BotFrenzy in terms of Screenshots
BotFrenzy uses two windows: a combination control-panel/chat-widget and
a display of the board. Here's the control panel thingy:
BotFrenzy provides networked play and chat. The arrows represent movement
cards which are used to "program" a robot's movement each turn. Once all
players have programmed their robot movements, the robots faithfully execute
their movement instructions to the word. Their antics are animated on the main
board display.
This is the board display, featuring blue slime and clawbot:
On the bottom is clawbot's program for the turn. Clawbot will follow these
moves exactly. He's sitting on a conveyor belt flanked by pits and the
edge of the board (falling off means certain death). If he doesn't get off that
thing, it will most likely do him in. Meanwhile, blue slime is merrily scheming
to do something unexpected to clawbot. But that's a story for another time
and place.
You can see that BotFrenzy supports many elements found in the original
Robo Rally board game. Not shown are the greyish express conveyors and some
other miscellaneous elements. BotFrenzy reads in an XML board file format
used by the excellent
GBoard-Edit program.
Let's go over what can happen in a game. Here are two unrelated screenshots
of some action going on:
The frame on the left shows blue slime falling into a pit. He fell in because
of a miscalculation in his program (somewhat intended for the purposes of
this screenshot). Falling into a pit yields a cute animation, but it is
a situation that is highly recommended for the other robot instead.
Over on the right you can see clawbot and blue slime
shooting at each other. Whenever a robot has another robot in its line of sight,
it will shoot that robot (at the end of the phase).
These next four shots show a spectacular sequence of events:
Slime is sitting in a bunch of lasers and is getting hurt every move. Clawbot
is right under a crusher that crushes on odd phases (1, 3 and 5). He has
one phase to get out of there before he gets smashed.
In this frame, clawbot fails to move away from his death (his program
said to rotate right). An unpartial crusher makes him explode.
Meanwhile, slime inches closer to his date with destiny.
Blue manages to get into the nasty-looking square with five lasers.
The consequences are clear. Alas for poor blue slime.
Kablooie! Don't worry though, both slime and claw will respawn for another
round of BotFrenzy.