C3PO - Obstacle 3-Putt by Sabodas (2007)



Play: c3po_20070924b.swf

The aim of the game is to hole out. Obstructing your way are circles of random size and position, which will deflect your ball and then disappear. You are rewarded points for every obstacle you hit, and of course for holing out.

Your opponent is an AI player. Its first priority is to hole out, second is to score maximum points. It will try and calculate the optimum path for a number of different aims, starting straight at the hole, and then full circle with 5 degree intervals.

In the top of the screen are some controls. Use the "New game" button to load a new game. The checkboxes next to it manage the default settings for scoring ("winner takes all") and playing against the AI opponent ("on"). The "Control panel" button opens a more complete settings dialog, allowing you for instance to reset the score, to add players (up to a maximum of 4), to change the point awarded for hitting circles (1) and holing out (10), to set the accuracy for the AI opponent... and some more debug options. One of my favorites is to have just the AI player, set to an accuracy interval of 1 degree, and see if it can find the hole every time.

Inspiration

For several years, I was an avid competitor (and still am a great fan) of St.Mulligan's 3-putt, a wonderful game in flash, which over time has evolved considerably and has become a major inspiration to exploring the possibilities of flash. Little wonder then, that my C3PO project entails some kind of 3-putt game.

I created the game using the Adobe Flex framework. In the summer of 2007 I hit on an article called Intro to the Flex SDK by Andy 'pinacolada' Fischer, and it touched exactly the right nerve for me to get excited - just the concept of actual source files that I can edit in my favourite editor, and store in an orderly fashion (instead of starting up the Flash program and trying to locate fragments of script).