I was messing around with play-by-email game concepts and at the same time kinda thought back to an idea I tried yeeeears ago in a far more clumsy manner.
Conflict Resolution is based on those absolutely awesome stick-figure martial combat animations that often do the rounds on Youtube and the like. I wanted players to get the sense of creating an awesome, fast-paced fighter without the dexterity focus. So you finalise your character *before* the fight starts (choosing a moveset and tweaking parameters) then watch it duke out against another prefab AI.
Fights last 15 seconds each and the goal is to deal the most damage possible.
Your "game goal" for the purposes of this build: try building your own bot / character that can topple the NandrewBot in two-way combat (one starting on each side, average out the scores). Post the file here if you're interested in offering up your own challenge!
I understand exactly what you're talking about, I was musing over a similar idea (basically a play-by-email fighter) and recording a set of deterministic "move" commands isn't far from what I've already got supported.
To have a more "game" feel, I suppose one could also explore some single player options (room full of specifically tweaked bots vs one player).
Hilariously enough, just started *another* side project, so I dunno if this will go anywhere. But I'm trying to make a resolution of posting more of my work online.
I kinda realised that if I wanted this to be more engaging for multiple players, it probably would've been wise to work first on a broader variety of moves rather than better move programming, so that it's easier to see a more explicit player personality come in.
Ha, I played with this last night! :D The fights were way fluid; it's not like a lot of other games where you see them taking turns, as if they really were robots.
It wasn't always obvious to me who won though, without looking at the score.
I really dig the idea, it reminds me of ff12 where I built a self efficient army through programming the gambits, and that was glorious.
I enjoyed tinkering with this, but my bots seem to be a combination of sheer brilliance (countering a flying kick with an epic super move) and utter stupidity, now if I could just figure out how to do more of the former and less of the latter I'd be good.
Haha, I reckon that's the main component of the game challenge.