A robot programming game design

terrakota

Hello, whats the right path to implement a game where the player must program robots behivor to fight each other using maybe a visual scripting tool included at runtime. Any ideas,links, etc how implement a game like this in godo? I just need the theory behind it. Thanks in advance and please excuse my poor english

TwistedTwigleg

Well, having never made a robot fighting game, or really any game that uses visual scripting, I can only make some assumptions on how to go about it.

First you will need to make some sort of visual programming language.

You may be able to use VisualScript (included in Godot 3.0) though it’s probably too broad for your needs. If you can use VisualScript, then all you should need to do is expose a bunch of functions specific to controlling the robots, and then let Godot do the rest.

If you cannot use VisualScript, then I would suggest deciding on how you want to make your custom visual scripting language. I would look into state machines, and then decide what flow structure you want. If you want branching visual scripting (like Godot’s visual scripting language), then I would look into using a Dictionary and generic states that you extend to give functionality. If you want queue based visual scripting (akin to Scratch’s visual scripting language) then I would use a list/array and generic states that you extend to give functionality.

Granted, I’ve never made a visual programming language, so I’m not 100% on how to go about this, but that is what I would look into.

The next step would be making a bunch of states (chunks of code) that do very simple, but specific parts of what you are wanting the player to be able to do.

Some example states could be moving a robot forward, rotating a robot clockwise/counterclockwise, making a robot jump, making a robot activate booster jets, etc.

Once you have each individual state more or less written out, then you need to make sure they work with the visual scripting language you wrote.

Once again, I’m not sure on the complexities involved in this, nor have I done it before.

Finally, the last broad step would be making a UI so the player can make their own scripts in your visual language. This greatly depends on how you want to setup your visual scripting langauge, and how complicated you want to make it.

Thankfully, I think this step would be much easier in comparison to the other steps above.

Overal, I would highly suggest looking at state machines, as I would think it would be one of the most important parts of making a programmable game.

The way I learned how to make state machines was to make a RPG dialog system. What really made it click for me on how to make a state machine was to view it like a choose your own adventure book, so maybe that will help?

I have not gone through this, but maybe this article from Medium will help explain? Apparently it shows the basics of state machines in computer science, so it should be fairly easy to apply the concepts to GDScript.

Hopefully this helps and gives you some ideas :smile:

terrakota

hmmm thank you . you relly gave me some lights there =). will try to investigate more about the state machines and the other concepts. btw can the godots visualscript beintegrated at runtime?

TwistedTwigleg

@terrakota said: hmmm thank you . you relly gave me some lights there =). will try to investigate more about the state machines and the other concepts.

No problem, glad I could (potentially) help.

btw can the godots visualscript beintegrated at runtime?

I'm not sure, as I have not really used Godot's VisualScript language. Given that the Godot editor is written using the Godot engine, I would say it's possible, but it may not be easily doable.

terrakota

ok thanks

J453Nomad

@TwistedTwigleg said:

Overal, I would highly suggest looking at state machines, as I would think it would be one of the most important parts of making a programmable game.

Do you know of any good tutorials for state implementation in godot? I know there are plug-ins, but I really want to learn how to code state machines, and understand them and that won;t happen if I only use plug-ins.

TwistedTwigleg

@J453Nomad said:

@TwistedTwigleg said:

Overal, I would highly suggest looking at state machines, as I would think it would be one of the most important parts of making a programmable game.

Do you know of any good tutorials for state implementation in godot? I know there are plug-ins, but I really want to learn how to code state machines, and understand them and that won;t happen if I only use plug-ins.

Unfortunately, I do not know of any Godot specific tutorials for state implementation in Godot, or really any tutorials on state machine implementation in general. I learned about state machines when accidentally making one when I was working on a dialog system for a RPG prototype in Javascript.

That said, the concept of state machines are pretty simple. You have a single active state, which can transition to other states. The idea is that it creates a flow graph where states connect to other states, and then these states transition to one another due to some condition.

What really helped me is thinking of a state machine like the choose your own adventure books, where at the end of the section you are presented with some choices and which page to go to based on which choice you made. In theory, these books are just a written state machine, where the states are the portion of the book you are at, and the transitions are the bits at the end telling you which page to go to based on which choice you make.

There are several types of state machines out there, each with their own pros and cons. As I said above, I really just stumbled upon learning how to make state machines, but at a glance the following links look like they could be helpful in learning how to make state machines.

-| Medium: Understanding State Machines -| GameProgrammingPatterns -| Dev.to - building a state machine in Python

I'm not sure how good or bad these are, but hopefully they can get you started with making state machines. Hopefully this helps :smile:

J453Nomad

Thanks. I will look into those sources. One of the sources you listed is in python, hopefully that will help as GDscript is similar. That also gives me another avenue to explore, perhaps if I can find some good examples in python, making the transition to implementation in Godot will be easier.