Bot Scavenger

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Bot Scavenger
A shipment of robots has crashed and robot parts have been scattered all over the surface of Nyehba, the moon of a nearby planet. You know how to repair robots and since, by the Law of Interspace Commerce, things lost in space belong to whoever can retrieve them first, you decide to go over to if you can bring salvage some robots. You land on Nyehba in your old BotRover, outfitted with robot pods, to collect the parts, and a simple gun. The gun is handy because there may be Protectos guarding the lost parts until the owners return.

Your Objective
Get as many robots as you can. You do this by collecting the parts and combining them into robots while defending against enemy fire.

Collecting Parts
There are broken robot pieces all over the place. There are three types of pieces you’ll find buried on the surface of Nyehba:


Head	Body	Legs

Collecting a part is easy: you simply fly over one and your cargo bay doors will automatically open to retrieve the part into one of your ship’s four pods.

Building Robots
Simply having parts in the pods will not do – the parts will need to be combined into robots so that they can be brought home. You can do this by flying over a resource dome, , which will automatically beam up the binding force that will put the pieces together in full robots.

Be Careful!
The shipping company has sent over Protectos to protect its lost parts while its recovery team is in transit. Protectos are small units that will attack anyone that is trying to take the lost parts. Each part that is taken sends out a distress signal to request protection and the more parts you collect, the more likely the distress signals will get through. Parts that have been built into robots will stop sending signals so you may want to build your robots as quickly as possible.

Getting Hit
The Protectos are not there to harm you – they only want to prevent you from taking the parts they are protecting – and so will aim only at your pods. Each of your pods can sustain four direct hits before it is destroyed. The less pods you have, the more trips you will need to make to the resource centers to free them up to collect more parts.

Dealing with Protectos
You can get rid of Protectos by firing at them - crosshairs will show on your viewport if you are on target to hit one. All protectos can carry one part it is sheltering - by destroying a Protecto, you free up the part, which you may then collect. On higher levels, the only way you can win the level is by destroying Protectos to get the parts to fill your quota. One more thing: don’t collide into Protectos - it will almost certainly destroy your ship.

Winning and Losing
You win each level when you’ve filled to quota of robots for that level. When you win a level, your ship gets repaired a bit so that any damage you have taken will be repaired - up to four hits worth. The game ends when all your pods are destroyed since you won’t be able to take on any more parts.

The Control Panel
When you first start playing, don't worry about memorizing the entire control panel - just concentrate on getting used to how your ship feels. The only things that will matter are the directional indicator, which shows you what direction your ship is moving in, and the parts pods, which show you what parts you have collected and what you will need to complete a full robot. As you get more advanced, you may wonder when missiles have been fired at you or how many robots you have left to collect. You can then revisit this page to see what else you can use to help you get the most robots.

The Viewport allows you to look into the three dimensional landscape on Nyehba and the robot parts scattered about its surface.
The Directional Indicator corresponds to the four directional keys (either the directional pad or the number pad). Pressing one of the directional keys will put your ship in motion in that direction until the opposite button is pressed. The standard buttons are used: UP (or 2) is forward, DOWN (of 8) is reverse, LEFT (or 4) turns left, RIGHT (or 6) turns right.
The Protecto & Resource Radar shows you where Protecto units and Resources Domes are in relation to your ship, which is located at the center and pointing up. The radar background is normally dark green but turns black when Protectos start coming after you.
The Incoming Missile Alert lights up in red when a missile is launched against you (possibly from a Protecto behind you).
The Bots Quota meter shows you how many robots you need to build to win this level. The filled boxes are robots you have successfully built and the empty boxes are the number of robots you will need to get.
Your Score shows you how many robots you have collected so far in this game.
Your Level is shown next to your score.
The Parts Pods allow you to store the parts you retrieve. The damage a pod has taken is shown by the color of its edge: green is healthy; yellow is slightly damaged; orange is very damaged; red is severely damage. Black means the pod is no longer usable. Every time you win a level, your pods are repaired to be able to sustain four more hits.

Visual Cues
There are a number of hints that will appear in your viewport to tell you about your situation.

If there are parts too far to see, you will see a Distant Parts Notifier light up near the top of your viewport. If you are lost, you can turn in place until you see the notifier and then head in that direction.
Protecto units appear on your radar as boxes.
Resource domes, where you can go to build your robots, appear as dots on your radar.
If your target is in range, a Target in Range will appear. If you fire in time, you will hit the target.
Your incoming missiles alert lights up red when one or more missiles have been launched against you.
To prevent you from getting lost, you will be stopped from leaving the crash site and a red bar will appear on the top of the viewport when you cannot move forward or on the bottom of the viewport when you cannot move backwards.

Screen Shots


Look around	Go towards a part	Part retrieved into pod


Red radar indicates hostiles	Incoming missile alert	Pod took damage


Enough parts for a robot	Find resource dome	Buil a robot!

Hints

Get used to referring to the directional indicator. Your ship is a bit old and slow and may not respond that quickly. There may be a small lag time between your instruction to turn and the ship responding to your request. Once you get used to the feel of your ship, you will be able to fly it smoothly and fairly accurately.
Even if a missile has been launched against you, you can avoid being hit by moving out of its way. Use the missile attack alert light to show you when missiles have been launched against you.
To minimize to chance that Protectos will get created to attack you, try to keep your pods empty by visiting resource centers as soon as you’ve collected enough to make robots. If you do not carry any parts, no new Protectos will be created. You can then concentrate on destroying existing Protectos to leave an safe environment.
You can maximize the points you get by building more robots than you need to finish a level.