Robo Instructus devblog

Updates on the development of coding puzzler Robo Instructus


New Stuff For The New And The Old

I'm that guy who quit his job to sit in his house making games. I'm currently working on robot engineering game Robo Instructus. For my previous weekly posts look here.

Working towards completing the puzzle content I’m busy designing and implementing new levels and puzzle mechanics. A lot of the new stuff I’m a bit hesitant to talk about, but I’ve also made some improvements to alpha-1. In particular a new level!

As I was designing a new function coming in the full game I created a level and stripped down the availability of other tools. So you can really just move about and use this one new tool. I found it’s a nice way of introducing a tool because it forces you to think about how it works in isolation.

News for the olds

This made me wonder if this technique would help in learning robo_detect_adjacent() from alpha-1. That’s when the game really begins, the first proper puzzle, but I think people are experiencing quite a spike in difficulty at that point.

To help with that I released alpha-1.10 today, bringing a new level that removes location & scanning. You really just have robo_left(), robo_forward() & a first go at robo_detect_adjacent(). If you got stuck on the previous alpha’s give this one a go and tell me what you think!

That’s not all, my quest to improve the tutorials never ends. New for this level, I actually explain while and for looping.

I’ve re-done part of the function tutorial to try and make it less abstractly based on plus-ing numbers and more on calling robo_x() functions that the player has been doing.

Finally alpha-1.10 also brings new feature for the in-line debugger; highlighting ‘constants’ that you’ve named. They show up in brackets alongside the number when they’re unique. Something like: -999 (UNKNOWN) instead of just -999.

News for the news

As mentioned I’m actively working on new stuff. But I’m keeping the build together in one, no weird branch stuff, and I’m planning yet more alpha-1 content. I’ll tell you more later! oooooooowwwwww.

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