Team Droid: Some Tips to Help You Out

Wednesday, 6th December 2023

In 2022 I released the game Team Droid for a game jam. Since then it has achieved a modest success, being the second most downloaded game after Ossuary. But like the board game that inspired it, Robo Rally, its appeal seems to be largely limited to those comfortable with programming.

So I've decided to put together some tips for players. For this future article series I'll concentrate on the actual process of programming robots and the interface, which some might find daunting.

When programming your robot, you'll see the level map taking up the majority of the screen. The controls on the left show you which robot you're programming, the contents of its RAM, the contents of its inventory (if it has one), the contents of its ROM (if it has ROM), and the list of actions available this turn.

The RAM is the part of the robot's memory that you fill up yourself, by choosing action from the available list and selecting "Add" from the menu. Remember that you can add as many of a single action as you like (to the programmers out there, you're just calling one of the available subroutines). This is one way that this game differs from Robo Rally.

The ROM of the robot can contain a single action that's always available. This is going to be the one that's must useful to the particular robot you've chosen. So Strider has Step Forward, Bouncer has Leap, Soldier has Shoot, and so on. Make as much use of the ROM action as you can, this this is one of the robot's main advantages over any other robot that you could have chosen.

Always keep an eye on the available action list, and try to remember which of the absent actions you've seen recently and which actions you've not. If Turn Left has only just dropped off the list, for example, then it will be a while before it reappears, and you ought to plan your next few turns accordingly.

And talking of choosing robots, the next post in this series will provide some tips on that for players who might be lost.