Parts Bot (Factory Worker) by bobleny

made by bobleny for LD27 (JAM)

You have ten seconds to program your robot using a randomly selected list of punch cards. Your objective is to pick up the parts and place them in the parts bin. All while navigating a randomly generated factory maze. The game is won when you have moved all parts to the bin.

Edit-
I have moved my entry from my dropbox to my server. The code has not changed though.
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I wrote this game for the 48 hour competition but didn't make the deadline, so I am submitting as a jam entry.

This game is written entirely in javascript, so no cheating!
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There are still a ton of things I want to implement. If you guys like, I will work on those ideas.

Any thoughts or comments are much appreciated.
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I wrote and tested this only in chrome. It does appear to work better in Opera and Firefox, but no guarantees. I would be surprised if it works in IE...

If for some reason the board is drawing slowly or flickering:
If you are going to play the game from the link, use Opera or Firefox. Alternatively, you can download the source and run it locally.

Chrome isn't caching the background images, so each time the board refreshes, which is does often, it re-downloads all of the images, which is painfully slow from my dropbox.

Web	http://bit.ly/17VWMDY
Source (.7z)	http://bit.ly/1fFvyjR
Post Compo (Web)	http://bit.ly/1dN7Ntj
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=19794

Ratings

Coolness	36%	1477
Overall(Jam)	2.52	540

Fun(Jam)	2.45	471
Graphics(Jam)	1.64	605
Innovation(Jam)	3.50	93
Mood(Jam)	2.31	486
Theme(Jam)	3.13	270

Feedback

Tritax

27. Aug 2013 · 01:03 UTC

The refresh time of the dropbox version is a bit slow, but the downloaded version plays really smooth. Fun - reminds me of RoboRally.

ENDESGA

27. Aug 2013 · 05:42 UTC

interesting concept :)

jprogman

27. Aug 2013 · 05:55 UTC

Very interesting. It took me awhile to get the hang of the game, but I'm still trying to understand how the conveyors work. I assume when you take full damage, you lose a life. I'm not sure if that's true.
Works in Firefox.

🎤 bobleny

27. Aug 2013 · 12:54 UTC

Yeah, conveyors are interesting. Basically, they don't turn on until you stop. This allows you to move past them in any direction. If the executing instruction ends with you on the conveyor belt, you will move forward one space and stop. If you are still on a conveyor, and your next instruction is to rotate, your robot will rotate, and then the conveyor will move you one space. I will have to play around with that. It might be cool if the conveyors moved you even in passing.

Yes, when you reach 100% damage, you lose a life. Unfortunately, the only way to take damage is by passing through or landing on an electrical hazard tile. I was really hoping to have lasers beaming across the board.

🎤 bobleny

28. Aug 2013 · 02:13 UTC

If any one is interested, my current, most stable release can be found here:
http://bit.ly/1doz3PD (It's a bitly, but I promise it's safe!)

Please note however, this should not be confused with my official entry. The bitly link will hopefully help prevent any confusion.

This version works a lot better in chrome but still sucks.

I fixed a weird bug where the squares rotation would affect the rotation of your robot causing confusion about the actual rotation of the robot.

Electrical hazards will now scramble all cards, not just the ones that have been executed.

You can now cheat by changing the time. Very useful for debugging!

I have also made a few visual / layout enchantments to the game.

Enjoy!

archaeometrician

28. Aug 2013 · 04:18 UTC

I agree with Tritax, I was not sure using the web version but the downloaded version play right. Nice idea. I played a game similar to this but yours have more features. Good work :)

ZYXer

29. Aug 2013 · 00:14 UTC

Wow! I must say this is one of the best games I've seen so far. Thinking spatially under time pressure is really challenging. Great work!

XaiZil

01. Sep 2013 · 13:32 UTC

I found this so hard! Interesting idea but I just couldn't get much worked out in time

🎤 bobleny

01. Sep 2013 · 22:15 UTC

The game is very hard with the ten second timer. I found the best way to play is to come up with as many game plans as you can before you deal the cards. The post compo entry will allow you to change the time.

Skye

01. Sep 2013 · 23:05 UTC

very fun

Danvil

01. Sep 2013 · 23:17 UTC

I really like the idea, but the 10 second timer is very hard...

jomomomo

02. Sep 2013 · 00:10 UTC

Neat idea, the refresh on card execution is a little choppy, would be nice to see the robot move with each card played.

h_double

02. Sep 2013 · 00:28 UTC

Technically impressive, but a little too daunting for me with the 10 second clock. :-(

superfoonly

02. Sep 2013 · 03:06 UTC

That was really hard

4xisblack

02. Sep 2013 · 10:42 UTC

I like that you have to both find the instructions you actually need and then attempt to flood the remainder of your queue with whatever worthless 'turnabouts' are available so that you don't crash into a wall. An interesting take on the whole 'RoboRally' thing.

01rafael

02. Sep 2013 · 11:11 UTC

this game is too hard for me. but, idea is nice. try to make features more useful.

loxo

10. Sep 2013 · 19:19 UTC

Nice game, but it's really hard to make the needed decisions in 10 seconds. I think I need too much time to look through the cards. Maybe it's because they look too similar. But it seems easier in the post-compo version, although the cards are the same. Maybe you find some time to include your additional ideas (uncontrollable lasers sound like fun), to improve the graphics and to add some audio. Also I think the game is well-suited for touch screens.