prog | (no subject)

Today at

dougo's I played RoboRally for the first time since I was introduced to it many years ago at

kyroraz's northern abode. Back then, the fellow (not Mr. K) who liked the game and wanted to teach it to us set up the board in a "fun" way, which resulted in us failing to finish after several hours. I thought: this is a very clever mechanic, but a terrible implementation.

In tonight's game, the fan (yet another person) set up the board in a much simpler fashion, so I was willing to try again. We did finish after a couple of hours. At one point I got killed and sent all the way back to the start, which was painful, but largely my own fault since I had forgotten about the wrench-icon checkpoints. And I did manage to go out with style: just as the winner tagged the last flag, I purposefully programmed my robot to hit the first one (which it had spent the whole game struggling to reach) and then rocket forward in victorious glee, hurling itself into a pit.

But really, vague fun at best. In appreciation I turned the tables and taught the Rallyite how to play RAMbots, which i like 40,000 times better. Boy, do I like RAMbots. I could play it again and again. Uhh... there really needs to be a Volity version. Also I should carry my screens around with me (as I already do with various other gaming equipment; jmac is always ready to THROW DOWN).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Way the hell back at the beginning of time, when I worked at Magnet, I wanted Magnet to get the license to do RoboRally as a multiplayer computer game. I.e., the computer does all the boring stuff.

Plus, a million cute robot (carnage) animations.

Magnet being run by idiots, it never even got into the planning stages.

Volity Rambots is a necessity.

Verily, it should be a launch title. I can even see us selling Icehouse stashes, though we may want to limit our retail activities to the card games first.