Robbie the Robot

New: The room editor is now complete and documented!

Robbie the Robot is a puzzle game intended to teach simple programming skills. The goal is to move a robot through a series of rooms; the player must write a short script to move the robot from the starting point to a finish point. There are puzzles to solve along the way: the robot must trigger switches in a particular order, or maneuver around obstacles, or manipulate other robots into triggering switches, etc.

It's now possible to create your own sectors (sets of rooms). I'd love to see anything you come up with!

See the web page, above, for the latest news, and please report any bugs using the "Ticket" system on the web page.

27 nov 2009

JM which is the file to download?

WHD At present you need to download the source, and run it with ActiveTcl. I've added information on where to download the source to the web page given above. Eventually, I intend to have downloadable executables for OSX, Linux, and Windows.

27 nov 2009

JM This is great!

My 14 year old son like it. This is very creative and I enjoy seen Tcl in action. I have some feedback for you to consider:

• - In the tutorial, clear the editor from the previous exercise
• - Have a keyboard shortcut for the "Run" button, F5 ?

Congratulations!

WHD I find that having the script persist is a good thing; it's fun to see what Robbie does with the previous room's script. However, Command-A or Ctrl-Shift-A will select the entire script, so you can delete it easily. And just this evening, I added a keyboard shortcut for the "Run" button (the game is by no means finished).

JM 3 Dec 2009, I have been playing with the room creation recently, and I want to mention it is really easy.

When I made one challenge room for my oldest son, It causes the youngest one (12 years old) ask for "his" room. I enjoy what I think is just the second phase in this journey (custom room creation).

AM (1 december 2009) My nine year old son is quite enthousiastic about it. I will have to translate the descriptions of the rooms for him, but he is definitely showing interest in learning to play it on his own. A typical child of his time, though, he asked at what site he might play it ;). I am not sure if my answer ("On my lap top") did convince him entirely ...

LVwikignome - 2009-12-03 13:50:12

I wonder if using aejaks if it would be possible to build a site that runs it?

JM 3 Feb 2011, I was playing with Robbie on windows, then I just tried on linux (ubuntu 10.04) and the voice feature is an additional fun ingredient that my son likes.