Computer Active
Reviewed by Simon Duddy

Computer Active Magazine UK- Rates RoboForge 4 out of 5 - June 2002

Not many people are lucky enough to make a living from something they enjoy but game players could join this group.

In the 'build your own combat robot' game, RoboForge players are invited to join online tournaments with prizes stretching potentially to thousands of pounds.

However , it wont be easy to get your mitts on the money because RoboForge is a very demanding game. It has impressive and detailed building tools that allow you to bolt components such as limbs, shields and weapons onto a robot chassis.

You can also program the robot to respond to certain situations while in battle. Impressive though these tools are, it will take considerable determination to master them. The game adheres rigidly to the laws of physics which enhances realism but makes the battles dull.

Battle graphics are also disappointingly basic but it is in the workshop that the game excels - It's one for fastidious and determined engineers.

--- Simon Duddy

Rating: 4 out of 5

ELSPA age rating: 11+

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PC Zone
Reviewed by Phil Wand

PC Zone Magazine UK gives RoboForge "Two Thumbs Up - 83%" May 2002

Don't be fooled by how this one looks.

Although RoboForge will do its utmost to make you think it was a 1992 SNES game running under emulation, what lies beneath the jagged edges and maniacal colours is a very enjoyable mindbender - a unique and addictive title suitable for anyone with more marbles than the average spray can.

The idea behind the game is to design you own robot using a variety of component parts, to bless it with artificial intelligence using the RoboForge proprietary programming language, and finally to enter it into a gladiatorial arena where it will attempt to destroy a number of odd-looking opponents.

Once you're satisfied you have your very own Terminator alive and well on your hard drive, go online and you'll be able to fight other people's monsters.

The first release was only available direct from Kiwi developer Liquid Edge Games, but now that BTL Publising has put RoboForge onto CD-ROM it comes with a nice manual, an improved context sensitive help system, a greater variety of robots to battle, plus a few nips and tucks to give it broader appeal (the original was a little too nichey for its own good).

What hasn't changed is the fascination you get form watching robots develop - from skeleton frames to intelligent automatons that owe their existence and behaviour patterns to you and no other. Aside from CogniToy's MindROver, we can't think of another PC title that manages to venture so far from mainstream yet remain so approachable. Two thumbs up.

---- Phil Wand

PC ZONE VERDICT 83%

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PC Gamer
Reviewed by Scott Humphries

Both complex and intuitive, this game takes a niche genre to the next level.

Last summer, mild-mannered senior writer William R. Trotter dubbed MindRover the first of a new hybrid genre of 'strategy/programming' games. Now, one year and a few mediocre robot games later, bot-building enthusiasts and desktop engineers finally have another strategy/programming gem to call their own.

Tiny New Zealand-based developer Liquid Edge has just released its three-year project RoboForge. This game has it all: Newtonian mechanics, intricate programmable logic, applied physics, and every other reason I decided to drop out of electrical engineering to become a film major.

This is giant-robot combat for cold, hard cash! With a little determination, RoboForge can be both fun and profitable.

The game is all about building and programming your own unique iron giants. You have over 200 parts, including shields, sensors, joints, components, and weapons. Imagine fixing a BattleMech chassis to Voltron limbs, then adding a Deception power unit, and you'll get an idea of the infinitely strange and colossal robot beasts you can create with RoboForge.

After you've tailored your robot to aesthetic and operational precision, it's time for the programming portion of the game. You assemble your robot's A1 by combining small pictographs into a network of decisions, similar to a flow chart. Algebraic equations become moves like 'If enemy is here, then attack her,' but the fluidity of the pictures makes it seem much simpler than experimental math.

Furthermore, with RoboForge's innovative 'snapshot system' creating deadly combos is as easy as posing your bot, snapping a pic, then repeating --- it's stop-motion animation on your computer, allowing you to dictate your robot's reactions to different combat situations.

The fighting is handled strictly by your robot, as it employs your pre-set actions in the combat arena. You get to watch the results play out as the combat engine runs through all the algorithms and combos you've pre-programmed.

After you're done practicing in the test arenas, it's time to take your bot out for the online challenges. Challenges occur in free chat rooms on the RoboForge network, and are great for meeting fellow competitors and sizing up the competition before tournaments.

Once you've competed in enough amateur bouts, you're ready for the Pro Circuit. Using a credit card or the PayPal pay-by-email system, you can enter a pro tournament to take home various cash prizes. The last competitor to win a pro circuit, Shiva, shelled out five bucks and scored $100 from the confines of his living room.

RoboForge does what it does supremely with very few faults. The interface and menus are slick and sensible, and though the 3D graphics in the Battle Player aren't the world's best, they work fine for showcasing your creations in otherworldly surroundings. Even the cool anime-style transition screens help add a little flavor to the feeling of the game. The sound effects are adequately jarring and realistic, and the gibberish-speaking alien refs are classic.

However, since the game itself is downloaded off the web (from www.roboforge.net) , you get no documentation. While there is a very helpful Flash tutorial, a printable PDF guide for reference would have been handy. Similarly, more scenarios would have been cool (such as races or obstacle courses), but perhaps the online community will prompt future expansions and modifications.

When it comes right down to it, you can't beat the asking price of $19.95 for the game and unlimited online access. If you weren't lucky enough to hit up the first strategy/programming robot game to come your way, now you have no excuse.

---- Scott Humphries

VITAL STATS FINAL VERDICT

CATEGORY Strategy/programming

DEVELOPER Liquid Edge Games

PUBLISHER Liquid Edge Games

REQUIRED P233, 64MB RAM, 60MB HD, 8M 3D card

WE RECOMMEND P11 300, 80MB HD

MAXIMUM PLAYERS 2

HIGHS: Unlimited design choices; engaging A1 system; easy online experience win real cash!

LOWS: No documentation; steep learning curve; relatively dated graphics.

BOTTOM LINE: Unique PC gaming - a digital canvas for the mechanical creations of your mind.

Excellent 87%

PC GAMER December 2001

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Prophecy.co.za
Reviewed by Jian Reis

Competition is in our blood. We are essentially a competitive race who seek to outdo each other in every respect, whether it be work or play. Many recreational pastimes such as car racing or mud-wrestling have developed into fully-fledged sports with tons of sponsorship money and more scantily-clad woman than you can shake a muddy stick at. And yet, when it comes to competitive pastimes, there is surely one that trounces all others in sheer style, skill and pure coolness. Robot battles. Sure, there aren't the flocks of babes yet, but the thrill of building your own combat robot to open a can of custom-built ownage on your foes is compensation enough.

Of course, building your own combat robot in real life requires loads of cash, a university degree in electronics and loads of skill. A well-equipped garage and access to high-tech components is a plus as well. A ready abundance of weaponry is good too. Most gamers have none of the above, except for the high-tech components, but most of us are not willing to melt down our motherboards to build robots just yet. And so, it was with this in mind that Liquid Edge Games set out to make RoboForge's a robotic combat sport simulator. Which is a fancy way of saying you get to build really big and bad robots that beat the crap out of each other.

It's a fantastically cool idea that has seen implementation in several games over the years, but not one comes close to RoboForge in terms of scale or polish. RoboForge gives you the ability to build any robot you want and let it fight against other robots. You literally build your robot from the ground up. Every aspect of your robot is entirely customizable. You select every component, you program the AI of your robot, you decide how the robot attacks and defends itself, you manage its power; indeed, you determine its every movement. If you wanted to, you could paint it luminous pink. Your robot is entirely yours to build. Think Tamagotchis, only ones that weigh several tons and that are armed with enough weaponry to knock out a small warship.

Building your robot is a step-by-step process. The first tentative step in robot construction is to pick an overall design and then the chassis to build your robot around. The chassis determines the general appearance and function of your robotic warrior. If you want a maneuverable robot that can attack your enemy from the sides you'll want a fast bipedal or quadrupedal chassis. Planning on charging the enemy head on? Take a large, squat chassis with big wheels and plenty of options for forward mounted weapons. We went for the head-on attack solution. Powerful, graceful, simple and bound to get laughs as our monstrosity literally rides down its terrified opponents.

So, now we've got a big chassis. The newly christened Roller-O-Matic needed a powerful engine to propel its considerable mass. Every robot needs a control unit - the literal brain of the robot. It is critical that the brain is well-shielded and placed out of striking reach as a single direct blow can cripple the brain and subsequently your robot. So we added a rear-mounted brain far out of range of the enemy's pathetic blows. After all that work and all those decisions we still only have a dumb, semi-mobile blob. The Roller-O-Matic is still no better than your typical inebriated Big Brother contestant.

Before we can add our array of devastation, The Roller-O-Matic needs eyes. So we pop a pair of sensors on the front our robot. The chassis comes with wheels, so we're not going to add arms or legs, instead we'll fix weapons directly onto the front of our roller of mass destruction. A few spikes and a buzzsaw for effect ought to do it. Then comes the difficult bit ? programming the hit zones and moves of your robot. This is where RoboForge can get complicated, but also incredibly satisfying. Nothing beats the feeling of struggling with combat moves and zones only to be rewarded when your robot spins around its enemy and delivers a single well-placed punch to your enemy's control unit to win the game.

Right. The Roll-O-Matic is finished, complete with a simple AI script that tells it to charge the nearest enemy head on with complete and utter disregard for personal safety. After putting it through its paces on some poor unassuming training robot we're off to compete against the other Robot Masters. Our first real match was against some robot called PiDo. We were hoping that 'PiDo' in some way stood for 'Pillsbury Doughboy' as steamrollers and large blobs of animated, boy-shaped dough have a somewhat amusing history of confrontations. Alas, 'itwas not to be'

Despite our confidence, it was the Roller-O-Matic that got squashed. Our poor steamroller got butchered in less than 5.29 seconds, in a bewildering array of punches, spikes and blades coming from all sides. A humiliation to say the least. Ah well Rolly, maybe next time. As mad geniuses are so fond of saying when their Frankensteinian monster consumes an entire village, back to the drawing board. Much of the fun and replayability in RoboForge comes not only from building new robots, but from the constant upgrading and modifying of a single robot. We found out the very hard and spiky way that Rolly was vulnerable to attacks from above and the side, and so we set about the process of strengthening his dorsal and ventral defenses. It is this kind of constant tinkering and revising of your robot designs that gives this title its incredible shelf life.

Liquid Edge Games have gone out of their way to create a community for RoboForge. There is a very vibrant online forum where amateurs can ask pros for tips and tactics and online competition areas where you can submit your robot to competitions. RoboForge was created with big competitions and big prizes in mind, so anyone with a good idea for a robot and some originality can enter online to win big bucks in spectacular tournaments. Be warned: the guys who play this online are good, and your first forays in the world of RoboForge are no doubt going to be similar to the Tale of Roller-O-Matic. Take heart in the knowledge that the game requires some serious time and effort to master. Even so, if competitions aren't your idea of fun you can just play about on your own, creating robots to fight each other. I spent many a late night simply pitting my creations against each other.

The biggest gripe with RoboForge is also what we love about it the most. The sheer depth of options available to you as you set about building and programming your robot is at times overwhelming. The game has a pretty steep learning curve. This is further complicated by the rather nice and functional, yet somewhat sparse Flash help guide. It would be nice if this were fleshed out somewhat. As it is, the best way to learn is through trial and error and examining other robots in battle. Even after many months of robot building people are still discovering new features. It can be overwhelmingly complicated at times, but perseverance will reveal a rich and rewarding title.

You have to love the fact that RoboForge is free for anyone to try out for a limited period of time. You can download the 30mb test from www.roboforge.net and if you like it, you can purchase it online and upgrade to the full version. After many months of struggling to build the meanest, baddest robot on the net I am still nowhere near my goal. But it has been a long time since a title held my attention this long with its inimitability, its depth and its sheer fun factor. RoboForge comes highly recommended, and if don't believe us, get the demo and see for yourself.

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ActionTrip.com
Reviewed by Dusan "Lynx" Katilovic

The notion to create a game that would enable you to design your own robots and then let them fight some others is not exactly new. We've seen it at work in several titles like BattleBots and Robot Wars. However, RoboForge did introduce some fresh and interesting novelties to this concept and its realization, which make this game an original challenge.

RoboForge had been developed by the independent New Zealand-based developers who sell their masterpiece over the net, thus avoiding the publishers. The game uses the pay-to-play on-line concept, and you will have to pay about $5 to participate in the advanced tournaments. If you, by any chance manage to win a tournament, you can win thousands of dollars.

RoboForge is so specific, that it would be somewhat inaccurate to describe it as a game. It is something that will make your brain work a bit, unless it already died from RPG, FPS, RTS (or some other three letter acronym) overdose. RoboForge will give you a chance to design an ultimate robot, whose overall characteristics will be better than the characteristics of any other robot. You will do this in the programs graphic editor, where you can live out all your cyber-bent fantasies. You get a number of basic component classes to work with, each with a decent selection of items to choose from. Power cells will, naturally supply the robot with the power it needs, and the CPU controller is its crucial component as it defines it reactions to the surroundings and combat behavior. Other component classes include weapons, shields and external sensors?

The controllers (bots' "brains") are rated in computations per second, while multiple (parallel) controllers allow faster processing, which is important as it presents the underlying infrastructure for bots' AI. As for your robot's external sensors, you have to balance their range and field of view. A variety of shields and armor help decrease damage. Swivel, ball, radial, and telescopic joints let you add a range of different appendages, most important of which are the weapons. Their selection is wide enough: you'll find a decent range of m?? armaments such as jackhammers, rams, claws, axes, and scythes, some of them very original. Considering the nature of battles fought in RoboForge, it is clear why there are no ranged weapons. A weapon's damage capability is primarily determined by its weight, multiplied by striking velocity (physics classes, please), with a bonus added for certain weapons. The physics engine is realistic and plays a significant role in your way to success (or failure), depending on whether you comprehend it and use it efficiently.

The tricky point is that each component installed on your bot adds to its total build cost and that, with some other specific match restrictions, prevents everyone from constructing a superbot. Instead, you'll have to pick and choose your parts carefully based upon how much damage they can do, how much damage they can withstand, how much weight they add to the robot and how much they cost, in order to stay within the given limits. This is how things are done if you decide to build your robot from the scratch, using the "Build New Bot" option from the "Workshop" screen. But, if all these choices sound a bit much, the "Bot Wizard" feature lets you quickly assemble a robot based on predefined templates. I must warn you, though, that using this option will deprive you from enjoying the essence of this game - the challenge that drives you make the best possible bot creation straight out from your ingenious mind. Even worse, such an "instant creation" will most likely end up as an average or ever loosing tin can. This feature is only handy as an introduction to the countless design possibilities, but nothing more.

Once your state-of-the-art creation is complete, you'll have to put some "thinking" in its artificial brains, i.e. program its combat moves and AI attributes. Creating the moves can be compared to a work of an animator: you manipulate your 3D modeled robot into a series of poses and take a sequence of pictures of it. The game then fills in the blanks between shots to create a smooth motion. In conjunction with your robot's sensors, you define 3D zones that determine how your creation will interact with its world and enemies it experiences. You can have as many predefined (e.g. attack, defensive, retreat) moves as you want, each one designed to handle a different strategy and particular tactical situation. You can actually make a series of positions in one single move to create a very complicated movement sequence. Much of what you can do is based on how you had previously designed your robot.

The next thing you should do is incorporate the moves into the robot's AI. You program the AI by using a decision tree with custom or pre-designed routines that allow your robot to analyze the situation and react to it. You can design very complex subroutines with a robust scripting language. Designing the AI is probably the most demanding and most attractive part of RoboForge! It will give you a good mental challenge, especially when it finally comes to battle.

When you finally finish your robot, it is time to try it out in practice, i.e. let it fight other robots. At first, you will only have a couple of predefined robots to fight off-line. This will keep you away from being embarrassed on-line, and give you a couple of hints as to what you should tweak up on your robot. When you think you are ready, just connect to the net and join the on-line world of RoboForge! The fights never last more than a couple of minutes. During the fight, you can only passively observe how the robots act and see the robot belonging to the better AI programmer win. For those of you who are into frantic action, forget about this title - RoboForge is about intellects rather than reflexes!

As for the technical aspects of the game, well they are far from crucial in a game like this, but that was still no excuse for the programmers to leave the work without brushing it up a bit. The menus are clear and intuitive, as is the entire user interface. The various robot components will give your robots a humanoid, insectile, or machinelike appearance; but, slow and jerky animations make the combat pretty tedious to watch. Roughly synthesized robot voices don't give the bots any personality. Rare and low quality sound effects do nothing for the game, either. The robots and the combat itself lack the certain element which would give the game the specific 'flavor' you'd like to experience in a game that is about the robots fighting each other.

In spite of its technical and audio-visual flaws, RoboForge is a true hit. Thinking up and tweaking your robots offers a lot of challenge, replay value, and entertainment. I recommend this game to all gamers who have a lot of patience and more creative then destructive energy.

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GameZone.com
Reviewed by Michael Lafferty

If you build it, they will come.... wait, that's not right.Let's try that again. If you build it, you will go - straight to tournaments to see if your creation has what it takes. Who knows, you might even win some cash. Yep, real money.

Ok, let's backtrack just a bit. The game is RoboForge and it is a program of battling robots. That is the simple explanation. There is quite a bit more too it than just that. In fact, you have to build the bot, and that is the strength and most of the fun of the program.

You begin in the workshop, so to speak, to build your robotic fighter. You can either go with the bot wizard, or you can start with just a chassis and customize/create your own mechanical monster of mayhem. The bot wizard gives you a basic robot, which you can then semi-customize through a nine-step building program. In finishing off the design of the bot, you will pick the controller, its energy source, sensor, left tentacle (depending on the bot), right tentacle, A.I. (artificial intelligence) basic reflexes, A.I. attack tactics, A.I. extras (such as avoiding the arena wall, or retreating from combat if winning with 30 seconds left in the match), and the naming process.

At that point, you are not even close to being finished. Once the bot has its basic form, you take it into another area of the shop for customization. You can paint every inch of your robot in a virtual 3D setting in which the camera can be zoomed in or out, and you can view your creation from every conceivable angle. Once you have it painted, you move into the programming phase.

This is where the game gets rather intricate and a little complicated. Not only are you programming its attack posture, but its battle movements, energy usage and how it responds to certain stimuli or situations. This is done in two parts. First there is a basic battle plan, which is simply a matter of selecting primary movements. But you can also get detailed by pulling up what looks like a winfile tree with blocks that can be added to or deleted. The programming is done in a declarative manner; such as if my enemy does this, then I will do this.

It is wise to save your bot before playing in there. You can take a perfectly functioning robot and reduce it to a disoriented mess quite quickly. After you've tinkered with the workings of the bot, you can test it out on a dummy target, in an arena setting that is solidly rendered. You first get a gridded look at what your bot will do, and then the game renders it into an arena, complete with a trash-talking foe (jibberish is what spews from its maw), and all the subtleties of a gladiator's forum. If your creation destroys the other quickly and effortlessly, you have a winner. If not, it's back to the drawing board.

Once your robot is ready, you can go online to an international gaming community that is actually engaged in setting up tournaments, and fighting bots. If you have completed in five or less tourneys, you can enter the amateur tourneys ? some of these are set way in advance with open admission. You may actually find yourself entered in a battle that won't take place for more than a week. The amateur tourneys are free to enter, and you can win actual prizes.

Then there is the pro circuit. It costs to enter these tourneys, usually $5 (U.S.) per tourney. But there is money to be won here, up to $100. And you will be ranked. The higher your ranking, the better chance you have to be invited to a "best of the best" tourney with bigger cash prizes.

RoboForge is an intriguing concept, with great graphics and solid game play. This program is multiplayer based with a large online community and many opportunities to enter bots in a number of tournaments. It is possible to outthink and overextend yourself in the building process, but that is where half the entertainment value of this program lies. This is a game that requires players to be creative and intelligent.

If you like building battling bots, then this Liquid Edge Games Ltd. product is right up your alley.

This product has great graphics, and solid game play. If there is a failing, it is the electronic manual, but the program interface helps guide players through the fundamentals. You can build any number of robots and enter a host of tournaments, and then wait for the results to roll in. This is, more or less, the equivalent of cock fighting taken into the cyber age. And remember, no actual robots were hurt or destroyed during tournament combat.

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XGR.com
Reviewed by Onik

One of my favourite TV shows is Robot Wars, in which small groups of people have poured their hearts and minds into a robot for the specific purpose of using it to destroy the other team's. RoboForge is much the same, except that your robot is A) Virtual and B) Has to fend for itself, with no outside controls. Such is the premise behind Liquid Edge Games' flagship product. To play you just go to the website, pay the one time $20 purchase price, download the relatively light 30MB file, install and fry lightly for a few minutes, err sorry forget that last bit, I was making dinner.
RoboForge is an online only game, with no subscription fees, no HPBs or LPBs, and lots of brains. At its core RoboForge is a construction set, like computerized Mechano. You build your robot from a large selection of components, texture and colour it the way you want, and then give it an AI so that it can fend for itself. Reminds me a bit of the Lego Mindstorms construction sets, only with a large dose of killer instinct.
Once the game is installed the first step is to hit the Workshop and design your 'bot. Two different options are presented: either start a Robot from scratch, or use the Wizard to get into the action with a simple 'bot really quickly. A word of caution, without massive tweaking a standard Wizard created robot won't last long against a user-made one online. Building the chassis itself is a fairly easy drag and drop process, you pick the connection point on the component, and drag it to a connection point on the chassis, then rotate as needed. The sheer combination of parts is, dare I say it, almost infinite. I've seen dozens of different designs, everything from a weedwhacker with legs, to a floating battering ram. Once you've completed the construction of the robot, the hard part starts, designing the Artificial Intelligence to control it. The robots use Zones to define what to do, and moves are programmed by moving the robot's limbs to striking positions, then taking a snapshot of that position, and the game engine interpolates between the rest state and the next snapshot. These moves are then referenced in the AI routines you create.
Although the AI is a drag and drop process, it's far from simple to create a winning combination. Basic find and attack moves are provided, but skilled RoboForge players will make their bots sidestep to get at an opponent's flanks, retreat when their health is low, or back away and attack again when they run into the enemy. There is even a scripting system if you feel really ambitious. Some tutorials on creating more advanced AI would have been really nice, and saved a great deal of time. As it stands the learning curve between putting a bot together and letting it move around, and making one that actually has a fighting chance, is very steep.
All in all creating a robot is a fairly involved process, and the old adage you get out what you put in applies here like you wouldn't believe. Expect to spend many hours slavishly tweaking a bot to get a real contender working. Once you are satisfied that your Robot is the next destroyer of worlds it's time to take it online and strut your stuff. The information you gave and your registration key are all you need to create an account, and from there you can join one of the chat groups and challenge other players and their bots.

Both bots are uploaded to the server, where they duke it out, then the resulting match is made available for everyone to download and watch. Because of this it doesn't matter if you have an OC-3 or a 56K connection. LPBs (low-ping bastards for the un-initiated) have no advantage in RoboForge, other than the ability to watch the match before their 56K counterparts. Being able to watch the fights in real time would be nice, but it's not really essential.

Graphically RoboForge is above average, the robots themselves move quite smoothly and the game interpolates between different actions very well. The robots themselves look decent, but the arenas could use a little work perhaps. The sound follows in the same vein as the graphics, some really nice clanging and smashing noises, but no music during the match. Hopefully some rockin tunes will be added in a future release. (Until then listen to XGR while you play, I found no problems running Winamp while playing.)

Most people will find RoboForge to be an interesting alternative to the current fragfest of online games, and with tournaments that you can win real MONEY in, it's sure to attract more interest. RoboForge's greatest strength, robot construction, might be its only real weakness, as building a competent robot is a long and involved process. However, once you have a decent stable of bots you can jump online any time and throw them up against other mad inventors and see how they fare. (I'd highly recommend taking notes on weakness in your bot as well as your opponent's.) Fun can be had by all with this title, so if you're looking for something a little bit different, and you loved Lego as a kid, check this out. The online community is very friendly and newbies are welcome anytime, I have yet to see a harsh word in the chat/challenge groups, which is something few games can boast.

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GameSpy.com
Reviewed by Tim "Juan Golbez" McConnaughy

If robot combat is your cup of tea, then take it to the next level with RoboForge.

If you're anything like me (and God help you if you are), you like robots. More, you like robots that fight other robots. I could even go as far as to say you want to design robots to fight other robots, much like you did when you were a kid. That is precisely what RoboForge is all about. It's a game of robotic combat, in which designers use the tools available to create robots, design attacks and moves for them, script them with AI, and then test them offline, or take them online to do battle with other designers.

Create Life in Five Easy Steps

Before we even go into the robot creation, it should be noted that the game also comes with a "Bot Wizard," which allows players to create bots by selecting pre-made components and AI, which they can then immediately start playing with. But, since that is the easy way out, most hardcore players will want to puzzle out the game on their own, so they can build more personalized gladiators.

Step one of the robot creation process is the design phase. In this portion, the basic chassis of your robot is selected. InRoboForge, the chassis is the central locomotion your robot will use, whether it be legged, wheeled, or hovering. There are many "races" in the game, and each has its own variations of chassis. You are free to mix and match the races as you want. Once you select a chassis, you are taken to a design screen where a drop-down menu interface allows you to select what component and race to view in a window to the side. You can view the hardpoints (the places where components connect), rotate the components, and drag-drop them on the chassis. As you do this, you can also skin the components with textures and colors.

Among the different types of components are controllers (the brain of the robot), joints, rotators, limbs, shielding, sensors and weapons. Each race has variations on these components. For example, one race has a chainsaw and axe available for weapons, while another has a sword and scythe. Since you can "mix-and-match" as you like, the races seem less important and actually get in the way at times. Because these races are different and alien, they all have different names for components, though all fall into the categories mentioned above. This produces confusion, since it isn't always evident what a part does by looking at it.

After designing your robot, you will need to create moves for it to execute. This is done by a posing/snapshot system. Basically, you create a new move, name it, and give it a starting snapshot. Then, you can move joints and take another snapshot, and RoboForge will animate the intermittent frames. This way, you can create complex moves with only a few snapshots. The snapshot feature can also be used to allow your robot to move or rotate in the middle of a move. The more complex the move, the more snapshots you will probably need.

The third phase of creation is scripting the AI. It is difficult to explain exactly how this works, so I will let the screenshots do most of the explanation. Basically, it is a node-based, iconic system where you create a group function, such as "Find Enemy," and add decisions and parameters to that group like a tree. You can have the robot evaluate things based on sensor data and react, consider its own health more important than damaging the enemy, or have it protect or attack a particular component -- the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. The AI is vitally important, however, since in RoboForge your robots fight autonomously you have no control over the robot once the battle starts.

The fourth and fifth phases are small, so I'll lump them together. The fourth phase is to analyze the robot for weaknesses, to see problems with its AI or moves, as well as its statistics, which include cost, weight, speed, etc. The fifth phase is a wireframe test arena where you can pit your creation against test robots, or other robots you've created/downloaded. After the test has run, it will load up a 3D arena where you can watch the fight in true 3D flavor.

Taking RoboForge Online

Once you have a robot (or robots) ready to wreak havoc, you can take them online. When you have logged into your RoboForge account, you are given the options of entering your robot in a RoboForge tourney, or going to the challenge room to play other users one-on-one style.

I will only briefly touch on the tournament mode, as this is for truly hardcore players only. In tournament mode, you can play in free or pay-to-play tournaments, and win cash prizes! RoboForge uses Paypal as the medium to both enter in tourneys and receive actual cash prizes.

In the challenge rooms, you can challenge (or be challenged) to combat against other users in an arena. One player "hosts" the game, meaning that the combat is played on their machine, and after that has finished the match is automatically made available for all to watch. There are no prizes to be found in the challenge rooms, but there are a wealth of good players and a strong community that likes to help newbies. There are many RoboForge fansites around, and some even have downloadable AI and robots for tweaking or learning, so even novice users can become pros in no time.

So, Should I Buy RoboForge?

Here's where things get tricky. I personally am totally in love with the game, but then I have a strong Robotech/Battletech/Anime upbringing. It is certainly not for the squeamish, and it will require that you devote attention to it, but you will get out of RoboForge what you put into it. It is a game for those who are willing to put the effort and time into the game, and not for the casual gamer. The strong community behind RoboForge will help newbies, but that only goes so far. For the price, $19.95 (until the end of August, then it will go up to $30.00), you get a lot more game than you get with some of the other, higher-priced games out there. You just have to be willing to make use of it.

[Juan Golbez has been gaming since he was old enough to play Choplifter, and he's always had way too much to say about each and every game he plays... So, he figured, why not let the public benefit from his opinions? Thusly, Juan Golbez said goodbye to the coffee fields, his trusty mule, and set out for GameSpy USA.]

pros: Extremely in-depth and provides countless possibilities.
cons: Daunting to new players; casual gamers may be turned off.

pros: Good graphics, sounds, and interface.
cons: Sometimes runs a little slow; unforgiving of small errors.

Robot combat fans will definitely get their money's worth with this awesome game.

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Gamerush.com
Previewed by Paul Younger

Did you ever want to head into the garage pull out an old lawnmower and turn it into an awesome fighting robot machine? If you did but never got round to it, you were either too lazy to give it a try or you knew your old man would go nuts the next time he went out to mow the lawn.

To bring this dream to life without taking apart the contents of the house tool box or  old appliances a new game is about to hit the scene courtesy of a company called Liquid Edge. LE are currently working on a new title called Roboforge which will bring giant robotic fighting gladiatorial machines to your PC screen. This is no beat-em up though, this game will test your design skills to the limit.

Unlike a beat-up where you choose from a few predefined characters Roboforge allows the gamer to design their machine from the ground up and then pit it against other like minded gamers in organised online tournaments. There is also something a else little different about Roboforge. You don't actually control your creations in battle, you need to create and fine-tune the robot to fight intelligently in battle which is part of the design process.

It all sounds a little bit train-spottery, but we think Liquid Edge are onto something here. With the likes of Black & White receiving praise for the Creatures, there are definitely gamers, myself included, that like to tweak aspects of gameplay where ultimately your creation will only be as good as you make or shape it. Roboforge gives you that chance.

When the game is fired up, the interface looks pretty slick by the way, you are presented with the menu where you can either head straight into the 'lab' and get to work on your latest creation or head online. The Lab allows you to pull together a machine based around various robot parts or should you prefer choose one of the many predefined robots which you can then tweak. It all sounds very simple but Liquid edge have included so much in the deign process. You have to start with the basic chassis the add joints, shields, controllers, weapons, you name it's there. 

To test my design skills I thought I would start a machine from the ground up. 20 minutes later I was ready to put 'Rush-X1' in the test arena. Thinking my robot  'looked' like a lean mean killing machine, I was sure I would whoop some training drone ass. 1 second into the bout 'BOOM!', Rush-X1 was no more. I realised I had made some terrible errors in the design so it was back to the drawing board to get my head round the basic chassis and joints.

The battles themselves are all in lavish futuristic 3D arenas so you get to see the action in it's full  glory, be warned though, there are some pretty dull robots out there that won't make the viewing too exciting. Of course, at the end of the day your robot may not be all singing all dancing but as long as it wins, that's all that matters.

Each game is recorded and stored on the main game server and Liquid edge allow you to download previous bouts to check out the competition. You can spot the top ranked players in the ranking list, download their victories, view them and at the same time pick up some handy design tips to improve your own machine. The whole thing has actually been very well thought out. 

Roboforge is about putting your robot against other gamers' robots in an arena situation and to make things interesting Liquid Edge are allowing you to do this online by organising tournaments at specific times. Getting involved in a tournament couldn't be simpler, log-on enter your user name and password and check out the schedule. Once you find a time to suit simply enter your latest creation into the tournament then turn up to fight.

Sounds good but it does get even better. You can actually win real cash, yes 'real cash' and prizes. Liquid Edge plan to run online tournaments where you pay to enter and then winnings are handed out. This is a great idea for a game like this and no doubt budding robot designers will be burning the midnight oil just before tournaments to perfect their creations.

Roboforge is currently still in Beta testing and it's great to see a different style of game hitting the scene. Move o
ver Craig Charles and Robot Wars, it looks like you may have some competition. 

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Zombified.com
previewed by Jesse

Clanking, rumbling, exploding; these are the sounds of the battlefield of robots. Liquid Edge Games brings you this battlefield in a java based game they call Roboforge. Roboforge brings you to a world of create and program your robot(s) and enter tournaments to defeat other creators around the world.

The title is Liquid Edge's flagship game. Minimum requirements start at 233 64 megs of ram and 8m of 3d video. After weeks of extensive building and testing rime on my machine these are the things I have learned:

Graphically this game is stunning. Even on the mid range graphics settings, (Where my pc fits in) the robots and arenas are amazing looking. The textures are smooth and detailed and the animation is very nice. There are a wide range of robot styles and parts that all have an original look to them and many beautiful and unique arenas to fight in. There are small glitches of delay on loadup, but it's barely noticeable.

As the battles progress you will enjoy the sounds they have included. The sounds of the robots growling and moving are very nice. The sounds of them pounding each other with clanks and grinds are even nicer. The only weak point to this point is the lack of music. There is music on the victory stand, but no menu music or music during the 130 second battle to set the tone.

Building your bot can be a challenge but it's well worth the efforts. With a little work figuring out the system, you can make your own metal gladiator. You have the option to build your bot from scratch, or use the wizard for the novice bot creator. Here's where the real fun begins. Once your bot has been created you begin to program its movements, attacks, and test it against the other robots in your garage (several have been included by the team for your testing). All in all, the menu interface is smooth and nice once you get the hang of it. The occasional icon or click bug does not cut away from the hours of fun.

If you enjoy building robots and watching battles, I'd recommend you try this title out. Pre-order yours today and I'll be seeing you on the battlefield!

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Overclockedcafe.com 
Preview by: Tom Ellis

 When you were a kid, did you play with an erector set?  I'll bet many of you did, and enjoyed making your own fantastic creations.  Some of you may have even built your very own killer robot with your set.  Some of you probably dreamed of building a 'real' robot someday. Today, there are many more options for playing with basic robotics, from Lego's to professional level  kits.  Still, to really build a true robot is a hobby for the rich.
Enter, RoboForge.

This is quite a unique game.  Unfortunately, no other sites that have previewed it seem to have gone any deeper than the very surface, and this is one game that demands in depth attention.  Build a robot gladiator, test it against some pre built creations, then set it loose in online tournaments, against other people's creations.  That, in a nutshell, is the game concept.  It is all hand to hand combat, don't expect to find any projectile weapons or missiles.  The intent is to have up close, 'in your face' combat, and it delivers.
To add to the novelty, this game will allow players to compete in online tournaments for cash prizes!  That's right, you can use RoboForge to launch your career as a professional gamer.  Don't quit your day job yet, though.  Making the best of the best in the RoboForge world is not all that easy.  The fun is trying to get there.

The game's uniqueness doesn't end there.  This is the first game of such size and scope that I have ever seen developed in Java.  Yes, I said Java.  Using Sun Microsystems's Java3D API, Liquid Edge has developed a complete, stand alone game, with support for DirectX 8 and OpenGL.  Currently the game runs only on Windows platforms, but as we'll see later that will hopefully not be the only platform for the game.

Before I start delving into the meat of the game, I want to give a word of warning.  This is not a game that you will master right away.  If the concept appeals to you, then give it time.  Initially, it can be frustrating, but as one gets the hang of designing bots, the rewards are huge in terms of enjoyment factor.
 
Designing your Robot

When you first start playing RoboForge, you have a few options to get going quickly.  There are a number of pre made bots that one can use, but the neat thing for beginners are the 'Wizard' bots.  There are Wizards included that allow you to build a robot quickly, with some preset options and customization choices for weapons, basic tactics, armor, etc.  There is an option to completely start from scratch as well, but you should probably start out with a Wizard Bot.

Once you have your basic design, you can customize it's various moves and AI options as well.  It is really quite simple to program moves.  It involves taking snapshots of the robot in various positions.  The game 'fills in the blanks' for the move.  The moves are then used by the robot's AI to determine what to do in given situations.

The robot AI is amazing.  You can start out very basic, and with simple drag and drop actions create some very complex behaviour.  For the brave, there are advanced options that let you do amazing things with your robot's AI.  This is one part of the game that takes some time getting used to, but is well worth it.  For instance, if you want your robot to execute the move named 'Frontal Attack', you set the AI to execute said move whenver the desired conditions (distance to enemy, where the enemy is in relation to your bot, etc) are met.  Want it to move away and reorient itself if the enemy gets to within 3 meters? No problem, just 'tell' the AI to do so.  The end result is often some very intelligent looking behavior.  Mistakes can wind up being very comical, though.  I say this from experience, after watching a new creation run around in circles while it's opponent took it apart one bit at a time!

Here are some screen shots of the robot creation process.  From left to right: Wizard Bot Screen, Robot Design Screen, Move Screen and the AI Screen:

I started out with a wizard bot, and once modified it actually won a fight in a tournament! I was a bit surprised.  My from scratch designs are doing even better, now that I'm starting to get the hang of it.  There are a huge variety of chassis types, components, energy sources, controllers, and weapons to choose from.  One of the great strengths of this game is the freedom it allows you to have in expressing yourself.  Your designs are limited only by your imagination.  Of course, a good looking design isn't always a good fighter, just keep that in mind.  Sometimes, simple is best.  I have seen a nice, simple, clean bot design win out over a much more 'advanced' looking design.
 
Fighting and Online Play

Whether you test in standalone mode, or go online for ad hoc challenges and tournaments, the initial combat is not in real time.  Even on a fast processor, it can take twice as long or longer than the actual fight time to run the initial simulation.  You get to watch in slow motion during the initial simulation.  When it is complete, you watch the fight as if it were a movie.  While this may sound boring to some people who are used to instant gratification, it is worth the wait, and quite a sight to see.  Watching the fights is like a spectator's sport.  It can be a lot of fun, win or lose.

In online play, there are two choices.  For Tournaments, you submit your bot(s), and then come back and check the results later.  You can then download and view your fight(s), as well as any Featured Bouts that are on the server.  There is also a Challenge Room feature.  This can be a lot of fun.  It is basically a chatroom type function that allows players to challenge each other.  The person accepting the challenge hosts the battle on his or her CPU.   Unfortunately, only the hosting player can view the simulation while it is running, but once done everyone in the room can download and view the battle.

Here are some shots taken in battle viewing mode, to give you a feel for the graphics.  These are both bots of my own design that have done fairly well against others.  The green bars indicate health, the blue power.

 The graphics are decent.  Not quite state of the art, but more than detailed enough for this type of game.  Some of the fights are incredible to watch.  Look for exploding parts, and even exploding bots!  If neither is destroyed in the fight, the winner is decided on points.  This basically means whichever took the least damage wins.  Fights can range from 60 to 180 seconds.  Tournament fights are always 180 seconds in duration.  The shortest fight I saw was about 12 seconds until one bot was completely destroyed!  That was an impressive win.

One more thing bears mention for online players.  No longer will broadband folk have an advantage over the modem crowd.  Downloading bot information and uploading/downloading finished battles will take longer, of course, if you have a modem.  When it comes to the fight, however, ping matters not one bit.  I am glad to see this, because I am ever sick of hearing HPB's whine.  I have a modem too, live with it, get over it.  Move on.  Now the only reason to whine is if people are SO impatient that they can't wait for a finished battle to load (it usually takes 2-5 minutes for me).
 
Bugs
No game in beta would be complete without it's share of bugs.  RoboForge is no exception.  Testing the game, which is in the .82 release as I write this preview, takes a bit of patience.  Nothing is more frustrating than waiting 6 minutes (and that is on a 1.725ghz P4) for a sim to finish, only to have the game crash as you enter the battle view.  Thankfully, patches are frequent and stability is growing.  It will be interesting to see if Liquid Edge Games can get to a stable 1.0 release level  in time to ship in 'a week or two' (as I was just told).  The release date on the Press Kit CD says May 15, so we'll see.

I ran the game on Windows 2000.  Interestingly, they do not recommend OpenGL on W2K, but rather DX.  I found, however, that I had no issues running under OpenGL (the crashes were on either setting).  The OGL support is a bit nicer looking than the DX engine, so I recommend trying it first.

Patching is done automatically when you log in to the online Tournament servers.  Alternately, patches can be installed manually, but it is so much easier to just log in.  More games should auto patch in this manner.  I found that the patches have been manageable even over my lowly 56K modem connection.

From my interactions with some of the staff, and what I've seen already in terms of patches, I am fairly confident that Liquid Edge is capable of shipping a stable product in the near future.  The latest patch did wonders for online challenge room stability, which was a huge plus.

Q&A with Liquid Edge Games

I had a chance to ask a few questions of Liquid Edge, and their business development manager Mike Ward was kind enough to get back to me with some prompt answers:

1.  Why Java and VRML to develop a game? I applaud the initiative, but  these are relatively uncharted waters.

We chose Java as it provided the best integration of 2D and 3D (RoboForge  needs an unusually high level of 2D GUI integration due to the construction  nature of the game), has multi-platform support and is at home on the net.

2.  Because of Java's multi-platform nature, are there plans for ports to other OS'es?

 We hope to provide a port to Linux as soon as the latest version of Java3D  is ported.

3.  There seem to be quite a few bugs left, at least for myself (running on Win2K).  Do you think that the game will be ready to ship on time?

We are working through the final platform issues and are confident of  releasing the game in the next week or so.

4.  What was the inspiration for the game?

The company's founder and CEO, Darren Green, was doing some contract work in Tokyo and was kicking back in his hotel room flipping through numerous  channels on his TV, all in a language he didn't understand.  One thing he  could work out, though, a lot of people liked a game where cumbersome  mechanical robots attempted to knock each other over. He thought the robots  were kinda cool, but figured that they were extremely expensive and you  probably needed a Dad with a PHD in robotics to build one.  As a kid he  always liked building stuff  (model planes, Lego etc) and he thought that  the idea of a computer game where you could actually build a robot and then  let it fight it out with other robots would be kinda cool (and much cheaper  than doing it for real).  It took a few years of contemplation (read: procrastination) for the idea to gel enough to tell someone else about it..now here we are!!

5.  What about server capacity if the game is a hit?  Will there be enough resources for huge tournaments?

We have based our server model on a PC server farm model. We get linear scalability by just adding new farm servers to our network model (using readily available, low cost PCs). The business model is such that the game sales more than adequately pay for the cost of up-scaling the server system
 
Thanks again to Mike for being so prompt and helpful during the writing of this preview.
 
Conclusions
So here we have a novel, networkable game, that will ultimately run on more than one OS.  While I won't make any final conclusions until I see the final version, I have found RoboForge to be quite enjoyable, and will continue to play it from now on.  If Liquid Edge Games can get the code cleaned up and ship on time, with appropriate marketing, then this could have the makings of a huge hit.  The pay for play Tournament model with cash prizes is an innovative way to promote professional gaming, as well.  Time will tell how well it works as a business model.

The hallmark of this game, in my opinion, is the total freedom it gives to the designer.  You can make your robot, it's moves, and it's AI as simple or as complex as you wish.  Each robot you create becomes a statement of your individual creative drive.  With nearly endless building and AI capabilities in the game, designing robots is at times more fun than watching them fight.  That says a lot, because the fights themselves are often awesome to behold.  True, you can get a 'dud', just like in real sports such as boxing.  More often than not, though, you will find yourself being entertained by these simulated robot gladiators.

This isn't a game for people who want instant gratification.  It isn't a game for people who don't like to think, or who lack creativity.  You might have to get used to 'sitting there' watching your creation do it's work.  Give it a week.  Then give it another just to make sure.  If you find the concept at all appealing, then I have a feeling you'll become addicted right around the time you start to figure things out...
 
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Head 2 Head Gaming h2h.ca
by Tristan Tillesburg

Scheduled for release very soon, Liquid Edge Games is supplying the gaming world with what is probably the most tournament based, internet-only game ever thought up of. What the hell do i mean by that? Well, think of setting up a gladiatorial robot...preparing every piece, the AI, the color designs, the strategy...teaching your robot. Then imagine going noggin to noggin with other robots made by other creators online, sending your robot into an arena where fate will be dished out by mechanical hands (or pincers for that matter). What is the point of all this? It's simple: we're talking about playing for prize money, because that's exactly what's at stake in Roboforge

With the intent of running tournaments of this sort with 10,000 entrants a day on a per day basis with the first prize being 10,000 cold US smackeroos, Roboforge is also only being distributed online. No publisher what-so-ever. Add that to the fact that Roboforge was programmed entirely in Java and you can see how this game is unique in more than one way.

We had the chance to play around with Roboforge ourselves to see what sort of game this was panning out to be, and one thing that we surely noticed was that the process of creating your robot is not one to be rushed through. You'll want to take your time making sure you have some idea of what your creation is going to do in the arena and how it'll respond. You can speed up the robot creation process by selecting some pre-made barebones models that need merely to be fitted with limb weaponry etc., but you're still going to want to be patient in assembling and training. Assembling your robot is performed via a 3D interface and getting up close and personal with all the bits and pieces is simple. You then get a chance to test your bot to see how it would fare on average and you can adjust where you need to in order to create a dominant robotic masterpiece.

Frankly, we sucked at putting together a robot that was any good at doing anything, except walking so we bashfully didn't attempt to play others online with our robot, "Smellsworthy". But heck...a little more time and perhaps she'll be a real ten grand winner.

However, if you're constantly annoyed at losing at least you'll always know what your robot was thinking and why it did what it did based on how you programmed its AI etc. So, trial and error will be the real basis of much of your work.

With the game's small footprint, Roboforge shouldn't be a space hog on any machine and the specs on paper are rather modest too. We tested our copy on two systems--a low and high range--to see how it fared. And although the high range (AMD 1.2/266fsb/GTS Ultra) had little problem carrying the load with some stalls, our low range system (PIII 500/100fsb/Voodoo Banshee) often stalled and froze at moments. Perhaps it was something on our end, but we're sure these things will be worked out upon release.

The game is simple in many ways and complicated in others. Its premise is easy to grasp and therefore one can't blab on about it endlessly. But as much as Roboforge will be a straighforward game, it will also be cheap too. About 30 bucks American from what we can surmise.

So is it worth picking up a budget, robotic gladiator-type game programmed in Java, bought and played strictly online with a prize of $10,000? We'll know soon enough. The last time we checked Roboforge was scheduled for release sometime in early May, so do indeed check out Roboforge's website and see if it might be up your alley. We'll let you know what we think when we review it in its full form.

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Bubbledream.com.sg
Previewed by Xavier: xavier@bubbledream.com.sg

Overall Rating = 7 / 10

Pros: (1) Build your dream bot and turn them loose over the Net.
(2) Installation file only 25MB.
(3) Beautifully drawn interface.
(4) A chance to win US$10,000. Enough said.

Cons: (1) Steep learning curve.
(2) Combat graphics unpolished.
(3) Broadband connection advisable for smooth gameplay.

 Have anyone forgotten about robot combat? Metals strewn apart instead of flesh, grease splattered instead of blood. If you had wanted violence without the blood and gore, yes, robots fitted the bill perfectly. Besides the 1994 classic One Must Fall 2097 (A game where you earn cash to enhance your robot to the next level of strength), there seem to be a lack of such metal-eat-metal games in the market. Or at least, those worth mentioning. Anyone remembered Slave Zero?
This will all change though. Liquid Edge Games, a New Zealand-based game development company, looks set to revolutionize that genre with their debut online-game, RoboForge.

Crank, Squeak, Crank
Working similar to the concept used in One Must Fall, players build a robot (Or select from the ready-built bots) and enrol them in tournaments and beat the crap out of their opponent's bots. However that's where the similarity ends.
RoboForge is a genre on its own. Build and written 100% in Java, RoboForge will be able to run on all Win32 platforms, Linux and other Unix variants. Let's take a look at this new kid on the block.
Features
First of all, RoboForge is not like any other online games that you buy off the shelf. Players will have to download the file from www.roboforge.net and create their 3D robots build robots by simply clicking different components together. Every component has a number of connect points to which you can connect any other type of component. It's as simple as pointing and clicking. Components from any of these can be combined and used. Components can also be of different types, which define their function on the Robot. Players will be spoilt for choice with selection such as sensors, shielding, weapons, energy packs, controllers, joints, etc (Refer to here for a full description).

Think One Must Fall or Street Fighters was a piece of cake, You will probably not think the same way in RoboForge because your skill in hand-to-eye coordination skills will not just be the winning factor in this game. That's because players will also have to program their robots through an Aritificial Intelligence (AI) wizard.

After building your robot, you can pit them against different level of 'Test' bots that come with the game. If your robot is bot-enough (Pardon the pun), you may pit them against other players' robots around the globe. No my friend, I meant the Internet.
I have not been able to try my hands against players from the Internet, due to the different timings against other beta players around the world. But from what I have tried against the 'Test' bots, I'll say they are some of the smartest damn metals I have come to face. The challenge here is to create and combine a smart AI with a good structural design for your bot. Only then do you stand a chance against your opponents.
Now for the real fun part. Liquid Edge has promised that tournaments in the game itself will be like professional sports with the winners receiving cash and prizes. They will be running tournaments of 10,000 entrants or more on a daily basis with a first prize of up to US$10,000. RoboForge also does not breach the strict Internet gambling laws because it is purely a skill-based game with no luck or chance involved. Players get full details of what their robot was thinking at all times during the fight so they know exactly why it won or lost.

Conclusion
RoboForge brings a fresh air to an online-gaming industry clogged by many fantasy-based games. Online games have already been predicted to fundamentally change the world of interactive entertainment in the future, and Liquid Edge Games will no doubt usher in the age of the true professional online gamer with RoboForge. I mean it.
RoboForge is available for pre-ordering through their website now.

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Gameindustry.com
Previewed by Greg Crowe

Sometimes I think television should adhere to some kind of truth in advertising law.

I started to watch a show called BattleBots, and much to my disappointment, they didn’t show robots at all. I turned the channel, and saw another show, this one called Robot Wars. This even had Robot in the title, and there wasn’t a robot in sight.

I know what a robot is; Asimov taught me. The thermostat on my wall is more of a robot than the Robots on these shows.

When will we see a robot battle with actual robots that have to think for themselves? Apparently, quite soon.

Liquid Edge Games has been working on such a thing for almost four years now. While their RoboForge has virtual robots (a battle with real ones is a long time in coming), they are robots in every sense of the word. Of course, having them virtual makes it difficult to apply the Three Laws of Robotics to them directly, but I digress.

Soon people from all over the world will be able to construct virtual robots, program them by teaching them actions and manoeuvres, and send them forth to do battle with the robots of opponents across the Internet.

What a marvellous world we live in.

GiN caught up with Mike Ward, the Business Development Director of Liquid Edge Games Ltd. He answered some questions about his company, its new game Roboforge, its place in society, the changing face of the computer game market, and the misrepresentation of robots on television.

Roboforge - http://www.roboforge.net

GiN: Tell us a bit about your company and how you got started.

Ward: Liquid Edge Games was formed in 1999 to continue the development of RoboForge. The company's founder and CEO, Darren Green, was doing some contract work in Tokyo and was kicking back in his hotel room flipping through numerous channels on his TV, all in a language he didn't understand. One thing he could work out though, a lot of people liked a game where cumbersome mechanical robots attempted to knock each other over.

He thought the robots were kinda cool, but figured that they were extremely expensive and you probably needed a Dad with a PHD in robotics to build one. As a kid he always liked building stuff (model planes, Lego etc) and he thought that the idea of a computer game where you could actually build a robot and then let it fight it out with other robots would be kinda cool (and much cheaper than doing it for real).

It took a few years of contemplation (read: procrastination) for the idea to gel enough to tell someone else about it. In 1997, Darren spoke to two of his programming friends (Hugh and Young) about the idea and received an enthusiastic response from them. The idea for RoboForge and Liquid Edge Games now became a reality. They spent a year designing the game in their spare time. Once the design specification was sorted, they all chipped in some money to fund the development for a year from Darren's basement.

The money was used to develop a working prototype of the game (crude but functional). The prototype was then used to successfully attract funding. Four more staff members were employed and development continued through 1999 and 2000 until our targeted launch in May 2001.

GiN: What about your new game, Roboforge? Tell us a bit about that.

Ward: RoboForge is an Internet based 3D computer game that allows players to construct sophisticated virtual robots and train them for combat. The robots are mechanical and/or organic in nature. Players can construct virtually anything by mixing and reusing components from a library of 300 parts and from the 12 different robot "genres."

Building a robot is as simple as clicking components together in a true 3D construction environment. Components can be Joints (moving servos), Sensors, CPUs, Energy Generators, Weapons, Shielding or just passive Limbs. Once constructed, the robots can then be trained for offensive and defensive moves (all in 3D), and programmed to think during combat (using a sophisticated but easy to use declarative programming interface). Wizards will allow a user to construct their first robot in minutes so they can then "tinker" with the settings, adding new limbs, painting and texturing, and so on.

Players can have an unlimited "garage" of robots. Once ready, they can let their creation loose in an arena against another pre-programmed robot and compete in tournaments on the Internet for prizes, including cash. The robots fight in a hand-to-hand style. The movement of the limbs and damage done to each other is calculated using realistic physics. Mass-inertia and 3D torque calculations are used in the simulation engine.

The robot sensor systems have scope and range. Damage is based on point of impact inertia and realistic resultant physics are calculated (i.e. limb recoil). Completely damaged limbs explode and so on. All this provides a realistic sense to the user when they watch the fight ensue.

GiN: We've seen various "'bot" battle programs on television where the "robots" are actually directed by humans through radio controllers. In Roboforge, can the robots be considered true robots?

Ward: You have identified the fundamental difference between RoboForge and the bot battle programs on TV - with RoboForge the bots are required to think for themselves. Once you send your bot over the Internet to fight in tournaments he’s on his own. As the boxing trainers say, “all the hard work’s been done before he enters the ring.”

Given the unlimited variations of robots that can be built with RoboForge and the fact that the bots think for themselves I guess you might say RoboForge is what BattleBots and Robot Wars will look like in a 100 years time.

You ask if the RoboForge robots can be considered true robots - absolutely! Unlike the TV shows where the robots are glorified remote controlled cars, RoboForge bots are true autonomous beings and with their own AI they think for themselves. With Roboforge the best bot builder will win, with the TV shows the best bot operator will win.

GiN: Do you see Roboforge more as filling a niche in the market or trying a new twist on an existing concept?

Ward: We see RoboForge as a new genre. It is a very much constructive and thinking game with most of the gameplay being focused on the building and testing of the robot. Players will get huge satisfaction and a sense of ownership from creating, nurturing and training a champion contender. Because the robot is autonomous we can organise huge tournaments and run them overnight.

If everyone had to be there to control their robots, it could take months for us to run a big tournament. Also, to play for money, everything has to be fair. Connection speeds greatly affect how a player performs in online games. The robots duke it out on our game servers, so it’s all fair and square. RoboForge is massively multiplayer with players being able to compete against each other from all over the world, not to mention the fact that they can win some serious cash prizes in the tournaments.

GiN: How are the online tournament structure and player rankings set up?

Ward: RoboForge is designed to run like a professional sports circuit. It is an international circuit and the designers are real people from all over the world. When players start they can enter the amateur tournaments that are open only to those designers who have competed in five or less tournaments. They are free to enter and will typically have several prizes that can be won.

They can then progress to the open tournaments, which again are free to enter, and will have bigger prizes. If players want to win some serious money, then they can enter the RoboForge Pro Circuit. These tournaments are pay-to-enter (only five US dollars per tournament usually). Huge cash and prizes can be won at these tournaments. There is a full ranking system, which culminates in an invitational tournament at the end of each season, where massive prizes can be won by a select few (the "Best of the Best").

GiN: Do you think you will make a larger profit from the sale of the game, or the pay-to-enter tournaments that will be available?

Ward: We believe that the ongoing tournaments will be integral to the success of RoboForge. This competitive and challenging aspect of the game with the resulting fame and fortune will be essential to building the community around RoboForge. Certainly we need to get the game sales side of the business model right first before the tournament revenue will kick in.

However, assuming we can achieve a healthy critical mass of numbers from game sales we expect the tournaments to contribute most to profitability, especially over the longer term. Games sales revenue tends to be rather short term and one-shot in nature, whereas the tournament aspect will ensure the longevity of the game.

We’re hoping for somewhat of a snowball effect, the more copies we can sell, the bigger the tournaments and more frequent they will be held, attracting more and more people into the online space of Robotic Combat Sport.

The unique aspect of the RoboForge tournament model is that it is easily scaleable. Because we use a server farm model, it is easy for us to quickly gear up for an increase in numbers of players wanting to enter into tournaments by simply adding low-cost PCs to the farm. There is no such thing as expensive redundant servers with RoboForge. We are looking forward to the day when we need to spend money to boost our server farm capacity.

Obviously the profitability of the tournament model depends on which percentage of players who have bought the game we can attract back to the professional contests. We’re relying on the inherent competitive nature of gamers, who after spending hours creating what they believe to be the ultimate fighting machine, will know the only true test for their creation is to see it compete in the professional tournaments. Whilst RoboForge is a premium game we feel that at a retail price of 29.95 US dollars, it is competitively priced.

At that price we believe we can get enough out there to ensure the profit from the tournaments will soon kick in. We could, of course, go the way of AOL in the early days and give the game away for free. Since we are selling online we don’t incur massive distribution costs. However, there is a perception of value issue, which may unnecessarily depreciate the game if it were given away for free. Since RoboForge is a quality product it can easily support the retail price.

GiN: Times were, having a publisher was crucial to the marketing success of a game. How has the Internet changed all of that?

Ward: I guess the way in which we are choosing to market and sell RoboForge over the Internet is evidence of the way the Internet has changed things. In the old days (not that long ago) the only way a game developer could get their product out there was through a publisher. Obviously this meant that the developer’s margins were eaten away by publishers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Electronic software distribution means that the cost of getting the game to the customer is lower and therefore we can afford to pass this cost saving on by charging a lower price for the game.

The Internet gives us the opportunity to carry out more cost-effective and targeted marketing. RoboForge will be primarily marketed through an Internet reseller program with a 25% commission for each sale referred by an affiliate.

I guess the real answer to your question of whether a publisher is crucial or not will only be found after we’ve been out there for 6 months - and whether or not we’ve been able to make a good go of it. Whether or not we can adequately penetrate the market with online only distribution is certainly an issue for us, and I must admit it was a big call for us to make to go it alone. Certainly at some point, maybe once the online community has been built, we would like to see a RoboForge CD in a box on a shop shelf. I guess that will be the only way we can hope to capture the impulse and gift buying market.

On the positive side, with the way we are going, we get to keep control of the development and marketing, which can sometimes be an issue for developers if they get locked in with the big boys.

GiN: Did you attempt the standard 'try to find a publisher' routine with Roboforge?

Ward: Yes and no. We funded the development of RoboForge ourselves. It was only in December of 2000 after two months of public beta testing, when the game was 95 percent ready for market that we decided to see what the publishers thought. I guess we were motivated to do this partly out of fear of not being able to successfully penetrate the market with online only distribution. Also, by at least talking to the publishers we won’t ever wonder, what might have been had we decided not to approach them.

We received strong interest from the publishers we met with. The difficulty we had was that because we are based in New Zealand, as soon as we left a publisher’s office, a certain amount of momentum would be lost and as time went on the distance factor probably put us in the too hard basket.

The other issue we faced with the publishers was that we were a bit of a square peg and they only had round holes, and as a result we seemed to fall through the cracks in a number of instances. By this I mean the publishers viewed us as online-only property (notwithstanding that we pitched to them that we could be both - box and online), yet because RoboForge is a premium game we did not fit with their online strategy of simplistic games given away for free to the casual gaming market.

Anyway, that’s how we read things, how can you really know what the decision making process is in a large organization? We believe we could find a publisher, however, how long do you keep trying and how long do you wait for an answer? Especially when you’ve got a completed product that you can adequately take to the market yourself. Because at less than 30mb, it is well suited to online distribution.

GiN: What differences do you suppose were there in the process of making this game with a smaller team as opposed to a larger development house?

Ward: I guess we were never faced with this choice because we were internally funded and never really had the deep pockets to pay for a large development team. The benefits we saw from a small team of our size were keeping a cap on the budget, better controlling the workflow and quality of the output. I’m sure there may be more bells and whistles we could have had with a larger team, however, I don’t believe we have had to compromise the game in anyway with a smaller team.

GiN: Had you considered making the game for a console platform?

Ward: Because the online tournaments are such an integral component of RoboForge, when the game was first conceived in 1997, next generation consoles with Internet capability were a long way off, therefore our only real option was to go PC based. We would at some point in the near future like to port RoboForge to a console platform. Given it is written in Java, we should be able to do this without too much difficulty.

GiN: Does making a game that is somewhat online-intensive such as Roboforge dictate what platforms you will produce it for?

Ward: Yes it does, certainly as RoboForge currently is, however, we have ideas for variations on the RoboForge theme that are not so online intensive and better suited to a console. It is all a matter or time, priorities and managing the resources we currently have.

GiN: What are your plans for the future?

Ward: We would really like to capitalize on our Java development expertise and do other online games. However, our immediate focus needs to be on business development for RoboForge and ensure that it is successful before embarking on other development projects - the joys of not having a big publisher behind us I guess!

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