Try VersaBot
Community Forums/Showcase/Try VersaBot
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| Hello Everyone, Last summer an old buddy of mine contacted me with this Turn Based Casual-Logic game idea - VersaBot. He designed the game and drew most of the graphics. I coded it - well and everything else! This is a free version I threw together for people to play/try. It has ten boards to play but, the board editor is disabled and game play is limited to two players. The full version will be coming soon to my H+Soft Arcade software.  This is a standard zip file - no installers. So if you like it keep it, if not you can easily delete it: (2.53 MB) http://www.hsretrogames.com/development/vbpromo.zip How to play: In Versabot, your goal is to reach your charge pad before your opponent does, or with out running out of power. The winner is obviously determined by who reaches their charge pad first, or who lives the longest w/out running out of power. On each round you are delt 10 random rom chips like FD 1, RT 1, Bk 2, Fire, SHLD(shield) etc. to program your bot. You must choose 1 and there's a maximum of 6. The roms run top to bottom, so turn them on in order! If you activate a shield it lasts 2 rounds. if you die, you loose a power point and have to restart from your charge pad. Please refer to my messy screen shot above while I describe how to play: A full turn in the game is based on 4 rounds. Round: 1 - The bots go. 2 - The board goes - These hazzards update: Pit Doors, Rotators and Electro Beams/Cannons. 3 - The bots go. 4 - The board goes - These hazzards update: Pit Doors, Rotators, Laser Cannons. Thats a full turn. It's important you remember the cycle of the laser and electro cannons! Here is a description of the hazzards on a board: Pit Doors - Open and close every board round - don't be on one if it opens or move on to an open one! Rollers - Roll you a space in the direction you moved on to the space - if there are several, you'll keep rolling Sliders - Slide you a space the direction pointed to, regardless of how you rolled on to the space. Sliders can chain like rollers. If you hit a slider then a roller - the roller will still move you the last direction moved. Rotators - These can't hurt you when landed on. They rotatate your bot 90 degrees left or right when the board moves. Red rotators turn right and blue ones turn left Crates - Do nothing. They block your path, just shoot them when you get a chance to fire. The bots can not push crates. Plugs - Plugs can be tricky. They can block lasers and player shots. You can also push them around to cover Cross Holes. Plugs can be stacked on other plugs. Plugs can not be pushed through walls, or over edges, etc... Cross Hole - Don't fall in! Plug them with a 'Plug' to cross. Electro Cannons/Beams - These are bad! You can cross electro beams only when they are off. Plugs are uneffected by electro beams. Laser Cannons/Lasers - Fire lasers - Don't get hit by one! A plug can block them. A crate will block them for one round. Walls - Nothing can go through walls! The bots can not move onto any space occupied by a cannon. The bots can not move onto any black or 'open' space - you'll fall! The bots can not hit each other - so don't ram your opponent. The bots shields can only block fired shots from the bots. That should get you started if you want to try this! You can also use a game pad - It's easier in two player games! I'd be happy to hear any comments or questions. Try this - It's interesting to see what people do! |
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| This is totally like Roborally I own the board game... its really fun |
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| There's a board game like this? I checked your link, this game does look like that! I wonder if my friend got the idea from that - I'll have to ask him. |
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| Has any one tried this? Just curious ... |
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I haven't, but it does look a lot like the game Chips Challenge.  |
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| I guess it does kinda look like Chip's Challenge with the tile layout. I'd have to say, the art work in VersaBot is bit more intricate on the circuit board and the tiles over-all ;) |
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| Just got thru playing it a bit. Didn't read the instruction at first so it was hard to figure out what to do in the beginning(my fault). But after I got the hang of it, it was cool. Definitely a mental challenging. I like the opening music. Reminds me of my freestyle days in New York. All you need is Stevie B doing vocals :-) I'll play the game some more later and give you more feedback. |
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| Thanks for checking it out zambani. I am still working out some bugs - I hope to have this done by the end of this weekend. Feedback is good, which is what I am looking for at this point - so I can fix any problems with the game. |
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| Somebody needs to make one of these games with a sheepdog instead of a robot. In fact... |
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| I'm really liking this game. I played some more and just completed a level. I'm starting to understand the strategy of winning. When is it coming out? |
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| @zambani, I hope to get this game done and available for my H+Soft Arcade software in a couple more days. Thanks for playing, I'm glad you like it. My family and I have been play testing it alot while I work out some little bugs w/collisions. my mother-in-law played this for hours last night - it was funny. |
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| I have updated the free version - it should be the last before I release the finished game. http://www.hsretrogames.com/development/VBPromo.zip Just cleaned it up a bit - debugged a few things. I revised the bot shields. They now protect you from shots from the bots only - and not laser cannon fire or electro beams. I updated my orginal instruction post too. |
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| All I'm getting is a black box with the chips all around... I hear sounds like there is activity but nothing else... this is after the Start Level 1 is pressed. |
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| @_Scully Hmm, strange. Are you running it in a window or full screen? I use incbin on all of my graphics and standard game boards, maybe they are not reading in properly. I haven't had any problems running it on anything else. I don't use any graphics drivers in my code - maybe thats the problem. The game runs in 16 bit maybe it should be higher? |
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| Has anyone else had the 'black screen' problem with this game? or my other games for that matter? |
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I tried both... exactly the same result.. now I'm on a laptop, HP Satellite if that helps. |
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| @_Scully Thanks for the visual. It looks to me like my images aren't loading properly. Are you using Nvidia Nforce graphics card - I've had problems with that card on my HP - especially with performance and speed. I'm using an Acer mini net book with a plain-old Intel graphics card and everything works fine as well as all my other games. It's really strange the backdrop image loads and nothing else ... |
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| I wonder if i have my image flags wrong, I doubt it but i'll check ... |
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| I checked my code and everything looks OK. I use the autoimageflags command to set my images to dynamic image and masked image - which sets them up properly for capture. My sprites and tiles are loaded in as large images no larger than the screen resolution being used (640x480) as a pixmap one at a time then the tiles are captured individually - I don't know what the problem is at this point ... Are you sure you tried it in full screen? Sometimes the results can be different because I use different flipping policies in windowed mode. To run full screen (which i'm sure you may have) Click 'Cancel' when you get the Run VersaBot Windowed? prompt. |
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| I've been running TileMax in OpenGL, DirectX7 and 9... nothing like this happening. Are you doing anything funcky? |
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| No funkyness here ... or that i know of. I just use the basics. I keep my stuff pretty simple for compatibility. Standard refresh rates @ 60hrz and basic flipping policies like flip() and flip(1). I'm not using any wierd graphics drivers or outside stuff, etc. My games aren't any different than the BlitzMax examples you see included with the IDE - just the basics. I have ran my stuff on multiple windows pc's without problems. It's always hard to figure out wierd bugs like this. I'm going to compile a different version with out using incbin to store media or levels in the app - i have had problems like this before ... |
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| OK _SKully try this one - I updated the orginal and posted it again for convenience: http://www.hsretrogames.com/development/vbpromo.zip I didn't remove the incbin media on this version - but removed the pixmaps and strayed away from using defaults on setting the graphics object. I assume the HS logo showed up ok and the title screen worked ok right? You just couldn't play the game? It seems to me if the images loaded ok not using pixmaps - then the other stuff should too. |
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| Its working now |
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| Whew! - I'm glad! - The bad news is I'm going to have to remove pixmaps from all of my stuff now! But this is also good in getting rid of the dreaded black screen - it may have been happening on my other games. Now that it works, let me know what you think of the game. |
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| What about pixmaps aren't working for you? I use them in TileMax for editing, creating animstrips... no issues there Is there a way to reorder the proms.. It seems to play any selected ones from the top down and not in the order selected... is that by design? |
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| Apparently, pixmaps aren't working for what I do - doesn't mean they're bad. Yes, the proms run top to bottom - you just turn them off or on - if you could just click any order the game would play to quickly on the board size given. |
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| Not really.. if you borrow from Roborally... let both sides set a certain number of proms in a different order...then play both sides simultaneously.. see what happens when your robot gets pushed off course :) |
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| Man, that sux, when i first started coding this game the bots moved at the same time - then i changed it. Not to mention i didn't even know Roborally the board game existed. I would have to completely restructure the game engine to change this. Especially with the prom execution. This version of the game does not work for you at all? It was actually kinda tough to code the version i've done. |
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| I'd get more peoples opinion than just mine too... |
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| Sounds good to me _Skully ... Anyone else like this game the way it stands? I think it works out quite well - besides I don't think it should play entirely like a board game that all ready exists. |
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| Yeah this is cool. |
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| Thanks K - Glad you like it! |
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| The full version is out now if anyone is interested ... It requires H+Soft Arcade. Get info & downloads @ http://www.HsRetroGames.com |
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| besides I don't think it should play entirely like a board game that all ready exists. Rightly so... I just pointed it out because it looked so similar... and knowing the game mechanics of RoboRally, I suppose I was making suggestions that would have created even closer parity... oops ;) in order to play this do you have to first download that HSoft Arcade and then the game? |
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| Yes, you must download/install H+Soft Arcade first then download/install VersaBot. You can choose a H+Soft Arcade download Here: http://www.hsretrogames.com/hsarcadedownloader.htm Get VersaBot Info/Download here: http://www.hsretrogames.com/info_versabot.htm |
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