Talk:Robot Odyssey

Fun, but odd learning curve

I played this on my Tandy Color Computer 3 in the late 80's.

I think this game would have been a little better polished if released today. The change in difficulty from the Third Level to the Fourth Level was just a HUGE leap. I finally got stumped for good on level 5 - right past the room where you have to hit the buttons in a certain order (I used flip-flops and they eventually got it right, I think).

On the other hand, I learned quickly that there were ways around the earlier puzzles - setting the thrusters in robots with nothing but flip-flops and just letting them bounce randmomly until they reached their goal. If you put an object in a robot's hand and then grabbed that object, you could shove the robot through the wall to active a touch-sensitive button. This might have held up my skills in robot wiring, but I guess I get points for outside-the-box thinking.

I think if this game were rereleased and polished up today it would have a smoother learning curve. Still, the game was fun and I spent hours tinkering with the logic gates and playing in the tutorials.--Pittsburghmuggle 21:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

General discussion

by wiring a synchronous circuit of logic gates...

I haven't played the game in a few years, but I'm fairly certain that the circuits weren't synchronous but instead involved propogation delays (especially if you burned chips). I won't make the change in case my memory is faulty, but perhaps someone with a copy of the game should check to make sure.--Malcohol 09:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

As far as I remember from playing this game the propagation through a gate takes exactly one unit of time, and all pending gates propagate at the same instant, which makes this synchronous. The solutions for some puzzles depend on this behavior. Eldar 23:11, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, that sounds right. A seperate issue: I'm very dubious about the idea that the engine for Atari Adventure was the same as for Robot Odyssey. Can anyone confirm that? I appreciate that Warren Robinett may have been responsible for both titles, but the 2600 had only 128bytes of RAM compared to the Apple's 4K!--Malcohol 13:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds dubious to me too. Adventure has a much simpler engine, and no simulation of logic gates whatsoever. It seems that the "same engine" claim also appears in the entry for Rocky's Boots. Perhaps someone can explain (or remove this claim from both entries)? Eldar 00:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It's not the same engine, although to be fair none of the engines in any of the games knew anything about logic gates. It was in fact a modular library that was used in several TLC games. AFAICT they were derived from the work that Robinett did on Rocky's Boots. Eric22 03:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Robinett. He said that he was the developer for Rocky's Boots but that Mike Wallace and Leslie Grimm were the developer's of Robot Odyssey. So by his own words, it would be proper to remove his name as a developer. You can send him an email in case you have any questions for him, click the above link. He confirmed that Rocky's Boots used an updated version of the 'Adventure Engine' that he developed himself. He and other developers at The Learning Company refereed to the improved versions of the adventure engine by a non-decimal number, the final version for the Atari game being ADV#1. By the time Robot Odyssey was complete, they were referring to the engine as ADV#110. The the Atari's 6507 CPU is just a streamlined 6502 (the Apple ]['s CPU). Nearly identical. Updating a game engine from an Atari game is not the most complicated programming challenge. The 6507 has a reduced address bus, so the 6502 can use more memory, bankswitching not required. The 6507 is unable to service external interrupts, so the 6502 can poll a keyboard for input without slowing down. This is an uneducated guess, but I'm pretty sure Rocky's boots didn't even take advantage of the wider bus. I have communicated with other developers who reverse engineered these ADV engines, they are impressed with its efficiency and said that Rocky's Boots could be implemented and playable on the Atari 2600 with only slight tweaking. The ADV#110 engine however, would probably require a 128k cartridge with 64k of that being ram just to get it to run and would not be suitable for an actual game. Also, Ann McCormick is often falsely credited as a developer or the producer of Robot Odyssey. She is neither, she is the a co-founder of The Learning Company and was there when the game was designed. Rita Levinson is the producer.--Zerothis 17:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

So? Why didn't you remove them fom developer list? You seem far more knowledgeable about this subject then the rest of contributors. I scooped the original developer list from HotU. I'm removing Ann McCormick and I think Mr. Robinett should stay. After all, he did develop engine for game. Goyle 10:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Just leaving this here to use as a source later

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/01/robot_odyssey_the_hardest_computer_game_of_all_time.html Gamaliel (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Other games?

Is this a good candidate? Widget_Workshop Also, a "see also" linking to an article on logic simulators would be nice for someone going further than the game allows. 73.3.211.0 (talk) 06:29, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Removed content?

Why are the Easter Eggs removed? For those that don't know, these are events hidden in the game, and now apparently in the history. 73.181.82.26 (talk) 06:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Similar Games?

The section on "similar games" lists a number of games that are said to be similar to, or spiritual successors of, Robot Odyssey that sound much more similar to or inspired by Robotwar. For example, Carnage Heart is about high-level programming, like Robotwar, rather than logic gates, like Robot Odyssey, and it's about sending your programmed bots into autonomous battle, like Robotwar, rather than riding them around a maze solving puzzles.

But I don't want to just change these all based on my opinions (even if my opinions are a lot better than yours ;). Are there actual sources saying that these games are similar to, or inspired by, or spiritual successors to, Robot Odyssey, as opposed to Robotwar or the various other programming games of the 80s? If not, this should probably just talk about the related TLC games and the modern clones and remakes, and everything else should be discussed on the page about programming games in general. --157.131.246.136 (talk) 20:39, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

lead description

The second sentence says this game "has been described as the hardest computer game of all time." This seems out of place for the lead paragraph, as it has been described that way by one person, hardly an accurate consensus about the game. Digging into the source article further uncovers more problems: (1) the author did not do any systematic research to find the "hardest computer game"; he's merely reporting on the hardest game he happens to have played in his childhood; (2) the claim is in the headline, where hyperbole is de rigueur as clickbait. The article makes it clear the game is incredibly challenging—an opinion shared by others the author spoke to—and the Wikipedia article should of course reflect that. But "hardest of all time" is hyperbole unsuited for Wikipedia, and certainly for the lead paragraph. 2605:A601:AADC:2100:C2FA:4802:5984:FA49 (talk) 17:59, 16 April 2021 (UTC)