I've decided to participate in Chris Bateman's "Only a Game Play Specification Symposium" (http://onlyagame.typepad.com/). He's basically asking people to help him out by exploring play specifications.
He suggests (in order to keep things constrained) that we start with games whose primary "verbs" are move and shoot. A fine idea, if I may say so. As for how we should go about specifying play, he proposes that we "simply think about all the activities you pursue in any given game and then identify what you do (the verbs) and what you do it to or with (the nouns). Then, list them."
I'm very interested in seeing how this turns out because it reminds me of something tried to do as part of the game ontology project. We found that our attempts, while yielding a reasonable specification, didn't result in something that we thought was particularly interesting. What worried me the most was that I felt that we had somehow lost something that was vital towards describing, in an interesting fashion, what a certain game was like. Our analyses were perhaps to dry, and most games ended up looking similar, though we knew that the experience of playing them was not. So, we abandoned that approach and moved on to other things.
Regarding this approach, I still have many of the same reservations. However, I am hopeful that this approach will prove more fruitful!
The above tactical verbs are all used to describe common strategies while playing Robotron. For example, attack towards the edge with the least grunts and then circle around while strafing. Also, since grunts will always converge on your position, you can lead them into electrodes and cause them to explode.
I beat my high score. I was feeling really proud and I wrote it down on a piece of paper so that I would remember it when I got around to writing this gamelog. Obviously, I've lost the piece of paper. I've even played some more Robotron to see if I could beat THAT score. Sigh.
All I remember is that it was over 40,000!
I'm playing this for research reasons. Seriously!
Robotron is a hard game, and it is made even harder due to the controls. The original arcade version was played with dual joysticks. I've had to play it on a keyboard. This is a clear example of an arcade game with special affordances due to the hardware input!
My current high score is 39,175 (and I reached wave 5).
Really hard, especially on with keyboard. It has a certain intensity though..
This is the only GameLog for Robotron 2084.