Unfinished: Bot Colony 07/10/2014

JIMMY! TO GOD DAMN PEPPER GRINDER

You HAVE to be fucking joking.

Go to Wal-Mart

In the first look of this game in one of the help sections it said to use "a" and "the" appropriately. My guess is it assigned the specific "the" to the first briefcase they picked up and then didn't reassign it from that point on, so it was always trying to get that first briefcase.

This is just an exercise in unbearable frustration. I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt and say something like "at least there's an interesting concept in here somewhere" but nope, I can't seem to find any redeeming qualities at all.

The briefcase situation is more infuriating than the pepper grinder situation.

Yeah, the problem is "the". The first time you say "the" briefcase, the robot selects the nearest one. After that, it assumes you're still talking about "the" same briefcase from then on.

I looked on the Bot Colony forums to figure out what you're supposed to do, and it seems like you can get the robot to understand you're talking about a different briefcase if you give more details. The example given was "pick up the green briefcase on the center Tokyo shelf".

You might also be able to say "pick up this", although I have no idea if that would work or not.

The part that might be interesting would be to teach Mike a more efficient command, earlier, when there's no time limit. Allegedly, it's possible to teach him to pick up the bag, go to the xray machine, and put the bag on the conveyor as all one command. (Which, if we're being honest, should really be a command the robot already knows to fucking DO HIS JOB)

@stumpsock said:

I laughed so fucking hard at this. So dumb.

I think Mike is forever locked onto the first green briefcase you disposed of. BUGS.

I'm surprised Vinny didn't ask one of the robots when they got off.

THIS GAME IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!

Oh that's so Jimmy.

Alex is doomed once the robotic army takes over, he hates that damn robot.

Watching this game is giving me a stress headache.

I should stop with that but people keep taking about nightmares here.

Anyway, I read that as huggage room, which I may need after watching more Bot Colony.

Vinny keeps saying center shelf when it tells him every time it doesn't understand center. Middle would have worked

This is Octodad with voice recognition and zero charm.

It heard Vinny's "Fuck you!" as "fought POO", lol. Fought POO too robot, fought POO too.

Your Wifes new legal name is TAARGÜS TAARGÜS

Classic jimmy

THE FUCKING SOFA CUSHION

hoo boy, dem robots

I think the colour coding scheme was to help identify which green briefcase you had to pick up. Ask what the day of the week is, and pick the green briefcase which has that colour.

This game looks like it's deliberately trolling. Demanding the player input object names that voice recognition has difficulty with, such as "vase," "sauté pot," "Guam," and "giraffe" or stressing the player with a time limit that makes their voice change character.

The dev has a nice "out" in that they can blame all the problems on the windows voice stack, however even when Windows is able to parse the voice command correctly, the game just doesn't understand.

Also who makes a voice-controlled game that a colour-blind person can't play? Shouldn't accessibility by the first concern of a developer making a game whose primary input is voice control?

They seem to be promoting it as some kind of revolution in animation technology as well, but as far as I can see it's nothing more than a different and less precise way to call up pre-baked animations. They pull quotes from Gamasutra and Destructoid on their website that look like they're stoked about the game, but when you look up the quotes they're all taken horribly out of context, or from sight-unseen previews and Q&As.

I mean, what the hell is this if not a joke? It's a real shame because the premise of the story is pretty cool. Perhaps this is just another case of a guy who likes to make up stories shoehorning them into a game.

Just two thoughts.

Dont tell a robot to pick up "the briefcase" in a room full of briefcases, even if you where talking to a human you should specify WICH briefcase. The robot even claims he doesnt know wich briefcase the bomb is in when you asked him about it.

The color chart is showing what day the luggage arrived and the news say the bomb just got in so ask the robot what day it is and then find an green suitcase with the correct color code for today whatever day that is.

These are just thoughts and might be totally wrong but who cares :)

edit: also the first time when you got your own bag you specified to the robot that "the briefcase" is your blue briefcase and "the shelf is the tokyo shelf" so every time you say "go to the shelf" or "pick up the briefcase" he goes to the tokyo shelf and then tries to pick up the briefcase you are holding in your hand wich he obviouslt cant reach.

Giant BEAST is greatest thing to ever happen in video games media. Ever. :D

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This seems like a fun time.

well now we know the actual game is busted too, not just the fault of bad voice system

I would have liked to see them try just saying "get this" and see if the game asked what it was they wanted picked up, that would make sense, instead of just trying "get the briefcase" over and over again knowing it wouldn't work.

Either way it looks like it just bugged out really, the "game" is just messed up, but made for a fucking awesome QL :P

Why would you allow the voice transcription to come up with "soul" in a room with zero exploration of theological beliefs, oh, AND A SHELF LABELLED SEOUL.

Jimmy what is context

"Go to Guam"

"I don't understand what you mean by 'Go to Wal-Mart'."

"this isn't an arm, this is me."

How long until the Bot Colony Endurance Run guys?

You should not have kept saying "Get the Briefcase" without referencing anything, Mike obviously then just referred to the last instance of a briefcase in it's memory which was in no way what you wanted.

Regardless, thanks for giving this game a fair shake, it really just seems broken, voice stuff isn't there yet i guess. I feel like siri on my phone is a thousand times more efficient than this microsoft nonsense.

"This isn't an arm, this is me!" Shutup robot.

This is why I prefer to go to shelves the old fashioned way.

Man, they've been active for barely a week and GBEAST is already my favorite thing about the site.

this game is garbage

Was this game developed by Wal-Mart?

did you mean?

While I am growing to hate early access games more and more I still can't argue with the fact they provide great GB videos.

What confuses me the most about this game is why it has such a large dictionary of words that are useless in the game, and why it doesn't recognize synonyms for the items you need to interact with. The large amount of irrelevant words only makes the voice recognition more likely to fail, and even back in the era of text adventure games in the 80's there were several words for each action and item.

Why does the game even have the capability of thinking you'd want to say "Vegan on the weekends", given what the game is about?

This game would be great if you were looking to get some rhymes for your next rap song. Just say your line and at the bottom it will spit out something completely different, but rhymes!

Relevant song:

Oats,

I'm a vegan on the weekends.

Best part about the video was that Vinny said he's going back on his own time to figure this shit out. I loved both of these Bot Colony videos, the premise is so cool, the execution is severely lacking.

Giant Beast is doing a fantastic job, I can't wait to see what Alex and Vinny can do with actual equipment.

I never can grasp the idea of being colorblind. Do these people see world as other does ? Or they just cant name the colors