Hugo Simoes
simple living, careful thinking, collective fun
WarpChase is a multiplayer game I have created to showcase my Prequel programming language.
At first, I tried to find a game written in JavaScript where I could then plug in Prequel to control its players input.
The interesting games I could find did not suit me and soon I have realised it would be best to create a game tailored to my needs...
WarpChase is a one button game with just enough ingredients to make it interesting.
You can play solo or with others. Cooperatively or competitively. You can focus on attack or defense. On getting points or taking them from others.
The mechanics are simple: catching a grey ring gives you a point; catching a red ring allows you to chase other players temporarily, removing 3 points from each player you catch during this period.
Your player is continuously rotating clockwise, until you touch/click the game area (or call WARPCHASE.ACTIVATE) which makes it move forward. Once you stop touching/clicking (or call WARPCHASE.DEACTIVATE) your player starts rotating in the opposite direction.
Also, objects wrap around screen edges, thus deriving the "Warp" part of "WarpChase".
That's it. Simple, but with enough tactical decisions to make it interesting.
(Note that the graphical representation will change as soon as a visual artist puts their hands on it. So, for instance, what I now call a ring might turn out to be represented differently.)
Developing a bot for WarpChase is conceptually easy. Each Prequel program is given a snapshot of the game state (how many players are in the arena; who is playing on which team; their score; the relative positions of the players, points and powers; how many ticks have elapsed and so on) and simply has to decide whether to call WARPCHASE.ACTIVATE or WARPCHASE.DEACTIVATE.
There is no limit on how long it takes to reach a decision, but the game moves on... After all, this game is not turn-based, it is a real-time system. If a bot takes too long to decide, the snapshot of the game state will be increasingly out of date.
Give it a try.
Feel free to contact me if you are stuck developing a Prequel bot.
Enjoy! :)
EDIT 2021/11/22: WarpChase link updated.
EDIT 2022/05/03: WarpChase link updated.
December 30, 2020
WarpChase, Prequel