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From: bluecow@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tobish E Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Robot Battle available
Message-ID: <111464@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 91 19:47:03 GMT
References: <111384@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1331@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
Distribution: comp.sys.mac.games
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Lines: 27

Robot Battle _is_ similar to Robowar (and Core Wars, etc) in that they are
all derivative of the original Apple II game, Robot War, by MUSE.  However,
Robot Battle shares basically nothing with Robowar.  Robowar's language is
much more low-level than Robot Battle's.  Robowar allows many robots to go
at it at once; Robot Battle is strictly one-on-one.  In Robowar, you see the
whole battlefield on-screen, and the robots are represented by relatively
small user-definable icons which move about; in Robot Battle, you see a
small section of the battlefield in closeup (the robot pictures were created
using Super3D) and a radar view of the whole battlefield.  You select what
section to view in closeup by dragging a rectangle around the radar view,
the rectangle representing the area to be viewed.  Robowar has a free-form
battlefield; Robot Battle is grid-based.  Robot Battle has lots of digitized
sounds...  ;-)  On a more non-frivolous note, however, Robot Battle is a 
very Mac-friendly program; it looks and feels like a good Mac interface.
It will even continue to play battles (at a slower rate) as a background
application.  Robot Battle has humans, which roam around the battlefield
and lob grenades at robots who remain stationary for too long.  If you
want to compare RB with another program of the same genre, it is more 
similar to Omega than Robowar, but I wince even as I type that because 
RB's really not like Omega, either, but it's certainly not much like
Robowar.  Yes, there are several programs of this type lurking about now,
but the genre has a lot of potential, and all of these programs pursue
that potential in different ways.  

Tob
bluecow@unix.cis.pitt.edu