Game: RAMbots

Thread: Re: when do I score a goal?

kuhrusty — 2008-06-02T06:18:09+00:00

drewfish wrote:
This seems to imply two things: (a) you have to stand something up before you can knock it over (which is why the green beam is so valuable), and (b) you can score a goal by knocking over the opponent RAMbot of the appropriate color. Are both these true?
Yes, those are both true.

Thread: when do I score a goal?

drewfish — 2008-06-01T18:31:46+00:00

Hi,

I haven't actually played RAMbot yet -- I just got a bunch of treehouse sets and the "Playing with Pyramids" book.

I'm confused about when a goal is scored. The book seems to say that the only way to tag a goal is to knock over an object of the matching color. This seems to imply two things: (a) you have to stand something up before you can knock it over (which is why the green beam is so valuable), and (b) you can score a goal by knocking over the opponent RAMbot of the appropriate color. Are both these true?

Thanks,
Drew

Thread: Re: Working on a variant for those of us that bought Treehouse

ZNemesis — 2008-03-05T09:32:53+00:00

How are you supposed to tag flags or RAMbots with a Xeno set? Do I have to get gray pieces just for this purpose?

Thread: Re: The RAMifications of programming perils.

PaulRein — 2007-12-29T07:09:58+00:00

Thank you!

Yes, your right. I completely missed that! The Treehouse-sets does contain everything one player needs (plus an extra colour). One Treehouse-set per player plus one for the pieces on the board is correct so if you don't plan on playing more than two players you'll only need three sets (and so on).

Thread: Re: The RAMifications of programming perils.

kusinohki — 2007-12-29T06:47:46+00:00

Nice review!

I had to comment about the treehouse thing. After pondering for a while, I think RAMbots fits the treehouse marketing/packaging better than most of the older games. If I'm thinking correctly, you only need #players+1 treehouse stashes to play. When setting up rambots, the first thing I do is make a bunch of monochrome trees and hand each player (and the board) one tree of each color. With treehouse, you could just hand a tube to each player and tell them to remove white and do the same with the board.

Now I'm wondering if 2 player rambots will be included in the 3-house booklet I've heard rumors about. Basically, it's a list of game rules that can be played with 3 treehouse stashes.

Thread: The RAMifications of programming perils.

PaulRein — 2007-12-28T23:27:56+00:00

RAMbots is a very good take on the program-your-moves-in-advance-then-execute-genre. Like all Icehouse-games it is quite abstract with all aspects of play represented by coloured plastic pyramids in different sizes.

It is almost inevitable to compare RAMbots to RoboRally. Both involve programming robots to accomplish tasks on a board. Both have their turns divided into a programming phase and a execution phase. Both involve robots that can shot and otherwise interfere with the other robots. On the other hand, where RoboRally has detailed and modular gameboards and nice miniatures, RAMbots is totally abstract. RoboRally robots need to upgrade with new devices while RAMbots come factory equipped with four different beam-devices. The timing of the program execution also differs significantly, more on that later.

As always with Icehouse-games, the cost of the game depends on what you already own. I'm willing to bet that almost everyone on this site can scrounge up a chess-board or checkers-board (otherwise you can just draw a 8x8 grid on a piece of paper) thus making the cost of that effectively zero. The same goes for the screens to hide your programming behind. Just use something that can stand up on its own, like a slightly opened book or something. (You do have books, right? Right?) That leaves us with the pyramids themselves.
For RAMbots you need complete stashes (five large, five medium and five small) in four different colours. The rules specify red, blue, green and yellow but you can of course substitute whatever colours you have. If you don't have at least four stashes of pyramids, you need to buy them. Unfortunately (from the perspective of playing RAMbots), LooneyLabs now distribute pyramids in the form of Treehouse-sets. While Treehouse is a good game, these sets contain only one nest (one large, one medium and one small) of pyramids in each of five colours. To get complete stashes you therefore need five Treehouse sets (in the same colours). This costs a pretty hefty $50 but on the other hand you then have enough pyramids to play almost every Icehouse-game there is (there are very few that need more than five stashes) so it's a one-time investment.

The quality of the pyramids is excellent, they fit snugly into each other and are very pretty. (Playing any kind of Icehouse-game in public inevitably causes people to stop and look.) As an abstract game, there is no artwork whatsoever (unless your particular chess-board happens to be decorated in some way)

The rules for RAMbots are available online and were also published in Playing With Pyramids. The rules are not hard to learn and fall into place after just a few turns. (Of course that does not mean that programs wont get screwed up now and then) The programming differs from RoboRally in two major ways. First, while every player starts out with the same coding resources, once you start to damage robots you steal instructions from them. This both denies them certain possibilities and expands your own. The second difference is in the timing. In RoboRally, everyone gets to run their first instruction, in order of precedence, before anyone runs their second instruction. This is not true in RAMbots. Everybody starts with their first instruction and checks who gets to run their instruction first. That player then immediately replaces the executed instruction with their next in line and another round of precedence checking is done and so on. This way, one player might execute several instructions, possibly their whole program, before anyone else gets a chance. This is the part of playing RAMbots that confuses experienced RoboRally-players the most.

You need to tag beacons in the order of your own goal stack (which means that not everyone is racing for the same beacon) but, in contrast with RoboRally, you can actually tag an upright robot of the right colour instead of the beacon! (You can't tag yourself so that colour needs to be tagged as a beacon)

The floor itself presents no dangers or obstacles in RAMbots (in contrast with RoboRally) but space is limited so the RAMbots interfere with each other all the time. There are no race-ahead problems in this game. Also the open nature of the floor means that someone almost always have a line-of-sight to your RAMbot. Interaction is plenty (and usually not co-operative ).

In summary, I think RAMbots is one of the very best Icehouse-games, second only to Zendo.

"Short-sighted programming can fail to improve the quality of life. It can reduce it, causing economic loss or even physical harm. In a few extreme cases, bad programming practice can lead to death."
-- P. J. Plauger

Theme:
Price: [BGCOLOR=#FF0000][/BGCOLOR] (if you need to buy all the pyramids)
Quality: [BGCOLOR=#00FF00][/BGCOLOR]
Artwork: What art?
Ease of Learning: [BGCOLOR=#00FF00][/BGCOLOR]
Weight:
Luck:
Interaction: [BGCOLOR=#00FF00][/BGCOLOR]
Waiting:[BGCOLOR=#FF0000] [/BGCOLOR]
Length:
Replayability: [BGCOLOR=#00FF00][/BGCOLOR]

Overall:

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kuhrusty — 2007-07-29T01:04:12+00:00

End of first turn; Red got hammered by Blue.

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kuhrusty — 2007-07-29T01:03:44+00:00

Start of first turn.

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kuhrusty — 2007-07-29T01:03:11+00:00

And they're off!

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kuhrusty — 2007-07-29T01:01:02+00:00

Initial setup.

Thread: Re: eliminated!

kusinohki — 2007-07-26T19:43:06+00:00

wow. just... wow.

I've seen ppl knocked down to just 3 pieces (all large) a couple of times, but never less than that.

Thread: eliminated!

kuhrusty — 2007-07-26T08:32:23+00:00

Hey, here's something I'd never seen before: I was eliminated from a game! As in, no pieces in my code pool, just being smacked around the board as an obstacle until the other players sent me off to the store for snacks.

I got off to a pretty bad start; I think I was knocked down to five pieces in the first turn. I held on like that for a few turns (starting my programs with my slowest instruction, so that there would be nothing to steal from me), but at some point, someone tore me up after my program had already run, leaving me with only one medium green. (That's tough to recover from!) There were a couple of turns of "well, I'm done with my program; what's taking you guys so long?" and then that last piece was taken from me too.

After that, they just had their way with me; I was probably rammed as many times after being knocked out as before.

As one player explained to me: "You keep underestimating how much everyone here hates you." Ha ha ha ha ha.

Thread: Working on a variant for those of us that bought Treehouse

Krisjohn — 2007-02-05T06:52:02+00:00

I've been working on a variant of RAMbots I call RAMhouse that's designed to be more flexible when it comes to the pyramids you have available in your collection. I've mostly got Xeno Treehouse sets at the moment, so without a little tweaking, I wouldn't be able to play RAMbots.

http://www.krisjohn.net/ramhouse.html

I just did an updated version after having a chance to playtest recently. Feel free to make suggestions or comments.

Image

Orph — 2007-01-21T17:09:48+00:00

Picture of my homemade RAMBots board. Starting spaces marked for fast setup.

Thread: First time, 2-player session

jhliu — 2006-05-25T05:01:10+00:00

I played RAMbots for the first time this week with Will, another first-timer. We did one round as a practice just to be sure both of us knew how the programming phase and execution phase worked, and then we started for real.

Since the goal stack for your opponent is made up of pieces from your own code-pool, picking which pieces to use for the goal stack is part of the strategy, too. I ended up using two small and two medium pieces, and Will used 4 medium pieces. When we got to execution phase, it meant that he was able to use small (higher precedence) pieces to get all his moves before mine, but once I started tagging goals, I had a lot of medium pieces to work with, a good balance between precedence and further movement.

On the first round, we were both going for targets furthest from our starting points, which meant we would intersect. I wasn't sure which way Will would try to go, so I went for the quickest route to tag the piece. When we revealed instructions, it turned out that he had programmed to try to move my target, plus a couple of attempted attacks and rams. Since he used mostly large pieces, I was able to move in and tag the target, but then got attacked once and lost a piece.

After that round, I was more cautious because I realized Will was playing offensively, and I tried to attack more, or take routes that would be less predictable. I tagged my second goal, and Will missed me.

I think the third round we both managed to hit each other a couple times, and then I tagged another goal. Then Will miscalculated where I would be, and managed to put himself in a corner, next to a beacon. For my next move, I used several small pieces to corner him, and then attacked, damaging him 3 times in one round. He did one damage to me, but then moved off to the side, because he hadn't expected me to come straight at him.

Finally, I had enough pieces to tag my last goal, and won the game.

We missed the fact that you could tag the opponent when he is the same color as your next goal, so neither of us took advantage of that.

I do see that in a 2-player game, it's easier to figure out tactics and there's only one other player to worry about. I'm interested in trying a 4-player game, just to see how the chaos plays out.

Seems like a fun game, but I'll hold a rating until I get to play some more.

Thread: RAMbots: chaotic and fun

lambda — 2005-10-18T19:40:03+00:00

RAMbots is an Icehouse game design by Kory Heath. It is a programming game, in which you design short programs that determine what your RAMbot does as it races around the board trying to tag goals, steal pieces from other players, and cause general mayhem. It has been compared to RoboRally, but not having played RoboRally, I can't really speak to that comparison. It's a fun, chaotic game that works well for 2 to 4 players.

Since it's an Icehouse game, there's not really much to say about the components. You need the four standard Icehouse colors (Red, Yellow, Green and Blue), a chessboard that is big enough for the large pieces to lie down in a space, and screens for each of the players to build their programs behind. The Icehouse pieces need to be the stackable kind.

Because the rules are available online, I'll only give a brief overview. The goal of the game is to tag four colored beacons (or other players of the appropriate color) in an order specified by one of your opponents. On each turn, you build a small program consisting of five instructions. Each instruction indicates how your RAMbot will move, and a certain type of beam it will shoot after it moves. Large pieces can move faster, and smal pieces move slower. The beam powers are attack (allows you to steal a piece from a RAMbot that you hit), pull a piece towards you, push a piece away from you, and activate a piece (stand it upright, which activates it for scoring). Once everyone is done programming, they reveal their programs simultaneously and begin executing them. Each instruction has a priority; small pieces have high priority, while large pieces have low priority. If there is a tie for size, then the precedence stack determines which color has priority; if there's still a tie, the precedence stack will determine which player has priority based on their color (at the end of each turn, the precedence stack rotates, so no player gets an unfair advantage). Once one instruction has been executed, it is put back into his code pool, and his next instruction is considered. This way, if you use all high-priority instructions, you can execute all of your code before anyone else has a chance to run; this is balanced by the fact that the smaller pieces move you less, so it's hard to get where you need to go with small pieces. While pieces are moving, they may ram other RAMbots or the goal beacons, which may allow them to steal pieces from the other players and complete their goals. Once you have tagged all of the beacons in the specified order, you win.

The simultaneous movement makes this game very chaotic. Because all of the goal beacons are near the middle of the board, there's a big rush to the center, which leads to lots of ramming, pushing, tagging, and so on. When people ram each other they push each other and steal pieces, they push and pull the beacons, and generally get in each others way. This leads to a fun, light game with a lot of "argh, I can't believe you did that" moments (and the occasional "argh, I meant to play this piece, not that one"). There is a good deal of room for strategy, however, because at any time you know what pieces everyone else has to work with, and you can make sure your instructions are executed correctly before anyone else moves by playing high-priority instructions. There are some real tradeoffs here, because high priority instructions don't let you move as much as low priority ones, so you may lose the race to a crucial piece, and also, if you get there first, someone might come up behind you and ram you.

I find that there are some things that can help make games fun, but lead to the game being broken, that are present in RAMbots just enough to make it fun but not enough to make it broken. For instance, in RAMbots the rich get richer; as you complete goals and ram other bots, you collect more pieces to program with, but this is not an overwhelming advantage. People have lost all but two of their pieces on the first turn, and still managed to come back and win the game. It's also a multiplayer game with the possibility of screwing other players, which can in many games lead to kingmaker and other problems. The chaos and the fact that attacking another player doesn't always help you means that you don't generally run into kingmaker issues. So it manages to have the fun of having the rich get richer and attacking other players, without a lot of the problems.

The game feels fairly different with two players than it does with four (and three is somewhere in between). With two players, there's a good deal more strategy; while there's some chaos due to not knowing what the other player will do, you can generally strategize in ways that account for most possibilites. With four players, chaos reigns supreme, and figuring out how to take advantage of the chaos is essential. Both are fun games, but they feel pretty different.

If you like simultaneous movement, programmed actions, and a good deal of light-hearted chaos, this is a great game. If you get frustrated by not being able to keep track of what your program is going to do, or by the fact that everything you do may be completely screwed up by another player, this game probably isn't for you. It can be a chaotic game with a good dose of strategy, or a strategic game with a good dose of chaos, but on the whole, it's loads of fun.

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jody — 2005-03-30T20:57:24+00:00

Setup for 4-player game of RAMbots