When I was a kid, this game was an incredibly effective teaching tool! What it taught me was that I was a dumb dumb dummy dumb-head who would never be able to comprehend how electronics worked.
Not sure that was the lesson its developers were aiming for. But if so, job well done :-D
Dag nabbit dang, you beat me to it! That 2018 thread about Robot Odyssey Online had a link to a Slate article mentioned some stuff about Alan Kay's high regard for Robot Odyssey, who somebody quoted, then he posted a correction to the article himself, and I posted some other discussions about it with him as well (and some links to other papers about related stuff by Chaim Gingold, Kurt Schmucker, and Dan Ingalls). Robot Odyssey was brilliant and waaaay before its time, and as Alan Kay said: Warren Robinette is a very special designer! He was the creator of one of the first known easter eggs in a video game: Atari Adventure, released in 1979 on the Atari 2600.
(I happen to be wearing my Factorio t-shirt right now! That's another robophilic game too, notoriously known as "programmer crack".)
>nlawalker on June 29, 2018 [-]
>From the Slate article:
"When Teri Perl described the project to legendary computer scientist Alan Kay, he said, “You’re wasting your time. It can’t be done.” That is, the basic idea was simply too complex to run on an Apple home computer. When Robot Odyssey shipped, the company gave Wallace a plaque that said, “It can’t be done. —Alan Kay.”"
>That's an awesome story.
>alankay1 on June 29, 2018 [-]
>An "awesome story" that isn't the way it happened (as with too many "awesome stories"). See the comment I made (posted below by niawalker). To summarize here, I said I love "Rocky's Boots", and I love the basic idea of "Robot Odyssey", but for end-users, using simple logic gates to program multiple robots in a cooperative strategy game blows up too much complexity for very little utility. A much better way to do this would be to make a "next Logo" that would allow game players to make the AI brains needed by the robots.
So what I actually said, is that doing it the way you are doing it will wind up with a game that is not successful or very playable.
>Just why they misunderstood what I said is a bit of a mystery, because I spelled out what could be really good for the game (and way ahead of what other games were doing). And of course it would work on an Apple II and other 8 bit micros (Logo ran nicely on them, etc.)
>From: Alan Kay Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:55:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: Just curious ... To: Samuel Klein, Don Hopkins, Chris Trottier, John Gilmore
>Hi SJ --
>Robot Odyssey is another game that would benefit from having a clean separation between the graphical/physical modeling simulation and the behavioral parts (both the games levels and the robot programming could be independently separated out) -- this would make a great target for those who would like to try their hand at game play and at robot behavioral programming systems.
>This is a long undropped shoe for me. When I was the CS at Atari in 82-84, it was one of our goals to make a number of the very best games into frameworks for end-user (especially children's) creativity. Alas, Atari had quite a down turn towards the end of 83 ... We did get "the Aquarium" idea from Ann Marion to morph into the Vivarium project at Apple ... And some of the results there helped with the later Etoys design.
>Cheers,
>Alan
>From: Alan Kay Subject: Robot Odyssey
>I actually argued with him [Will Wright] and Maxis for not making SimCity very educational. E.g. the kids can't open the hood to see the assumptions made by SimCity (crime can be countered by more police stations) and try other assumptions (raise standard of living to counter crime) etc. I've never thought of it as a particularly good design for educational purposes.
>However, I have exactly the opposite opinion of Robot Odyssey, which I thought was a brilliant concept when the TLC people brought it to me at Atari in the early 80s. (Rocky's Boots is pretty much my all time favorite for a great game that really teaches and also has a terrific intro to itself done in itself, e...
I get what Kay was getting at (using a Logo-like language rather than circuits), but that would have been a very different game. The point of Robot Odyssey (and Rocky's Boots) was to teach digital logic, not programming.
When I was 8-11 I played this game obsessively. I did a fourth grade project on logic gates because of it. Probably contributed to why I ended it up in robotics.
It was an incredibly hard game. I got to the last level on my own but didn't unlock the fourth robot, leading to a soft lock. I also used unoptimal solutions for maybe half the levels. Ie. Using a random bouncer and patience to traverse the ventilation shafts.
Some of my fondest memories of growing up with an Apple II.
8 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 29.8 ms ] threadNot sure that was the lesson its developers were aiming for. But if so, job well done :-D
2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118649
(I happen to be wearing my Factorio t-shirt right now! That's another robophilic game too, notoriously known as "programmer crack".)
>nlawalker on June 29, 2018 [-]
>From the Slate article: "When Teri Perl described the project to legendary computer scientist Alan Kay, he said, “You’re wasting your time. It can’t be done.” That is, the basic idea was simply too complex to run on an Apple home computer. When Robot Odyssey shipped, the company gave Wallace a plaque that said, “It can’t be done. —Alan Kay.”"
>That's an awesome story.
>alankay1 on June 29, 2018 [-]
>An "awesome story" that isn't the way it happened (as with too many "awesome stories"). See the comment I made (posted below by niawalker). To summarize here, I said I love "Rocky's Boots", and I love the basic idea of "Robot Odyssey", but for end-users, using simple logic gates to program multiple robots in a cooperative strategy game blows up too much complexity for very little utility. A much better way to do this would be to make a "next Logo" that would allow game players to make the AI brains needed by the robots. So what I actually said, is that doing it the way you are doing it will wind up with a game that is not successful or very playable.
>Just why they misunderstood what I said is a bit of a mystery, because I spelled out what could be really good for the game (and way ahead of what other games were doing). And of course it would work on an Apple II and other 8 bit micros (Logo ran nicely on them, etc.)
>From: Alan Kay Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:55:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: Just curious ... To: Samuel Klein, Don Hopkins, Chris Trottier, John Gilmore
>Hi SJ --
>Robot Odyssey is another game that would benefit from having a clean separation between the graphical/physical modeling simulation and the behavioral parts (both the games levels and the robot programming could be independently separated out) -- this would make a great target for those who would like to try their hand at game play and at robot behavioral programming systems.
>This is a long undropped shoe for me. When I was the CS at Atari in 82-84, it was one of our goals to make a number of the very best games into frameworks for end-user (especially children's) creativity. Alas, Atari had quite a down turn towards the end of 83 ... We did get "the Aquarium" idea from Ann Marion to morph into the Vivarium project at Apple ... And some of the results there helped with the later Etoys design.
>Cheers,
>Alan
>From: Alan Kay Subject: Robot Odyssey
>I actually argued with him [Will Wright] and Maxis for not making SimCity very educational. E.g. the kids can't open the hood to see the assumptions made by SimCity (crime can be countered by more police stations) and try other assumptions (raise standard of living to counter crime) etc. I've never thought of it as a particularly good design for educational purposes.
>However, I have exactly the opposite opinion of Robot Odyssey, which I thought was a brilliant concept when the TLC people brought it to me at Atari in the early 80s. (Rocky's Boots is pretty much my all time favorite for a great game that really teaches and also has a terrific intro to itself done in itself, e...
It was an incredibly hard game. I got to the last level on my own but didn't unlock the fourth robot, leading to a soft lock. I also used unoptimal solutions for maybe half the levels. Ie. Using a random bouncer and patience to traverse the ventilation shafts.
Some of my fondest memories of growing up with an Apple II.