Vinny Bought Bot Colony. Now What?

Jimmy: "That's the guy who sidelined Jimmy."

so funny

Speech recognition, still the weakest thing around. Not even a good one gets things right like Siri for example. Why can't they ever make those programs listen to WHAT we say instead of something like it? We might never know... oh, and I'm betting that was about the same as the Siri on phones, meaning a terrible one!

They should REALLY test their games more and make it more possible to say simple things. This game didn't seem to be tested at all...

Now I kind of wonder if there is a game which CAN do this without much fail.

Not the ants!!

haha damn that Jimmy

I laughed so fucking hard!

I laughed so fucking hard!

So after reading a few things...

- There's no other noise in the room except Vinny. We can clearly hear him through the mic he's using with no trouble, doesn't matter that it's a boom mic.

- I don't have to make a 'voice profile' for my phone. That I would have to for 30 minutes to an hour to "play" a game like this is insanity. Furthermore, when I talk to my phone, it understands the difference between "abort" and "aborts". And the few times it is off, I never get results like "A New York pass". "Shut" seemed like another problem, and when he tried "close the drawer", Jimmy let him know that he was already in "close" proximity. Infuriating.

- When teaching Jimmy a new command, Jimmy insists you teach him based on commands he already knows, one step at a time. Jimmy fucked up simple commands already, there is no reason to assume he would be smart enough to understand a multistep process of picking up the grinders and putting them down in each other's places.

- "You can type things too!"... Um, well, yes, but the game's gimmick, and what sets it apart, as well as what you see in the videos, is the whole voice thing. Is someone going to pay $15 to play a game where you indirectly control a being, having them do mundane things, by typing in things like "pick up the vase"? What is this game without voice, really?

- The whole pepper grinder incident... even though he didn't say "Switch the salt and pepper", if one wanted to do it the way he did, it's as if the space to the right of the coffee maker does not exist. The right of the coffee maker is instead somehow past where the counter elbows to the left of the coffee maker. Even the top of the coffee maker exists, just not the space where Vinny is clicking. That's something wrong with the game itself.

Because if you analyse the actual sounds coming from us when talking, it's pretty damn hard to determine what words we are saying. In no way the sounds match 1 to 1 to the words as they are written.

So you get dozens of ambiguities in each sentence. To make a good guess as to whatis being said, you need to have an understanding of the messed up way humans use grammar and you need to have knowledge of the entire world to understand in what context something is being said in..

And that's just damn hard. Language is one of those very human things that's hard to separate and model in computer software without dragging in the whole rest of the brain and the years of experience we had to learn it.

Jimmy will haunt Vinny forever.

Did he do all that training and then not select it as his voice profile?

This was one of the greatest premium videos of all time. Holy shit I'm dying of laughter right now.

I laughed so much! Thanks!

Jesus...

So this is what it's like to watch a man die.

Classic Vinigawa

Good gracious I think I love this man.

Breaking Vinny.

makes me appreciate my kinect a little more, only a little.

Vinny's cobbled together setup plus the isolation makes it seem like he's recording on a space station.

We read you loud and clear Orbital-Vinny 1.

I'm 10 minutes in. Is this fucking Frog Fractions 2? Please tell me this is Frog Fractions 2.

Catched a bit of this live. So. Funny. And frustrating.

Why build one giantbomb for the price of one, when you can build two giantbombs for the price of two?

See *** for answers.

You're probably right, yesterday our Steam sales (in units) went up 40%.

How does communicating with Jimmy compare to negotiating with a two-year-old?

@botcolony: Hi, so is there any particular reason behind the actions of your dev team in marketing the game in a seemingly misguiding fashion? Details here: http://www.giantbomb.com/bot-colony/3030-46842/forums/a-cursory-examination-of-bot-colonys-steam-page-1489155/#16 PS You can totally answer in that topic to keep this page strictly for people to clamor at Vinny's great experience.

Oh man, when Jimmy sets the pepper grinder on top of the coffee maker... I was worried for Vinny's mental health. Between the new setup and having a toddler at home, this game had to be so frustrating for him, but this was a really great video and freaking hilarious to watch.

Thank you, Vinny!

@gnoltac: Ah, point taken.

But some of the words Vinny said were pretty clear. Like his name. My bet's on that the game probably wanted him to say it differently, like "Whinny" considering the bad english in this game.

You still got to agree they need to make some sort of better way to make these types of games. Maybe one they have tried out.

@vierastalo: I answered it as you suggested, but I'd like everybody here to see the answer

http://www.giantbomb.com/bot-colony/3030-46842/forums/a-cursory-examination-of-bot-colonys-steam-page-1489155/#21

Dat Beard

Instant classic

The wrecking of the training part seems to presage the rest.

The toy giraffe. The TOY GIRAFFE!

Jimmy, hang yourself off of the ceiling before Phillip does.

Ah hah! I pick up the pepper grinder.

So for this specific point, I think you really need to look at what was happening and why. Context in this case is of utmost importance. You've asked the player to "find the hidden differences" via this entire tutorial puzzle. These puzzles are usually completed by, say, circling the difference in a newspaper. You have the added wrinkle of having the player fix the problem, which is fine in some cases, but has some design decisions that must be addressed and worked around. This really feels like something that should be caught in testing or just needs someone to point it out so it isn't glossed over.

A couple of many possible examples:

-Vinny tells Jimmy to "turn the pot" or something similar. At this point *He has solved this puzzle portion*. He demonstrated that he knew the object and what needed to change to re-orient it. Having to repeat this command 3-4 times is unnecessary, and adds more points of failure for no good reason. If it needs to be more complex have Jimmy ask the player which direction to rotate(gradually showing them ways to give more specific commands).

-The salt/pepper incident is similar. He is interacting with the 2 objects that need to be changed, he knew how to solve the puzzle, the ONLY thing keeping him from doing it is the inability to figure out what exact commands Jimmy needs to put them in the proper spots, which by the way I still wouldn't be able to guess if it wasn't for a previous post explaining it. This is easy enough to solve via proper tutorial pop-ins suggesting the correct commands to give, or AI that isn't nearly as strict and knows what goal the player is trying to reach as well.

-Your translation, text, dialogue etc can be extremely confusing. Jimmy's responses seem nonsensical and in many cases arbitrary. Adding a dialogue above the input that shows what Jimmy *thinks* you meant for your last command could be helpful, as well as cleaning up the grammar mistakes to make it less confusing. Additionally, bad inputs should be recognized and responded to immediately in as clear a way as possible. Waiting for jimmy to respond to a command(even one he doesn't recognize) makes it hard for the player to observe the problem and correct it. When Jimmy *defines* something, I would not guess he was going to perform an action on it, I would think he mis-understood the command. Simple things like this can make all the difference for training the player into the way you want them to speak for easier understanding.

As this is early access I expect some of these problems, but many you addressed here can be solved even more thoroughly, and may require more thought than just expanding the options within the AI routines.

@renahzor: All great points. Maybe we went overboard, wanting the pot to look exactly like in the picture (handle pointing left, aligned with the stove top). There is even an align command to enable you to do that, if you explore what Jimmy can do. Perhaps we should have been satisfied with telling Jimmy what to do, and have him cheat and position the object correctly. The way it stands, you can control by how many degrees something is rotated, and if it's clockwise or counterclockwise. While this may not make sense for a game, it may be OK for a modding tool ( see http://steamcommunity.com/games/263040/announcements/detail/190591878968722392 ), where you want fine control over animation.

@botcolony: I think that's all great for further down the road in the game, but you also have to look at the use case for this particular puzzle. Players are 5-10 minutes into your game, and have just spent 20-30 mins or way more calibrating the voice commands etc. They want to poke and prod at the game a bit, and will need some direction. Jimmy could have a huge library of functional commands but the player simply won't know that. It's best to introduce them slowly so the player can grasp both the use and limitations of certain features. This is the very first time they're asked to rotate an object, and though its very cool, they wont know right now they can tell him to "rotate the pot 75 degrees counter clockwise". It's not necessarily about removing those options, but streamlining them in the early game and introducing them properly.

Especially if you have a very large, robust list of commands and command modifiers, you're going to need to introduce them slowly. When a player gives a command jimmy doesn't know, but may correlate to something else he can do with an object, he should suggest other commands (specifically those relevant to the puzzle at hand) rather than just referring to his command list. "I dont know that command, you can see all my commands by asking about them" is not as good as "I cannot squeeze the ball because I do not know the command squeeze, but I know how to pick up, push, and throw a ball. Would like me to try one of those?"

This is gold! What a trainwreck of a game. I demand a review! :D

Oh Lord; when he set the pepper grinder on top of the coffee maker I lost it. As painful as it must have been for you Vinny, thank you for this piece of hilarity. Also, perfect ending.

When the game...crashed...because he ..told the robot to put the toy giraffe back..I ..think I reached enlightenment.

Amazing video.

- I still don't have to make a voice profile for my phone for it to understand me. And it understands the difference between "abort" and "aborts", "shut" and "shot", etc. And, my main point, I didn't have to spend 30 minutes reading things to set anything up. The voice recognition on it is already good, and I'm not talking about an iPhone. It understands me; no profile, no arduous setup. Maybe you should ask Google for their technology.

- You may want to look at 1:09:35 again. "It is already close." His 's' doesn't have the 'z' sound used when 'close(d)' is a verb. He says the drawer is in close proximity. If he is saying the drawer is already closed (which it doesn't appear to be), why the horrible grammar?

- "Keyboard correction solving 90% of the problems" is pointless. In what's supposed to be a voice driven game, I shouldn't have to touch the thing. If I am going to, there's no reason to use voice. If I am going to say a thing and see the first or second word is wrong, having to holllllllld the left arrow until the cursor is on that one letter and then correct it and press enter, I may as well just type. And as said already, what is the game without voice?

- In addition to the right of the coffee maker not existing, once the pepper was there, why did Jimmy walk completely out of the room when Vinny said to pick up the pepper grinder again?

Hilarious.

I think this game is interesting and I like that a dev is here talking about it.

Bought Colony?

I think this game has a lot of potential, and I hope it gets fine-tuned in the future. I've always wanted to have a pet robot!

By "potential" do you mean decades for voice/speech recognition to get not-shit?

This game does not mesh well with Vinny's personality disorders.

There is something hugely therapeutic about watching Vinny go slowly insane over the course of an hour and a half.

Hey Vinny, thanks for the great video. Hey Jimmy, get bopped!