5 ms·

Colobot, an RTS game where you program your units in C++ like language (2019)

133 points by Claude_Shannon 5y ago

Claude_Shannon 5y ago
I've changed the title a little, because the default wording was a little too long. I've talked to several of my friends and people in general and to my surprise this game had been somewhat popular in Poland. Have you ever heard of this game? It utilised a C++ like language that you could write your scripts in.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Some of my Polish programmer friends speak fondly of it, but being Polish myself, I've never heard of it until they told me about it.
- wwilim 5y ago
  Most people must have gotten it from CD-Action, which was THE monthly gaming magazine at the time. Each copy came with a DVD containing a few demos of upcoming games and 1-2 full games, most of them titles a few years old. Colobot made an appearance sometime in the mid-2000s.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Yep, that's how I played it. Loved it as a kid. Also I'm reasonably certain it was bundled with "Komputer Świat" not CD-Action since it was more of an "educational" game, CD-Action did more "mature" releases. But I might be wrong.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Yep, that's how I got it.
- Tade0 5y ago
  Played it as a teenager - some of my first lines of code were laid in its code editor. I remember that in the Polish paper manual the language was described as being Java like, though.
- Nition 5y ago
  I used to play it back in around 2002. I'm in New Zealand. I heard about it from a friend telling a friend. Great game.
- agravier 5y ago
  It's an old game. I tried it 20 years ago or so. I'm French, so it was not totally unknown outside of Poland.
wruza 5y ago
I really wanted to program starcraft back when I played it. At the very least, to bind some key to scatter packs before storming into splash. At most, use scripts to organize complex military operations. Starcraft has a good macro, but it also requires micro, but rather than stressing myself with apm, I’d better “train” my forces between the battles. It was very annoying and un-immersive to see advanced tech protoss to fail simply because they got stuck on a ramp.
- neatze 5y ago
  Have you tried to play https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/ ?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Dragon age inquisition has an amazing visual programming system, you could set whoch cajaracter will do what under which circumstances, like 'cast spell X when main character is low on HP' or 'when there are more than Y enemies" It really isnt too much to use or ask for
  - gmueckl 5y ago
    This has actually been a staple in the Dragon Age series since part one. I don't recall if they toned it down in the second part, though. Also, I would love to know how many tweaks and hacks these selectable behaviors need to work together neatly in these near arbitrary combinations (e.g. some unexpected priority inversion during behavior selection or deciding whether to continue or abort at certain points etc.).
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  Iirc the alphastar team released an API to programmatically interact with the game
- szundi 5y ago
  Try springrts.com, you can script it with lua.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
On the topic of different programming-driven games, Mind Rover is a robot simulator in which you program by connecting wires, carrying something like analog data. I'm not aware of anyone else ever having played it, but it seems to have some internet significance.
- dagw 5y ago
  I loved that game! I also remember it being one of the very first commercial games actually being released for Linux. Actually being able to buy and play a game on Linux was a pretty big deal.
dlsa 5y ago
Not going to play this game. At all. I sense I could easily put 3000 hours into it. A man needs to know his limitations. Cracktorio taught me that.
- t0suj4 5y ago
  Don't worry there isn't that much content in this game. You can finish the story in a couple of hours, will take longer depending on how much you want to tweak your scripts but it'll take tens of hours at most.
  - dlsa 5y ago
    That's what someone said about Cracktorio. I think we spent like 40 hours on the demo.
    - Claude_Shannon 5y ago
      This time this is actually true - there's not much of sandbox mode.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  The main campaign is not that replayable, fortunately (unfortunately?)
- ok_dad 5y ago
  2 weeks of turning my screeps code from a simple script into a system where I had a CI/CD system (on a VPS I paid for in addition to the game!) compiling Purescript into screeps JS convinced me the same, lol. These are cool games for people with more time than me, and these days I prefer just coding at work and doing other non-tech stuff at home. If I were 20 again though...
  - dlsa 5y ago
    Screeps is something we could invest far too many hours into.
selfhoster11 5y ago
It's worth noting that the game was a commercial title, and the Polish Colobot community managed to convince Epsitec to open source it. This game was a large part of my childhood, and finding out it was open sourced was indeed a very happy piece of news.
- neilparikh 5y ago
  I think something similar happened to the Warzone 2100 RTS.
the_only_law 5y ago
Interesting idea. I like RTS, but I often suck in multilayer because I’m not very good at precisely timing macro or doing anything related to micro.
- OneTimePetes 5y ago
  Which is why the idea of the "multi-role" rts was invented. One guy plays sim-city to build the base. Another plays tower defense to defend the base. One guy plays Defense of the Ancients-Heroe gameplay, and one guy plays the large scale meta-rts. Then it became a balancing nightmare and we gave up, making instead seperate games for each gamer. The end. There was even once the approach of the arena rts.. you dont micro, instead small battles are taken to a separate app (on a cellphone, were cell-phone user duke it out).. But players hate to lose control over outcome. Turns out seemless match-making and game joining and replacing ai is hard.
buryat 5y ago
played a lot in it when i was 13-14, i was studying Pascal at that time and it was fun to apply that knowledge (of programming) in a game. Not sure actually how I heard about this game iirc I read about it in some computer newspaper and decided to buy
- Claude_Shannon 5y ago
  CD-Action, I suppose.
stevefan1999 5y ago
i wonder if we can use WebAssembly instead of a C++ like language? This way we can program it in many programming languages such as Rust and even C#
fatcow 5y ago
Us old-timers may remember a PC one called PCROBOTS sent to UK to participate in tournaments in the early 1990s (30 years ago!) http://www.pscs.co.uk/pcrobots/index.php http://www.pscs.co.uk/pcrobots/index.php https://programminggames.org/PCRobots https://programminggames.org/PCRobots
- jhbadger 5y ago
  And even more old-timers will remember RobotWar from the PLATO system in the 1970s and its Apple ][ port in 1981. This was probably the first example of this genre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar
keyle 5y ago
My next game, if I ever dive into gamedev again, would be a programming game. Btw if you like programming games, zachtronics is definitely the reference at the moment https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics
- hcs 5y ago
  That's a goal for me as well. The Zachtronics "design puzzle" games are considerably more interesting (to me) than most standard "program a robot" games. Some others of possible interest: Hack 'n' Slash is a game about applying debugging/hacking tools to itself. https://store.steampowered.com/app/246070/Hack_n_Slash/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/246070/Hack_n_Slash/ Human Resource Machine and 6 Billion Humans are fairly simple as programming goes, but the UI and debugging experience are nicely polished. https://store.steampowered.com/app/375820/Human_Resource_Machine/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/375820/Human_Resource_Mac... Baba Is You, arguably, it made me think a lot about puzzle game mechanics. https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/ Shameless self promotion, PrograMaze is a little puzzle I made. https://gashlin.net/games/programaze/ https://gashlin.net/games/programaze/
  - Donckele 5y ago
    Hey! that looks like a 2d turing machine kinda game. Could you give some instructions on how to play?
    - MauranKilom 5y ago
      Not the author, but the grid is simultaneously a tape/program and a maze. At each step, two bits of the program are read and converted to a move of the blue box. Each set bit is also a wall in the maze which blocks movement. Note also the instructions at the bottom. I found the introduction simple enough (but maybe the game was updated since you asked). Edit: Beat the game. Cool concept, I found the levels to be on the easy side though. Some ideas for if you wanted to extend it: You could have "stuck" bits, different kinds of boxes (different rules, or "doesn't die from hitting a wall"), and multiple boxes and/or goals.
still_grokking 5y ago
To add to the list of similar games found on this thread: https://store.steampowered.com/app/777150/Adventure_Land__The_Code_MMORPG/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/777150/Adventure_Land__Th...

I've changed the title a little, because the default wording was a little too long. I've talked to several of my friends and people in general and to my surprise this game had been somewhat popular in Poland. Have you ever heard of this game? It utilised a C++ like language that you could write your scripts in.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
skocznymroczny 5y ago
Some of my Polish programmer friends speak fondly of it, but being Polish myself, I've never heard of it until they told me about it.
wwilim 5y ago
Most people must have gotten it from CD-Action, which was THE monthly gaming magazine at the time. Each copy came with a DVD containing a few demos of upcoming games and 1-2 full games, most of them titles a few years old. Colobot made an appearance sometime in the mid-2000s.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Yep, that's how I played it. Loved it as a kid. Also I'm reasonably certain it was bundled with "Komputer Świat" not CD-Action since it was more of an "educational" game, CD-Action did more "mature" releases. But I might be wrong.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Yep, that's how I got it.
Tade0 5y ago
Played it as a teenager - some of my first lines of code were laid in its code editor. I remember that in the Polish paper manual the language was described as being Java like, though.
Nition 5y ago
I used to play it back in around 2002. I'm in New Zealand. I heard about it from a friend telling a friend. Great game.
agravier 5y ago
It's an old game. I tried it 20 years ago or so. I'm French, so it was not totally unknown outside of Poland.

wruza 5y ago

I really wanted to program starcraft back when I played it. At the very least, to bind some key to scatter packs before storming into splash. At most, use scripts to organize complex military operations. Starcraft has a good macro, but it also requires micro, but rather than stressing myself with apm, I’d better “train” my forces between the battles. It was very annoying and un-immersive to see advanced tech protoss to fail simply because they got stuck on a ramp.

neatze 5y ago
Have you tried to play https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/ ?
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Dragon age inquisition has an amazing visual programming system, you could set whoch cajaracter will do what under which circumstances, like 'cast spell X when main character is low on HP' or 'when there are more than Y enemies" It really isnt too much to use or ask for
- gmueckl 5y ago
  This has actually been a staple in the Dragon Age series since part one. I don't recall if they toned it down in the second part, though. Also, I would love to know how many tweaks and hacks these selectable behaviors need to work together neatly in these near arbitrary combinations (e.g. some unexpected priority inversion during behavior selection or deciding whether to continue or abort at certain points etc.).
throwaway6734 5y ago
Iirc the alphastar team released an API to programmatically interact with the game
szundi 5y ago
Try springrts.com, you can script it with lua.

rhn_mk1 5y ago

On the topic of different programming-driven games, Mind Rover is a robot simulator in which you program by connecting wires, carrying something like analog data. I'm not aware of anyone else ever having played it, but it seems to have some internet significance.

dagw 5y ago
I loved that game! I also remember it being one of the very first commercial games actually being released for Linux. Actually being able to buy and play a game on Linux was a pretty big deal.

dlsa 5y ago

Not going to play this game. At all. I sense I could easily put 3000 hours into it. A man needs to know his limitations. Cracktorio taught me that.

t0suj4 5y ago
Don't worry there isn't that much content in this game. You can finish the story in a couple of hours, will take longer depending on how much you want to tweak your scripts but it'll take tens of hours at most.
- dlsa 5y ago
  That's what someone said about Cracktorio. I think we spent like 40 hours on the demo.
  - Claude_Shannon 5y ago
    This time this is actually true - there's not much of sandbox mode.
selfhoster11 5y ago
The main campaign is not that replayable, fortunately (unfortunately?)
ok_dad 5y ago
2 weeks of turning my screeps code from a simple script into a system where I had a CI/CD system (on a VPS I paid for in addition to the game!) compiling Purescript into screeps JS convinced me the same, lol. These are cool games for people with more time than me, and these days I prefer just coding at work and doing other non-tech stuff at home. If I were 20 again though...
- dlsa 5y ago
  Screeps is something we could invest far too many hours into.

selfhoster11 5y ago

It's worth noting that the game was a commercial title, and the Polish Colobot community managed to convince Epsitec to open source it. This game was a large part of my childhood, and finding out it was open sourced was indeed a very happy piece of news.

neilparikh 5y ago
I think something similar happened to the Warzone 2100 RTS.

the_only_law 5y ago

Interesting idea. I like RTS, but I often suck in multilayer because I’m not very good at precisely timing macro or doing anything related to micro.

OneTimePetes 5y ago
Which is why the idea of the "multi-role" rts was invented. One guy plays sim-city to build the base. Another plays tower defense to defend the base. One guy plays Defense of the Ancients-Heroe gameplay, and one guy plays the large scale meta-rts. Then it became a balancing nightmare and we gave up, making instead seperate games for each gamer. The end. There was even once the approach of the arena rts.. you dont micro, instead small battles are taken to a separate app (on a cellphone, were cell-phone user duke it out).. But players hate to lose control over outcome. Turns out seemless match-making and game joining and replacing ai is hard.

buryat 5y ago

played a lot in it when i was 13-14, i was studying Pascal at that time and it was fun to apply that knowledge (of programming) in a game. Not sure actually how I heard about this game iirc I read about it in some computer newspaper and decided to buy

Claude_Shannon 5y ago
CD-Action, I suppose.

stevefan1999 5y ago

i wonder if we can use WebAssembly instead of a C++ like language? This way we can program it in many programming languages such as Rust and even C#

fatcow 5y ago

Us old-timers may remember a PC one called PCROBOTS sent to UK to participate in tournaments in the early 1990s (30 years ago!) http://www.pscs.co.uk/pcrobots/index.php http://www.pscs.co.uk/pcrobots/index.php https://programminggames.org/PCRobots https://programminggames.org/PCRobots

jhbadger 5y ago
And even more old-timers will remember RobotWar from the PLATO system in the 1970s and its Apple ][ port in 1981. This was probably the first example of this genre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar

keyle 5y ago

My next game, if I ever dive into gamedev again, would be a programming game. Btw if you like programming games, zachtronics is definitely the reference at the moment https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics

hcs 5y ago
That's a goal for me as well. The Zachtronics "design puzzle" games are considerably more interesting (to me) than most standard "program a robot" games. Some others of possible interest: Hack 'n' Slash is a game about applying debugging/hacking tools to itself. https://store.steampowered.com/app/246070/Hack_n_Slash/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/246070/Hack_n_Slash/ Human Resource Machine and 6 Billion Humans are fairly simple as programming goes, but the UI and debugging experience are nicely polished. https://store.steampowered.com/app/375820/Human_Resource_Machine/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/375820/Human_Resource_Mac... Baba Is You, arguably, it made me think a lot about puzzle game mechanics. https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/ Shameless self promotion, PrograMaze is a little puzzle I made. https://gashlin.net/games/programaze/ https://gashlin.net/games/programaze/
- Donckele 5y ago
  Hey! that looks like a 2d turing machine kinda game. Could you give some instructions on how to play?
  - MauranKilom 5y ago
    Not the author, but the grid is simultaneously a tape/program and a maze. At each step, two bits of the program are read and converted to a move of the blue box. Each set bit is also a wall in the maze which blocks movement. Note also the instructions at the bottom. I found the introduction simple enough (but maybe the game was updated since you asked). Edit: Beat the game. Cool concept, I found the levels to be on the easy side though. Some ideas for if you wanted to extend it: You could have "stuck" bits, different kinds of boxes (different rules, or "doesn't die from hitting a wall"), and multiple boxes and/or goals.

still_grokking 5y ago

To add to the list of similar games found on this thread: https://store.steampowered.com/app/777150/Adventure_Land__The_Code_MMORPG/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/777150/Adventure_Land__Th...