A game where you write software to solve problems...?

June 3, 2007 11:22 PM

What was this fascinating shareware video game? It involved writing LOGO or BASIC-like code to guide a ladybug on a tree branch past obstacles to a goal.

About 7-8 years ago I was showed an interesting game by a friend of mine that involved writing code for a ladybug "robot" to guide it to a destination. It was something like The Incredible Machine, but instead of placing objects you'd write some script commands, then hit a "play" button to run your code and see if your ladybug got to the goal. If you screwed it up, your bug would fall off the branch or crash into the obstacle and you'd have to start over. There were a few (2? 3?) levels available in the "demo" version but the game was available online for purchase. Your bug had sensors of some kind that you could 'test' (like in C Robots) and turn or stop based on if there was something detected by the sensors.

At first I thought the game was called "Brainbug" but apparently that's just the name of a techno music band..I think it may have been called something similar.

I'm also very interested in any other games of this type as well where you have to write software (in a proprietary language or a well-known language like C) to solve a series of preexisting problems. Thanks!

posted by ostranenie to computers & internet (11 comments total)

This sounds similar to the Logo Turtle Tutorial, though I'm guessing maybe that's not what you used, perhaps it was related?
posted by twiggy at 11:26 PM on June 3, 2007

Ahh, here we are. Bug Brain...
posted by twiggy at 11:27 PM on June 3, 2007

Bug Brain?
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 11:29 PM on June 3, 2007

Guess I should have refreshed before I posted, but yeah.. That looks to be the game you are talking about.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 11:30 PM on June 3, 2007

A fun game in this vein is MindRover; you can get a demo there. It's a few years old now, but it's still very good.

The basics of the game is that you are designing robots. You 'program' them with circuitry; different circuits do different things, and you arrange your circuits into programs. The external slots on the robot can take sensors of various types, and you can opt for at least a couple of different kinds of locomotion. Everything is in 3D; there have been 2D games in this vein, but I've never seen another 3D one.

In single player mode, you have a series of challenges to overcome. In multiplayer, it can be deathmatch or a race or a 'sports match', which I think involves trying to move a ball through the goal.

You don't, as I recall, directly write code, but you can nonetheless do some very sophisticated stuff with the circuitry you're given. It's essentially visual programming. I had lots of fun tinkering with it, some years ago.

Check out the demo; if you enjoy the game, it costs $25.
posted by Malor at 12:33 AM on June 4, 2007

This question reminded me of ZZT, which is a game-like thing I haven't thought about for years. Maybe you'd be interested in that as well.
posted by tew at 12:33 AM on June 4, 2007

If you're into the whole idea of programming games you might enjoy Robocode as a step up. You program a robot in Java using the robot API and you can battle them against the robots of others.

If you know a smattering of Java it's very easy to program a basic bot to get started and leave lots of room for more advanced control later.
posted by puddpunk at 3:36 AM on June 4, 2007

Tower of Babel was awesome. Sadly it seems that a couple of promising remake projects failed to reach completion.
posted by teleskiving at 4:03 AM on June 4, 2007

Thanks for the comments! Yes, I remember ZZT and loved it, and MegaZeux and SuperZZT and I wrote code for those as well. Bug Brain was it though. Thanks again!
posted by ostranenie at 9:12 AM on June 4, 2007

Check out Robot Odyssey which is very similar except that you wire the robots rather than program them.
posted by Four Flavors at 3:45 PM on June 5, 2007

I've been playing the Bug Brain game a little bit, and I think MindRover is much better. Bug Brain is, well, buggy! It doesn't always react in a consistent way or do what it's supposed to do. I never had that problem with Mindrover.

Bug Brain also runs in several small windows, so on a high res screen, it's hard to see. Mindrover seems to scale properly with resolution, although the demo doesn't seem to care much for widescreen.
posted by Malor at 10:37 PM on June 5, 2007