[OLPC-Games] Anyone interested in a Game Jam?

Wed Nov 21 17:49:21 EST 2007

Actually Robot Odyssey was a grander conception (which I've described in the correspondence with Don Hopkins, and also can be found on the web). I was a big admirer of this game when I was at Atari.

It was an adventure game in which you and 3 robots (which you could program) do something cooperative (the robots can intercommunicate) to win through a level. Then you had time to test the next level, program the robots and try to make it through. And so on. So, unlike most games, it had not just tactics and strategy, but allowed time for planning and putting those plans into some of the participants. A great idea. The main flaw was that the form of robot programming used in the game grew in complexity faster than the functionality. A redo of the game would use a better way to program the robots. This game is also a genre (for example, many sports games are like this except that they can't be programmed by the users). One could imagine a 5 or 7 athlete football game programmed by teenagers, etc.

Cheers,

Alan

----- Original Message ----
From: Bil Simser <emailme at bilsimser.com>
To: Games for the OLPC <games at lists.laptop.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 2:34:27 PM
Subject: Re: [OLPC-Games] Anyone interested in a Game Jam?

Is this not similar to the old crobots (or pascal or whatever flavor)
 from
long ago? There was an engine driving it and gave you basic constructs
 for
your robot. You wrote it in a c-like scripting language and set them
 off on
the battlefield. Microsoft's terrarium was similar to this, except you
 built
bugs in .NET and uploaded them to a server. I've been wanting to do
something like this for awhile where people could learn developing
 through a
fun interface, just haven't figured out the mechanics yet.

-----Original Message-----
From: games-bounces at lists.laptop.org
 [mailto:games-bounces at lists.laptop.org]
On Behalf Of Bert Freudenberg
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 3:11 PM
To: Games for the OLPC
Subject: Re: [OLPC-Games] Anyone interested in a Game Jam?

That sounds cool indeed, a bit like what SJ, Alan, and Don talked  
about (a remake of Robot Odyssey):

http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/145

- Bert -

On Nov 21, 2007, at 22:58 , Jason Pratt wrote:

> Interesting.
>
> There was a fantastic game built at the Pittsburgh Game Jam based on
> "programming" (using a viusal tool) robot characters in a small
> physics-based environment.
>
> It had a very quirky art feel, and a quirky goal: the idea was to get
> one of the robots to a cat that was in the environment, at which
 point
> the cat would jump onto the robot's head and "snuggle".  It was
 pretty
> funny and very cute.
>
>
> On 11/21/07, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>> No, I rather guess he was surprised by the fact that apparently no
>> team even considered using Etoys for their game.
>>
>> But equally surprising is that most, if not all talk on this list
>> seems to be revolving around programming games for kids, rather than
>> with them.
>>
>> - Bert -
>>
>> On Nov 21, 2007, at 22:20 , Jason Pratt wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this...
>>>
>>> - that eToys is vastly superior to whatever was being used at Game
>>> Jam Brasil?
>>> - that the Game Jam Brasil participants weren't very competent?
>>> - that this particular developer is significantly more skilled than
>>> the Game Jam Brasil participants?
>>>
>>> It's not clear what he's advocating.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/16/07, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>>>> Want to share this comment of a fellow Brasilian developer:
>>>>
>>>> "At Game Jam Brasil last weekend, none of the teams used eToys.  
>>>> I was
>>>> able to reproduce their games (which they took 29 hours to
 program)
>>>> in just a few minutes in eToys. And using the machine itself
 rather
>>>> than a separate development PC.
>>>>
>>>> Though to be fair, I was programming games in Basic before any  
>>>> of the
>>>> participants were born"
>>>>
>>>> - Bert -
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 16, 2007, at 18:28 , Samuel Klein wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I should have read all my mail before asking :-)  Also, here's  
>>>>> a set
>>>>> of photos just uploaded to the wiki from the Brasil jam last
>>>>> weekend:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Game_Jam_Brasil
>>>>>
>>>>> SJ!
>>>>>
>>>>> On Nov 4, 2007 10:35 PM, Andrew Clunis <andrew at orospakr.ca>
 wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 14:33 -0400, Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
>>>>>>> Myles Braithwaite wrote:
>>>>>>>> I am definitely in.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Alright, as of now it's just Myles and I, with Soni maybe  
>>>>>>> showing
>>>>>>> up if
>>>>>>> she's got time that weekend.  Anyone else interested?  We're  
>>>>>>> still
>>>>>>> thinking of the weekend of the 16th of November.  (Same time as
>>>>>>> the CMU
>>>>>>> Game Jam IIUC).  With such a small number of people we might be
>>>>>>> able to
>>>>>>> hold it at Linux Caffe.  I'm going to be in Taiwan come
>>>>>>> Wednesday, so if
>>>>>>> we're going to have more people I'll need to know about it soon
>>>>>>> so I can
>>>>>>> find a bigger venue (and/or book a table or two at Linux
 Caffe).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I might be interested in coming too!  I'm the guy who was
>>>>>> working on
>>>>>> Develop activity earlier this year, but being in Ottawa has left
>>>>>> me a
>>>>>> bit cut off from all the other OLPC people.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I *might* need a place to spend the night, though!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> No way we'd finish all of that in a weekend, though... still,
 it
>>>>>>> would
>>>>>>> be interesting to see how far we got.  I'm sure a smaller game
>>>>>>> would be
>>>>>>> far more practical.  Or we could just cut it down a lot and
>>>>>>> consider
>>>>>>> basic playability the goal, with the various extra rules as
>>>>>>> secondary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yeah, I suggest the iterative approach is probably best.  If
 your
>>>>>> game
>>>>>> is always at least running to some degree, more people will be
>>>>>> encouraged to jump in and contribute. :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>> Andrew Clunis
>>>>>>

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