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Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

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Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#41

Post by ALittleLight »

Adam13531 wrote: post #2

Hey all, I've been working full-time on a game called Bot Land for the last four years, and it just launched: https://bot.land/ In the game, you can make bots with a Scratch-like interface called Blockly or use a subset of JavaScript. Either way, bots are fully automated. Here are some screenshots of the game: https://imgur.com/a/Rs2OWFg Almost all of the development process (~5000 hours) was streamed live on Twitch:…

One problem I'm having, when manually editing the code, is using Math functions. Ideally, I'd like to calculate the square root of an expression, but whenever I try to use Math functions I get the error "The Callee's type is MemberExpression which is not allowed".

Any advice?

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#42

Post by Adam13531 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #41
Adam13531 wrote: post #2

Hey all, I've been working full-time on a game called Bot Land for the last four years, and it just launched: https://bot.land/ In the game, you can make bots with a Scratch-like interface called Blockly or use a subset of JavaScript. Either way, bots are fully automated. Here are some screenshots of the game: https://imgur.com/a/Rs2OWFg Almost all of the development process (~5000 hours) was streamed live on Twitch:…

One problem I'm having, when manually editing the code, is using Math functions. Ideally, I'd like to calculate the square root of an expression, but whenever I try to use Math functions I get the error "The Callee's type is MemberExpression which is not allowed". Any advice?

Hey, so one thing to keep in mind is that BotLandScript is a subset of JavaScript. Member expressions (e.g. "entity.life") are only allowed in extremely narrow scenarios.

Second, all available functions are accessible by clicking the question mark that shows in the script editor. Some Math functions like "abs", "floor", and "ceil" are exposed to users, but "sqrt" is not. This means that you would have to either write your own implementation or convince me to add it to the game. When I hear "sqrt" in Bot Land, I assume you want to find the distance between two objects, in which case you may be able to use the built-in "getDistanceTo" function. It can either take in an entity or two arguments representing (X, Y) coordinates and returns the Manhattan distance between the bot and the target.

If there's another scenario where you'd like the square root, I'd be glad to consider either accommodating the scenario or just adding access to Math.sqrt directly. If we go that route though, you wouldn't have access to whatever results from it before ~Tuesday of this week at the earliest.

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#43

Post by xentripetal »

Enjoying it so far, small bug report:

Loadout weapon drag window can get permanently stuck on the screen, requiring a refresh. See here https://i.imgur.com/cL4x2Vk.png

Steps to reproduce: Go to Edit Blueprint Window. Start dragging a window. Press backspace to go back to the game field. The window is now permanently stuck.

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#44

Post by jkp56 »

Sounds interesting, but didn't work for me: it got stuck on the "bots are busy assembling the game". There is no indicator of progress, no errors, no logs. It's a good idea to add a feedback button that would upload logs on demand. I'm using Firefox Android with uBO. Only GA was blocked, but there's no way I'm enabling it.

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#45

Post by cpb »

Adam13531 wrote: post #17
ponyous wrote: post #4

Woah congrats. I have watched a stream or two of yours and it looks really interesting. I really liked your marketing document and think others might find it really useful, hope you don't mind me linking it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TiSmB7IaWpIf_7cUWzk7GAtR... (let me know if you are not ok with that and I'll edit the comment)

Thanks! The marketing document is fine to link. It hasn't really been updated much, but then again, I'm going to try more ideas from it now that the game has launched and the fires have died down a bit.

Congrats man!

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#46

Post by seaish »

Adam13531 wrote: post #18
dcdgo wrote: post #11

The Google code blocks integration is quite nice. as a developer, I wouldnt want to play this though.

You can code in a subset of JavaScript too. Even with that in the game, I find Blockly a little bit more usable given the current feature-set in Bot Land right now (mostly the existence of snippets and premade scripts in Blockly). It's nice to get large chunks of code that you can just drag around. Alternatively, maybe you were referring to some other part of the game when you said you wouldn't want to play this, in…

I think they were just saying that since they code for a living, they don't want to play games that are also code.

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#48

Post by Adam13531 »

jkp56 wrote: post #44

Sounds interesting, but didn't work for me: it got stuck on the "bots are busy assembling the game". There is no indicator of progress, no errors, no logs. It's a good idea to add a feedback button that would upload logs on demand. I'm using Firefox Android with uBO. Only GA was blocked, but there's no way I'm enabling it.

Do you mind trying either the app or a different browser? I don't know why it wouldn't load at all. I agree that there should be some form of errors, logs, etc. I believe that will eventually happen if the game makes enough money to continue development. Launching on four platforms was only possible due to being able to thinly wrap the site, and unfortunately, now there are a lot of other important tasks to tackle that will probably happen before this. :(

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#49

Post by Adam13531 »

xentripetal wrote: post #43

Enjoying it so far, small bug report: Loadout weapon drag window can get permanently stuck on the screen, requiring a refresh. See here https://i.imgur.com/cL4x2Vk.png Steps to reproduce: Go to Edit Blueprint Window. Start dragging a window. Press backspace to go back to the game field. The window is now permanently stuck.

Thank you for reporting this! I say this with no sarcasm: I think this is a completely unique bug.

Also, it's better that I get reports than not, but if you've got any future bug reports or feature suggestions, there is an in-game bug reporter that you can use via the button at the upper right of most screens in the game.

Re: Show HN: Bot Land, a game where you fight others via code

#50

Post by Adam13531 »

seaish wrote: post #46
Adam13531 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can code in a subset of JavaScript too. Even with that in the game, I find Blockly a little bit more usable given the current feature-set in Bot Land right now (mostly the existence of snippets and premade scripts in Blockly). It's nice to get large chunks of code that you can just drag around. Alternatively, maybe you were referring to some other part of the game when you said you wouldn't want to play this, in…

I think they were just saying that since they code for a living, they don't want to play games that are also code.

Oh yeah, you may be right. I took it to mean "given that I know code, I wouldn't want to use a drag-and-drop interface". I've had a few pieces of feedback like that before, and sometimes even pointing out the existing coding interface doesn't please those people. To each their own, for sure!
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