right. Clicking the big red turbo button speeds you up, clicking again slows you down.



When all required pickups have been collected the CPU will light up, and you must pass over it to drop them off.

At the mo you just collect 1, then 2, then 3 up to 5 bits after the last lot have been dropped off it just keeps going with no more pickups.

You run out of track you die, hit a wall you die.

Esc to end.

Points are awarded for the number of tiles you cross, pickups collected, and dropped off. Each pickup has a timer which counts down. If not collected it will respawn elsewhere. Points awarded based on pickup timer so get there faster to get more points!

Obviously if I continue with this then there will be more pickups, powerups, randomly changing tiles and anything else I can think of.

Bugs I'm sure abound, as do programmer graphics and maybe just a bit of artist programming ;-)

Only been tested on 4 PCs 2 desktop, 2 laptop of varying spec and it seemed to be pretty consistant across them.

Constructive criticism welcome.

Download 663kb

I like this, I had lots of fun. Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time Inde. Positive feedback from you means a lot.

Shame you are the only one in 20 hours :-(

Thought I'd done everything right, small download, screenies etc..

Ah well.

Wait for it... wait for it...

Haven't been home at a decent hour in two days! :o) Will have a look tonight (about two hours from now). Looks good - I didn't think 'programmer art' at all.

Patience, Grasshopper.

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Stalemate!!!!

I'll have a poke at it when I get home too. Looks interesting.

"Stalemate" Gelly ??? If you had a problem would you care to elaborate ;-)

I love these types of games... I really must make one soon :D

Cool, I'll try this soon if I get time... good luck with it.

I liked this but I just found the tiles a bit confusing. I'd prefer it if there was a subtle grid overlay so that I can distinguish each individual tile. Also, is the red, curved arrow thing needed? It just seems to get in the way a bit.

In earlier incarnations of the tile sets it was more of a grid pattern, each tile had a darker edge, but when I finally settled on a circuit board tile set, that sort of got missed out lol



It also started with much smoother curves, but that just didn't sit well with circuitry. Shame really it took me a while to get the bot to follow them nicely. lol

The red curved pointer is possibly superflous, I just found the selection box on its own a bit cumbersome.
Perhaps I should just stick to the one pointer/cursor type ??

Geehawk, this is very very good and very addictive (even though I keep getting killed :p) Excellent work!
How did you get the robot to follow the curves on the tiles? I think it's really cool :D
Keep up the good work man!

Ash

Yeah, that earlier screenshot is much clearer. I think you need to find some kind of compromise between the two. Maybe you could try setting the background of each tile in an alternating bright/dark green colour - checker board style. The difference between the bright and dark tiles only needs to be pretty subtle, IMO. Just enough to differentiate the tiles. You could also have an option to turn the grid off for people who prefer it without.

Definately stick with the theme you have now, though - it works well.

Yeah, I'd bin the arrow thing and just have the mouse cursor constantly displayed. You may want to make it a tad smaller, though, so that it doesn't get in the way when pointing on tiles.

Ash

The bot basically works much like a line following robot in real life.

Underneath all that pretty art work ;-) is a basic version of the tiles with just a thick line on a black back ground.

The 'bot' has 'feelers' that sit infront and either side of the line. I just test the color at the end of each, as the bot moves forwards, and if its line colour turn in that direction. The bot will actually follow pretty wierd and random paths quite happily.

The code was based on Rob Farleys food gathering AI demo a while back, to get the general movement, and turning, but now tests for a line rather than distances from waypoints.

I did try and do my own waypoint based movement but couldn't work out how to get the smooth curve following bit. Only ever managed lots of short straight lines. Obviously the way this has turned (pun very much intended) that straight line stuff would have been fine. lol

Thanks for explaining that for me :)
By the way i'm still playing on it now ;-)

Excellent work man!



Ash