Re: Robot Odyssey

[Eric Jacobs <no@no.no>]

Dave Morrison wrote:
> 
> >
> > I have the 2.0 disks that I sent in for an upgrade a long time ago, but I
> > don't believe they sent a new manual, only disks. It included a nifty self-
> > guided demo disk, which showed off demos of the all of TLC's major programs
> > at the time, but I couldn't find any ordering information on it (which is
> > surprising because it seems like that would have been a logical place to put
> > it.)
> 
> So what were the demos of?? Anything interesting??
> 

They were guided demos of all of the major products: Reader Rabbit, Bumble Plot,
Rocky's Boots, Gertude's, Moptown's, Magic Spells and Robot Odyssey. They were
self-guided demos, but did seem to actually run the real games.

The disk was a modified DOS 3.3 format, which was kind of strange for a
Learning Company disk. The games themselves ranged from AppleSoft BASIC to
under-the-OS machine language. Gertrude's, Rocky's, and Robot Odyssey all load
a file called "ADV #110.OBJ0" which contain the shared animation routines.

All of the demos are fairly short. Gertrude's showed one puzzle from Secrets
being solved, and Rocky's showed one of the easier ones from Rocky's Challenge.
Robot Odyssey showed several screens from around the game. The guy gets in the
subway car and rides around for most of the demo. Every once in a while a
dialog box would pop up and tell you something.

There was also a similar demo on the main disks that appeared on the main menu
as "Robotropolis Preview". It showed mostly scenes from the upper levels,
including the sonic lock and the hot wires puzzle.

Actually, you can patch a JSR to get the demo to accept real user input rather
than the guided tour. It turns out that most of the robots they show solving
puzzles are fake and don't contain any real circuitry, unfortunately. The
first sewer puzzle and the teamwork solution to the Vending Machine (in the
Town) are real, however, and you can walk right into them and poke around.

Imo, the best improvement in v2.0 was the tutorials. They doubled the number
(from 3 to 6) and made it a lot easier to get started as well as solve some
of the harder puzzles. They did a section on Robot Teamwork that was really
terrific.

There was an Easter Egg in level 2, "The Secret Room of Public Knowledge".
Was that around in 1.0, or was it new with 2.0?