Robotfindskitten

Last updated
robotfindskitten
Original author(s) Leonard Richardson
Initial release1997
Written in Assembly language, C/C++, Flash, Gambas, Inform, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Scratch
Platform Amiga, Android, Apple II, Arduboy, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atmel AVR, Commodore 64, DOS, Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Mac Classic, Maemo, Nintendo DS, Palm OS, PlayStation Portable, POSIX, QNX, Rockbox, TI-83 Plus, TI-99/4A, Z-machine, ZX Spectrum
Available inEnglish
Type Game
License GPL v2 or later
Website http://robotfindskitten.org/

robotfindskitten (rfk) is a "Zen simulation", originally written by Leonard Richardson for DOS.

Contents

Game

It is a free video game with an ASCII interface in which the user (playing the eponymous robot and represented by a number sign "#") must find kitten (represented by a random character) on a field of other random characters. Walking up to items allows robot to identify them as either kitten, or any of a variety of "Non-kitten Items" (NKIs) with whimsical, strange or simply random text descriptions. It is not possible to lose (though there is a patch that adds a 1 in 10 probability of the NKI killing robot). Simon Carless has characterized robotfindskitten as "less a game and more a way of life ... It's fun to wander around until you find a kitten, at which point you feel happy and can start again". [1]

The original robotfindskitten program was the sole entrant to a contest in 1997 at the now-defunct webzine Nerth Pork — the object: create a depiction of "robotfindskitten". (The robotfindskitten concept was originally created by Jacob Berendes, but the only submission he received depicted kittens meeting an untimely end at the hands of malevolent robots.)

When the author rewrote the program for Linux in 1999, it gained popularity and now has its own website and mailing lists. Since then, it has been ported to and/or implemented on over 30 platforms, including POSIX, the Dreamcast, Palm OS, TI-99/4A, the Z-machine, the Sony PSP, Android, and many more. [2] Graphical versions, such as an OpenGL version with # emblazoned on an otherwise featureless cube, also exist. Remakes of it are also used as programming tutorials, such as for Gambas.

Related Research Articles

<i>NetHack</i> Classical roguelike ASCII graphics computer game released in 1987

NetHack is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game Hack, itself inspired by the 1980 game Rogue. The player takes the role of one of several pre-defined character classes to descend through multiple dungeon floors, fighting monsters and collecting treasure, to recover the "Amulet of Yendor" at the lowest floor and then escape.

<i>Marble Madness</i> 1984 video game

Marble Madness is an arcade video game designed by Mark Cerny and published by Atari Games Inc. in 1984. It is a platform game in which the player must guide a marble through six courses, populated with obstacles and enemies, within a time limit. The player controls the marble by using a trackball. Marble Madness is known for using innovative game technologies: it was Atari's first to use the Atari System 1 hardware, the first to be programmed in the C programming language, and one of the first to use true stereo sound.

<i>Rogue</i> (video game) 1980 video game

Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman with later contributions by Ken Arnold. Rogue was originally developed around 1980 for Unix-based minicomputer systems as a freely distributed executable. It was later included in the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 operating system (4.2BSD). Commercial ports of the game for a range of personal computers were made by Toy, Wichman, and Jon Lane under the company A.I. Design and financially supported by the Epyx software publishers. Additional ports to modern systems have been made since by other parties using the game's now-open source code.

<i>Rise of the Robots</i> 1994 video game

Rise of the Robots is a fighting game released by Time Warner Interactive in 1994. Originally developed for the Amiga and DOS by Mirage's Instinct Design, it was ported to various video game consoles, including the Super NES, the Mega Drive, and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. The game includes a single-player mode in which the player assumes the role of the ECO35-2 Cyborg, as he attempts to stop the Supervisor who takes over Electrocorp's facilities in Metropolis 4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danielle Bunten Berry</span> American game designer and programmer

Danielle Bunten Berry, formerly known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game M.U.L.E., one of the first influential multiplayer video games, and 1984's The Seven Cities of Gold.

<i>Berzerk</i> (video game) 1980 video game

Berzerk is a multidirectional shooter designed by Alan McNeil and released for arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. Following Taito's Stratovox, it is one of the first arcade video games with speech synthesis. Berzerk places the player in a series of top-down, maze-like rooms containing armed robots. Home ports were published for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual programming language</span> Programming language written graphically by a user

In computing, a visual programming language or block coding is a programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation. For example, many VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows", where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations.

<i>Dragon Quest IV</i> 1990 video game

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, titled Dragon Warrior IV when initially localized to North America, is a role-playing video game, the fourth installment of the Dragon Quest video game series developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix, and the first of the Zenithian Trilogy. It was originally released for the Famicom on 11 February 1990 in Japan. A North American NES version followed in October 1992, and would be the last Dragon Quest game localized and published by Enix's Enix America Corporation subsidiary prior to its closure in November 1995, as well as the last Dragon Quest game to be localized into English prior to the localization of Dragon Warrior Monsters in December 1999. The game was remade by Heartbeat for the PlayStation, which eventually was available as an Ultimate Hits game. This was followed with a second remake developed by ArtePiazza for the Nintendo DS, released in Japan November 2007 and worldwide in September 2008. A version based on the Nintendo DS remake was released in 2014 for Android and iOS.

A tool-assisted speedrun or tool-assisted superplay is generally defined as a speedrun or playthrough composed of precise inputs recorded with tools such as video game emulators. Tool-assisted speedruns are generally created with the goal of creating theoretically perfect playthroughs. This includes but is not limited to the fastest possible route to complete a game and/or showcasing new ways to optimize existing world records.

<i>Rescue Rover</i> 1991 video game

Rescue Rover is a puzzle video game that was developed by id Software and published by Softdisk in 1991. The game was distributed as shareware, with the first 10 levels making up the shareware version, and another 20 levels being present in the registered version. This is one of several games written by id to fulfil their contractual obligation to produce games for Softdisk, where the id founders had been employed. A sequel, Rescue Rover 2, followed.

Chase is a turn-based computer game in which players are tasked with escaping from robots programmed to pursue and kill them. The player attempts to destroy the robots by moving in such a way that the robots collide with each other or other obstacles. The basic concept has been part of games stretching into the 1970s, and is among the earliest of the "standards" for microcomputer platforms. Many variations exist, the most notable being the home computer-based Escape! and Zombies, Daleks on MacOS and robots on Unix.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thottbot</span>

Thottbot was a website originally launched in 2001 as a news aggregator for various online role-playing games. In August 2004, the site was re-written into a searchable database exclusively for the MMORPG World of Warcraft, as well as a plug-in that could be used in the game itself to gather additional data. The website was discontinued on November 30, 2010 when its parent company, ZAM Network, merged it with its similar database website Wowhead.

<i>Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters</i> 1996 video game

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters is a fighting game in the Mega Man series released as an arcade video game in Japan in 1996. It is the direct sequel to Mega Man: The Power Battle released the previous year. Both games were ported to home consoles in North America in 2004 as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube and in Japan during the same year as part of two game compilation titled Rockman: Power Battle Fighters, also for the PlayStation 2. An adaptation of both games for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, titled Rockman Battle & Fighters, was also made. Both games were later re-released as part of the Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium compilation in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neko (software)</span>

Neko is a cross-platform open-source animated cursor-chasing cat screenmate application.

<i>Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer</i> 1995 video game

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, originally released in Japan as Fushigi no Dungeon 2: Fūrai no Shiren, is a roguelike video game developed and published by Chunsoft. It is the second entry in the Mystery Dungeon series, following 1993's Torneko no Daibōken. It was originally released for the Super Famicom in 1995 in Japan. Sega published a Nintendo DS remake in 2006 in Japan and in 2008 internationally. The remake was later ported to iOS and Android and published by Spike Chunsoft in 2019.

<i>Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup</i> Free and open-source roguelike video game

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) is a free and open source roguelike computer game and the community-developed successor to the 1997 roguelike game Linley's Dungeon Crawl, originally programmed by Linley Henzell. It has been identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine</span>

The Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine is a free and open-source, "all-in-one" game creation system. It was designed to allow the quick creation of 2D role-playing video games (RPGs). It was originally written by James Paige in QuickBASIC and released in late 1997 or early 1998. In May 2005, the source code was released as free software under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later, and it was soon ported from QuickBASIC to FreeBASIC and to modern operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 2600 homebrew</span> Video game genre

The first hobbyist-developed game for the Atari 2600 video game console was written in 1995, and more than 100 have been released since then. The majority of games are unlicensed clones of games for other platforms, and there are some also original games and ROM hacks. With only 128 bytes of RAM, no frame buffer, and the code and visuals closely intertwined, the 2600 is a difficult machine to program. and many games were written for the technical challenge. Emulators, programming tools, and documentation are available.

<i>Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead</i> Survival horror roguelike video game

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) is an open-source survival horror roguelike video game. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a fork of the original game Cataclysm. The game is freely downloadable on the game's website and the source code is also freely available on the project's GitHub repository under the CC BY-SA Creative Commons license. The game is currently largely developed by its community. Rock, Paper, Shotgun named CDDA one of "The 50 Best Free Games on PC" in 2016.

<i>Captain Commando</i> 1991 video game

Captain Commando is a 1991 futuristic side-scrolling beat 'em up originally developed and published by Capcom as an arcade video game, and later ported to several other platforms. It was the seventeenth game produced for the company's CP System hardware. The game stars the titular superhero who was originally conceived as a fictional spokesman used by Capcom USA in the company's console games during the late 1980s. On September 13, 2018, Capcom announced Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle with Captain Commando being one of seven titles and released digitally for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on September 18, 2018.

References

  1. Carless, Simon (2004-01-01). Gaming Hacks. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN   9780596007140.
  2. "The Many Ports". robotfindskitten.org. Retrieved 18 March 2015.