SkArcher on 24 Dec 2003 22:05:59 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Junk


On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 16:52:03 -0500, Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Wednesday, December 24, 2003, at 03:42 PM, SkArcher wrote:

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 14:20:26 -0600, Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thus spake "Glotmorf":

I think I'd still prefer cubes.  At a given level you could
define an island of cubes as being isolated all around on up,
so that a mound can collapse in the middle as well as at the
bottom.  You can also create "light wells" that way, such that
if a given XY square is open all the way up, one can recharge
anywhere in it along the Z.  Les'n, of course, there's a bot
somewhere above you hogging all the light.

You just reminded me of an idea I had a long time ago. Does anyone think that something like Boulderdash would be fun? The players could dig, shove
rocks, collect diamonds, be chased by fireflies and butterflies, etc.

sure. I like the idea of programmable robots tho, and the idea of mining, which was underused in the old grid, could provide some interesting things to do.

things I reckon we should do:

1) make the grid Toroid. moving off the left side makes you enter from the right, likewise with top/bottom. This is to give us a continual world surface and do away with the need for 'falling off' rules.

That's a good point... Of course, on a torus, going around the outer circle should take longer than going around the inside...

in reality yes, care to cite an instance to me where the grid was a good model of reality?

plus, you have obviously never played Torus Chess.


2) start with just a 2D surface and make the possible operations 'Gathering RUs' 'collecting power' and 'moving 1 square'. Don't yet bother with terrain, just assume that the robots are scavenging RUs on the surface.

This I disagree with. The way I've got junk mining set up would make it rather ugly to try to add it later. Besides which, where are they getting RUs, otherwise?

Actually, I think you have it rather ugly in setup right now anyway.


I'd also like to start with something more than the old Grid; if we just say, "everyone has a robot, go find Shiny Things", it's exactly the same as when the first Grid started, except we call them Robots. I'd prefer something different, at the beginning, and we can take it from there.

I just want a basic framework, without even any shiny or scary things. IMO its in how we advance from there that counts.


3) at (or by) the start of an nweek, each player should have mailed eir robots instructions to a remailer. the remailer than sends the list of instructions to the public forum at the start of an nweek. Instructions then take place at the checkpoints.

The remailer sends them at the start of the nweek to happen at the checkpoints?

Do you mean that each player will be providing three checkpoints worth of instructions at the beginning of the nweek?


Yes. The idea being that a) you have to think ahead and b)everything can go horribly wrong with comedic results if two robots interfere with one another.

We need a way to work out precedence for contested actions;

How about a given action has a minimum power, but the robot can add additional power (up to, say, that much again) to the action. The robot which allocated the most power to the contested action gets to move first (perhaps certain actions would come with a bonus to precedence considerations, or certain robot upgrades can be purchased or created (i prefer created) to add bonus to precedence - go faster stripes add 1 to precedence when moving, a digger arm adds 5 to precedence when scavenging, etc.

Sounds good... the actions have to happen in order, though - if I tell my robot "move to (3,3), move to (3,4), dig into (3,5)", having a high precedence dig shouldn't help if somebody's standing at (4,5) digging in while I move.


I don't quite understand you. Please clarify with diagrams :P

I definitely prefer the idea that all of the upgrades and so on have to be produced by the robots on the grid - if we made it so that it was a closed system and released the bots in there to co-exist in whatever way happens. Its a bit Von Neuman machine-like, isn't it?

Well, I'd planned to have many upgrades that are just found - you dig through the junk, and sometimes you find lumps of metal or whatnot for RUs, but sometimes you'll find an almost-working Laser Cannon from some ancient speeder, and with a small energy expenditure you can wield it onto yourself.

much more fun to have to find the RUs and make them into a laser cannon - possibly the 'Laser Cannon builder' would itself be an upgrade? That way each of us could specialise eir own robot for a task and we can start trading things between us. Hence what I said about von Neumann. It tickles my fancy to have an environment where only ideas can go in and out, resources and items all have to be obtained inside.

And yes, I know that doesn't make any sense in terms of it being all a game anyway, live with it.


Also, I think some things shouldn't be buildable. For example we might want artifacts that can be found, but that we no longer have the means to create (like the Improbability Drive on the Baron's old speeder).


I've got to disagree. I'd much prefer to have the grid like a glass box, where the players can only indirectly affect the action inside, and the inhabitants (the robots) have to evolve and build everything inside themselves. It would be different than the old grid, and a little more entertaining.


SkArcher _______________________________________________
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