Star Wars DroidWorks: Robot Abomination Simulator
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- Lucas Learning's first edutainment game from 1998! Nobody needed to see what it'd look like if beloved Star Wars droids had a terrifying lovechild together, but here you can. Shame that it's also a bit broken.
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Jar Jar's Journey was released in 1999, the same year as Episode 1. It looks like they were REALLY counting on Anakin and Jar Jar being popular.
Among the target demographic of "children ages 4 and up," they were quite popular indeed and they sold a ton of stuff. Folks seem to overlook that large portions of Star Wars was made for kids, especially the prequels.
So we adults ruin all the fun then?
Yes, the adults ruined it. I was born in 1993, TPM was my foundation for understanding the Star Wars Universe, but I fell out of that interest because you couldn't talk about TPM unless you wanted to parrot a list of ~5 basic complaints.
George always saw Star Wars as 'just a kids thing', people forget that when they look back to the original films and fail to discount the lens of childhood which it was first seen through.
I would say it was a lack of focus that ruin it. I do actually like that Star Wars can be for kids. But you need to weight it right. (And besides to me Jar Jar did not really ruin Star Wars. The telling of Anakins fall was so badly done that this really ruined the prequels. I mean that love story was at best creepy and at worst totally devoid of any emotion at all.)
Star Wars is such a expansive world of fantasy that you can tell many stories. Some stories can be aimed more for kids. And other can target a more adult audience. I think the many Star Wars games that where made showed pretty well how wide you can go. The many ways you could explore this fictional universe.
I was 11 when I saw it in theatres. I'm actually surprised that Jar Jar and Anakin were popular with kids since I remember even the younger kids in the audience not liking them. They were more mesmerized by the lights art fights and the space battles. Oh and the pod racing. Can't forget the pod racing.
STAY ON TARGET!
There's... two many of them!
HistoricaHungarica They came from, behind!
LOOSEN UP!!! *orgasm*
"It's a hit?!"
"Negative negative, it didn't go in..."
lgr is low key hilarious 😂
I loved this game. And never had to deal with weird physics glitches!
Maybe the computer you had at the time was fitted with a magical set of hardware that made the game function properly
You probably had the imac
I didn't have any issues bad enough to have remembered either. I think it worked better if you had just the right hardware, and some of us didn't know how lucky we were.
yea same i had it on my windows pc at home AND got my 4th grade teacher to let me install it on the mac at school, never had any issues
gotta be some kinda compatibility issue
It's based on framerate. The physics work fine at ~30fps. At 60fps and beyond, ramps become increasingly impassible.
Droidworks is actually a thing a Disney World. You can basically build all of these and take them home as souvenirs. :)
Democritus86 If the parts are mix and match they wouldn't need 3d printers, just stocks of all the parts.
That's still cheaper and more efficient at large enough scales.
Democritus86 no they just have tons of parts to pick from
A person |
Yeah. They do it at Disneyland in California as well.
3D printing anything even the smallest thing takes a very long time, it would not be time or cost effective. They are best really for one of things at the minute
@@aperson854 yes world is Florida Land is California.
Jawa in the sky. I can go twice as high. Take a look. What's in a droid. It's Starwars DroidWorks!
That box is brighter than my future.
The Chaos Dragoness yeah, if you're rolling with team skull!
oh man, this game makes me want a spore game, but with robots instead of creatures.
Or dude, imagine a game like Kerbal Space Program or Besiege with Star Wars droid items. It'd be fantastic with a solid physics engine.
Lazy Game Reviews totally! that'd be awesome!
I do hope they officially add more robotics to KSP. But there tons of good mods for that.
Do you think it HAS to be Star Wars droids? I mean, obviously that would add a delicious layer of charm to it all, but since using the Star Wars IP is impossible these days, could something that's basically a functional Droidworks without the glitches and Star Wars veneer still work?
That can to some degree be achieved with mods. I tried it. But yeah, doesn't really work since it's still Spore... They still hatch from eggs and don't do robot things and all that. But it was fun to build semi-robot creatures in the Creature Creator.
...Of course the downside was that the game would, in ordinary Spore fashion, throw my robot creatures into my worlds. In the Tribal Phase my tribe was always being terrorized by "wild animals" in the form of flying death machines with laser cannons for arms.
Well, they missed a golden opportunity by not calling it LucasSmarts...
Classic
As long as it's not LucasSharts.
I never even noticed that. Nice
Oh my god youre right
FWIW, many of the engine bugs were far less severe on hardware existent at the time. The engine just lost the gamble on forward compatibility. (especially the edge-between-two-surfaces issue) The physics bugs were MUCH less present on W98SE and a P3 era system.
I played it aeons aho when it was already old but still ran perfectly and it was fantastic.
The level design is almost on par with Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2.
talking about bugs in a physics-based educational game, this man must have never played Kerbal Space Program
I got nostalgic when first watching this, and rooted through my old CDs to see if I still had the copy from childhood.
Didn't find it, my older brother has it, but he sent me a copy of the iso.
Playing it on modern computers was like liding while recording, then speeding up the footage by about seven times.
So, yeah, you need old hardware (or software limiters to make high tech appear old) to play this game, which is unfortunate.
I wonder if Steam could get the rights to publish it alongside the other old LucasArts games...
@@gearhead743 Those aren't glitches
Learning how to contend with the eldritch abomination that is the Kraken is a core gameplay feature
@@Skorpeonismyrealname I just replayed it this weekend. You can try and use the program dxwnd. The main problem with the physics is that these are tied to the fps. So you can set a delay between the frames with dxwnd and you are good to go. I had some very minor bugs but nothing gamebreaking at all. Played it through in one go :)
I had and still have this game! I remember I enjoyed building droids way more than playing the actual game (that could be because English isn't my native language, and so as a kid I had almost no idea what I was supposed to do :D)
...I also remember the terrifying assassin droid you had to run away from in some mission. That thing appearing out of nowhere scared the shit out of me every time.
TheWRYYYYYYY i never even finished the training missions xD
I was also terrified of the assassin droids. I did not usually leave the testing zone.
This is so funny I was terrified of the droids too! I remember that once I had to do those missions, I couldn't stop looking behind me or the feeling of terror. Then, when I would replay the other missions I was still scared that it could be around a corner. I'm so happy that I wasn't the only scared kid!
Droid works was always secretly a horror game
Glad to hear I wasn't the only one terrified by the assassin droid.... that thing is made of nightmares. But to my credit I did finish the mission. It took alot of mental buildup to do it, but I did it. Modern day horror games have nothing on that sinister droid.
I was the guy who wrote the Wikipedia article on this game and got it featured on the main page. So stoked to see you give it your own spin. :D
Thank you for your service (against ignorance)!
It's amazing how often I look up a Wikipedia account and see that it's blocked
Oh god, this was one of the very few games I had played as a kid.
I don't know if I'll be able to handle this nostalgia bomb.
Shane McZane right
LGR is such a gem on youtube. Extremely simple format with excellent content and the result is a wonderful channel that has everything that a youtube channel should have with no extra crap.
Damn, I miss the times when game packages had a lot of content and effort put into them. Today you don't even get a manual.
You are lucky to even get meaningful physical media sometimes. MGSV's PC version came with a DVD case with a printed code on a sticker inside of it.
I want my gaming manuals! No one reads the read me, I want a hard back instruction booklet I can fap over on the bus home from town!
@@sosomadman pay extra.
some computer parts don't even come with a full manual, heck my chair had two seperate instructions one for the chair and ONE for the arm rest pieces which the chair instructions EXPECTED You to know and already have the 3 part sets of the armrest already built...
This game is almost like a spiritual predecessor to Kerbal Space Program. You build something to accomplish a particular goal, then try to do it with what you built. If anything goes wrong, you iterate on your design until you get it right.
The game Besiege is quite similar as well. It's definitely a subgenre that's taken off in recent years!
Ryan Rardin I would say it's more like Spore
I just bought Besiege the other day. A friend showed me _Kerbal Space Program_ (awesome game btw, check it out, you'll like it) and that reminded me of you dabbling with Besiege some months ago.
It's now just over €5 on Steam. Get it while it's cheap!
[/shameless plug]
Also Robocraft
I often fall asleep to your great videos at night, and not due to boredom either. You have the perfect soothing narrator voice!
Damn, that box has more colors than my soul
Cheeseburger Freedom Man Rip
souls don't have colors, I think
Dammit, should've said that the box is brighter than my soul
Your soul is RED WHITE'N'BLUE
Cheeseburger Freedom Man It would have more colours than mine as well, if I had one.
Also, I hope you win in 2020. LEGALISATION OF WEED!
@7:33 I laughed harder at this part than almost any other youtube video ever. that was great
Oh man, I remember playing this game as a kid
Duuude, I want A Jar Jar's Journey review sooo bad! :D
maxmetalknight agreed
I never got my Jar Jar cartoon, that Lucas promised, so at least there's that :D
Thank you for saving my morning.
Thanks for watching!
jawas live in the desert because they're looking for a hot time
lucas learning, WHAT
"Stay on target!" Funny enough I totally remember playing this in elementary school, very faintly though. I haven't thought of this until today.
Awesome memories from this game, I do remember kind of not really being able to beat any levels because of frustrating glitches. But I was just a Star Wars loving kid just enjoying building and driving around droids. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
The "stay on target" had me chuckling a good bit :-D
Oh man I had this game for Mac along with "the gungan frontier" it was slim pickings for a star wars fan with a Mac. Great video!
Waking up to an LGR video is the best feeling ever. Love ya, Clint.
❤❤❤
Dude, I use to love this game! It was installed on my grandparent's old computer and I remember my siblings and I would play it all the time before they got a new computer. Man, the nostalgia lol
Huh, I don't really remember it being that glitchy tho. Then again it was a long time ago, plus I didn't play too many levels. Or maybe we just pretty much ignored it lol
Hahaha, oh lord, the nostalgia brought back by watching you struggle to get up those inclines is too much. I adored this game as a child.
I LOVED playing this game as a kid. I got my copy through a scholastic book sale along side with star wars pit droids. I can't remember how many hours I spent playing this game in all it's glitchy glory.
Ellie Mae, Daisy Duke, and Wham! all in one review of a Star Wars "game!?" You just won the Internet, LGR!
Dog. droidworks is a masterpiece when played on a CPU slow enough that it can perform as intended. You saying you won't play it again makes me sad. You need to do this game right by figuring out how to get it to run properly, because I promise you, this game is one of the very best when everything works properly.
How DO you run it properly on a modern PC? I've been trying on and off to figure that out for the past ten years.
He should try it on an iMac G3, game runs well on those old PowerPC Mac computers
How slow does it has to be to work properly?
@@spockthelogical I just replayed it this weekend. You can try and use the program dxwnd. The main problem with the physics is that these are tied to the fps. So you can set a delay between the frames with dxwnd and you are good to go. I had some very minor bugs but nothing gamebreaking at all. Played it through in one go :)
@@spockthelogical Oh, I almost forgot. you want to aim at about 30 fps! :)
oh yes! I DO knew this when it was new, so awesome (as a child)
Aw you should have talked about how scary the assassin droids were for kids! Seriously, to this day, I have dreams they're chasing me.
"Unpredictable Glitchy Garbage"
I'd wear that on a T-shirt. :-)
As an aside, it's depressing that despite all the work done to make the *other* Sith Engine games work on modern systems, *this* is the one I actually want to see again.
Seems like this game could stand an update or a remake.
I played the shit out of this as a kid in the early 2000s. Didn't speak any english, so I had no idea you could even test the robots until I found the button after months.
Star Wars Math was pretty fun from what I remember.
The story was that you are a pilot whose ship got caught up in an asteroid storm and crash landing on Tatooine. You then have to earn money for new parts for your ship and eventually a brand new hyperdrive by playing games against other Star Wars characters and flying your ship-in-progress around the planet collecting scrap to sell to Wato so there is an unintentional theme of gambling through most of the game's content.
This is one of those games that I saw advertised many times, but never got around to ever playing despite wanting it.
Still got my dusty disk :)
The Gungan Frontier was an interesting Lucas Learning game since it was an ecology management simulator and I don't see many people talk about it. Basically Boss Nass wants the Gungans to colonize Naboo's moon but it doesn't have an ecosystem to support a colony so you play as either Obi-Wan or Queen Amidala and you collect plants, herbivores, and carnivores from the Star Wars universe, set up an ecosystem, and then tell the Gungan's how much of each species they can harvest so that you can balance the demands of a growing Gungan civilization without causing your hard-won ecosystem to collapse. It was really smart, really hard, and really rewarding.
This game seems like one of the most amazing ideas ever on paper. Everything about this game is just begging to me updated and tried again in the modern age.
Ah I had such a good time playing this as a kid. I remember restarting missions because I got the boxes in a hole and I actually remember having to learn about levers and pulley systems from the game. Huh, never struck me as a learning game as I played it. I could never finish the games though because the assassin droids scared me! Only ever finished the intro missions. Anyway, I'm sure you would have loved it if you played it as a kid back in the early 2000's
I remember playing this many years ago as one of my very first games ever. I played it on an old Mac my dad had set up in my room, along with a library of old ports of arcade games and dark forces. these games clocked truly unbelievable amounts of time. Even today I remember them fondly, albeit totally broken. Even then I could see the issues. This game, along with dark forces started me on the path I continue to this day if trying to find ways to break the game as much as possible. I'm very glad someone else covered this and brought out the dusty old nostalgia. LGR did a very good job with this video. I'm happy to see this game again. It's like an old friend. One that didn't age terribly gracefully, but an old friend nonetheless. Thank you, LGR
I'm glad to know other people had these problems. When played this game back in '04(ish) I remember being frustrated because I couldn't pass the first level. I always clipped through the box.
I remember playing this game at the Museum of Science in Boston, but my family sucked and never let me do anything I wanted to and pulled me away after only like 5 minutes. We just HAD to see every single fucking exhibit in the museum, instead of spending meaningful time with each individual one.
Rant over.
This game ruled so goddamn much as a kid. I loved it so much. I’m pretty sure that if I played this game I’d suddenly be able to find all of the secret, hidden areas in the testing zone immediately because I spent so much time there, testing out my awful, awful droids, just to make one that can jump the most, or one that literally couldn’t even make it up the slope to get into the area because I wanted to see how heavy of a body I could put on how tiny and weak of legs...
R2 and C3PO's love child is surprisingly nimble.
I fell in love with Droidworks ever since I tried it on my library's computers. And after my parents bought me a copy, the PC that it worked on with little bugs was a Mac 7500/100. Now, it's sad to think I'll never get this experience back. I'm gonna miss this rare gem of a game. There's also one thing that makes the glitches seem trivial: Those GOD DAMN sadistic assassin droids!
Aw man! My childhood!
I played this game a TON as a kid. (It ran perfectly without the glitches on my old Mac.)
And it still holds a special place in my heart.
…
Except the phrik mines level.
That place scared the shit out of me.
When I played this as a kid I remember it running perfectly, I wonder if it runs better on older machines. My Brother and I used to work together to each play and we would share our discoveries. my favorite memory was when we descovered how on a night-vision head you could paint the eyes white to change it from a night-vision effect to more of a headlamp effect which would greatly reduce battery consumption making the dark level way easier though 100 times creepier.
Jar jar binks, lord of hatred
ProtoMario Sith Lord*
Droid Works and Gungan Frontier were my two star wars PC guilty pleasures, and I'd absolutely love to see both of these updated. Hell, throw in Tie Fighter and X-Wing to the "Remake for modern systems" bundle and you've probably saved the spirit of human goodness.
Thanks for the review and the nostalgia.
I still have my original disk of this game -- I played many, many hours of this game a kid. Loved it.
I played this game like crazy back in the early 2000's and absolutely adored everything about it. I was about 6-7 at the time so I either never really noticed most of the glitchyness or just thought it was part of the game. If I had to go back and try to play through it now I would probably hate it. Good video tho.
"stay on target!", simply hilarious!!
10:08 what was with those late 90's morphing textures?
It's a fascinating topic and it has to do with how the software renderer cheaply maps textures without perspective correction! A bit much to explain in a comment, but here ya go:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping#Perspective_correctness
You can see that a lot in old PS1 games, especially anything with a 1st person mode where you can get right up against a wall, like MGS. It went away as 3D acceleration became standard.
Yes, it was very distinctive of the PS1. Perspective distortion is mainly in mid 90's shooters, a different type of distortion to PS1.
Z-buffering and perspective-correct textures were some of the things that the N64 had that the PS1 didn't. Unfortunately, the N64 also had over-aggressive texture filtering, which kind of evened it out.
Also, while quickly doing some research to find out whether that was as true as I remembered, I found out that the 'warping' effect I remembered actually has to do with the PS1 not having the ability to perform floating-point operations, it could only use integers (or whole numbers) to calculate the positions of whichever effect/polygon/vertex was being used. This meant that the vertices would often be warped, because there wasn't enough precision in the calculation to put everything in the 100% correct place.
Not only warped but often switching back and forth between different positions.
I loved taking this out from the library, how nostalgic.
God, I loved this game as a kid. I don't think I ever finished anything past the second mission, but I spent a ridiculous amount of time just building droids and running around the training facility.
Man, I played the crap out of this game back in the day. Not having traditional game consoles or a Windows PC growing up, this was one of the few games I got to play on the family Mac. One of my all-time favorites. Thankfully, the game ran beautifully back in the day. I guess our old computer was just crappy enough to keep things running smoothly! I wish I still had a machine that could run it.
Ah, CamelCase, whenever it's used in titles to make something look MoreImportant.
Of course I play so much BattleTech with it's BattleMechs and OmniMechs, the MechWarriors that pilot them. Battle Armor that uses HarJel to seal armor breaches, AeroTech fighters that are used to escort DropShips and JumpShips. I've grown so accustomed to it.
On the subject of this game, I have nostalgia with this game despite barely playing it. It was mostly watching my brother play it but I specifically remember the dancing mode on the construction screen.
Also... Who else thought InDex would describe *the* Force and not the forces of energy when LGR showed it in the video?
This game was pretty much my main gateway into Star Wars. I'm not kidding, I had watched the movies previously as a little kid, but I had next to no memory of them other than some of the characters names and the fact that there were robots, space ships and lightsabers. I had also watched my older brothers play the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, but that was pretty much it. I mainly wanted to play this because I was really into robots, and building and controlling robots was a thing in this.
i loved this game as a kid! didn't have the physics issues either (although I definitely got stuck a lot). always liked how the farmers in droidworks were the pedestrians in dark forces 2
I got this game from a book-fair when I was in a kid.
I thought it was the shit, and played it on what was, in hindsight, a proto-tablet my dad used for work.
Siriausly? No one posted a snarky retort on his comment?
I played this game when it came out and never had any issues like you experienced. It’s one of my favorite games from my childhood.
Highly unlikely
I loved this game as a kid and I don't recall having any of the glitches you mentioned. Bad camera, yeah. Awkward controls, yeah. But not being unable to move up ramps or anything. I wish I could tell you my setup but all I remember from then was it was a Gateway Windows 98 box. Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia trip!
This game scared the crap out of me as a kid. When the assassin droid shows up and wails away on you, I turned it off every time. Aaaaah, memories.
Played this when I was in preschool. I couldn't remember what it was called until I saw this video. Awesome I get to see this again!
oh man I played this game for many hours as a child! so great to see someone talking about it
Now I REALLY want to see the other star wars educational games I think I'll go search for some videos now.
I had this back in the day, I don't remember the box being holo on the Uk release though. LGR you are the man for my nostalgia needs!
I had Gungan Frontier in 99 (I was 6!) and it came with a demo of Droidworks. It had one mission, the one that teaches you the mechanics of gears, and a fraction of the parts available for droid building. But goddamn, I played the hell out of it. Probably played it hundreds of times more than Gungan Frontier.
I played the Macintosh version of this incessantly and it was rock-solid; I don't re,member ever encountering bugs like you showed off. The last handful of levels added active opposition (assassin droids that had to be avoided or stunned with one of the droid attachments) and scared the shit out of me as a kid.
Ah man, I played this game as a kid. This is like a blast from the past. Damn.
Man, I put so many hours in that game. Thanks for covering it, LGR.
YES, this was my childhood dude!
I went to a fun computer education thing that was hosted by a daycare called the treehouse at my local mall. I got to play this game when it first came out and it was my obsession! This is what I thought of when fallout 4 came out with Automatron.
Between this and the early armored core I found that I really enjoy these types of robot customization games and it saddens me it isnt a more popular genre.
At least steam has a few hidden gems that are like this game.
Oh man, the nostalgia. I forgot all about this game. I used to love this back when it came out. Pretty sure I didn't get very far since I was, you know, 10 years old... and it was a little janky... still lots of love! It came out after the Sojourner Mars rover mission ended, which wholly captured my imagination back then. Robots are cool.
Oh man, I played the shit out of DroidWorks when I was a kid. It was a decent way to learn about simple machines too.
That's interesting that you had so many glitches. I played this as a kid, and had no technical problems with it that I could remember. Climbing up ramps worked in a mostly natural way. Granted, things worked very unrealistically if you built a lightweight droid with high jumping power, but that was fun too. I think I probably would have been using a SONY VAIO running either Windows ME or XP (probably both at various times). I mostly loved the game, but put it on the shelf when the final missions were too hard for me. Years later I completed it, and was completely let down by the ending. Regardless, it was very fun to play through, and definitely educational. One last note, this game introduced me to the concept of kilograms.
I had this as a demo as a child - it have fascinated me ever since.
one of the games that got me hooked on starwars as a kid glad i found this vid
Jesus Christ. That box is the shiniest thing I've seen since the 25th anniversary edition of A Tribe Called Quest's "People's Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm"!
I remember playing this game as a kid. I freagin' loved it, creating your own droid in the Star Wars universe? That shit was mind blowing. Now I just need you to review Forestia and you have about covered my childhood when it comes to PC/Mac games...
I LOVED THIS GAME back in the day. I don't remember any bugs back in '98.
Did anyone else catch that Jawa joke at 9:31? "Why do you Jawas always live in the desert?" "Because we're looking for a hot time."
Gotta love sneaking adult jokes into a kid's game!
Oh my goodness, I used to go my middle school library during lunch or after hours to get my hands on this gem. This was my jam game.
I'd kill to just chill with this dude and play through his collection
Gungan Frontier, managing an environment on the moon of Naboo to support a colony there, was another edutainment game they made. There was also a podracer game at about the same time, but I think that was a regular Lucasarts project.
I used to love this game.
Never tried it on newer hardware... but never had an issue back when I played it.
Dang. We got to play this after all our work was done in our 2nd grade special projects class. This is the first time seeing it since then. This takes me back. hahaha
I vaguely remember loving this when I was 4 or 5. I just loved building the robots. Never remembered it being Star Wars since I never really got into it. But dang, this is bringing back a lot of memories.
Oh man... I had a lot of fun playing droidworks back in the day.
I loved this game when I was a kid! Still got the CD in my parents attic!
I remember "renting" this game at the Library. I used to love renting this game. It was a lot of fun when I was a kid. Was pretty cool to make your own droids. The missions and just messing around in the test area were actually really fun as a kid. I didn't have issues with either this game nor Lego Island on my old PC I had like 20 yrs ago. Maybe I just got lucky having the "perfect" level of slow computer lol.
Wow. There's a blast from the past. I used to love Droidworks back when my best friend from middle school had it. Here's hoping someone creates an open source clone of it so that future generations can also enjoy this forgotten gem. Though hopefully without a lot of the game-breaking bugs.
One of my friends had this on his Mac back in 99. We sat and watched him play for hours.
I love that you take time to shed some light on these obscure late 90's PC games that would otherwise be lost and forgotten forever. Keep 'em coming!
I had the demo of this game back in the days on my dad's power PC running on mac os 9 and I don't remember having any issues with it. making the robots dance was my favorite part of the game.
I had no idea lucasarts had an edutainment firm for a bit... AMAZING!
I remeber that game--it was a lot of fun making the droids. I never completed it, though...
As a kid, we had it running on some old Windows 95 computer and it didn't have those bugs in it.