| SkArcher on 24 Dec 2003 16:34:30 -0000 |
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| Re: [spoon-discuss] Junk |
On Tuesday, December 23, 2003, at 08:16 PM, Baron von Skippy wrote:-I like everything about this except for nweeks as opposed to checkpoints and "20 energy back every nweek." That seems a little low, given that that's an nweek of digging - potentially, one could spend two nweeks moving into a tunnel, two digging, two returning, and then five doing /nothing./ That's 11 nweeks, or about five and a half months, all taken for two 1/20 chances of finding a Shiny Thing. I'd say make it a move every checkpoint and at least 30 energy gained per checkpoint in the sun, if not more, and an ability (or the promise of a proposal later on to create this ability) to strap more panels on your robot and/or leave a generator in the sun to tap into at your leisure, both of which would speed up recharge.The robots are battery operated, starting with 100 units of energy, and unable to exceed 150 units; any robot action takes some energy (moving is 15, digging into a filled square is 20, etc.). They also have solar panels to replenish their power - each robot gains 20 energy back every nweek, unless they're in a tunnel under the Junk.I definitely intend to create upgrades that can bolster both the rate of recharge and the total amount that can be stored. I also picture things like some sort of spotlight that can be used to replenish another robot's energy, so one could stand out in the sun and provide power to another's bot inside the Mound. Also, I expect there to be upgrades that might, say, reduce the cost of digging, or allow you to consume scrap metal for energy, or maybe to leech power off of another robot.So basically, it's designed to suck, to encourage the creation of interesting things.It does suck slightly more than I meant it to, though - I meant for digging to move you to the location you dug. Also note that a bot could excavate all around a large Mound while still being relatively close to sunlight - on the map I generated in the original post, there are only four locations that aren't adjacent to either a 1 or a 0.Mind you, I do intend to sit down and actually craft a map sometime, rather than using that random one. But even there, I doubt there'll be too many really deep squares, unless we make the Grid much larger.With regards to RoboRally, I've never played that but it sounds interesting. Perhaps we could make a set of basic commands, and each player would submit a list of commands, so that a computer script could interpret and execute them:MOVE UP DIG LEFT USE Laser Cannon ON BvS etc.In a setup such as ours, how would script order be determined? i.e., if I and Rob both instruct our bots to move to the same space, which of us gets there? Or do neither of us do so?In some ways this reminds of Diplomacy, where orders are written down, and then all revealed at once. It makes it very easy to set up very intricate plans, and even easier to knock them down.I like it.
Oh, it got even better, because firing weapons in RoboRally is directional, not targeted - you fired along a line of squares and the first target in the way got hit. Pushing people off course got even more fun because of that :D
I only very briefly played Diplomacy, but its certainly a concept that makes for fun games.
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