User:Zeno McDohl/Chibot Ultra Battle

Chibot Ultra Battle, or ChUB is an America Online chat room game originally written by Neo-Kamek (under the alias of KamekSally) and later expanded on by Noah K 17, creating ChUB: Annihilation. Over the years as dialup became obsolete, AOL battlers started to die out. ChUB remains the only AOL battle with a still existing official webpage and also has projects by community members to create a new ChUB based on a stand-alone client.

ChUB featured different datasets (collection of characters/arenas/items) such as Fierce Battle, which had over 900 selectable characters.



History
Chibot Ultra Battle was first conceived as Sailor Moon K, to inject some life into the Sailor Moon battler community. At the time, the dominant battle bot was Sailor Moon Talonic, DarkFang's hacked version of Ai Senshi's original Sailor Moon Supreme game. While Sailor Moon Supreme/Talonic used a stamina system, Sailor Moon K used an MP system like Final Fantasy. Sailor Moon K also added new characters, such as villains.

With each new release of Sailor Moon K, new non-Sailor Moon characters were added, such as Sonic the Hedgehog. This produced complaints from purists, and Sailor Moon K eventually broke off into Kamek Ultra Battle.

The character library for Kamek Ultra Battle grew with each new release. Eventually, the character library was so large that Neo-Kamek created a new game called Chibot Ultra Battle. Unlike in Kamek Ultra Battle, Chibot Ultra Battle allowed hosts to use custom character datasets. Hosts could also create their own characters and introduce them into their game.

Eventually, Neo-Kamek got bored of ChUb, and made the source code public. New versions of ChUB cropped up, the most notable of those being the Talisman version by Noah K. The Talisman version replaced the in-game runes with talismans. There were also new talismans added.

Gameplay
ChUB gameplay was divided up into several phases: character selection, rune/weapon selection, team selection, pre-battle, battle, and post-battle.

Character Selection
Character selection begins after the host has fully loaded his/her copy of ChUB and opened entries. During character selection, players choose a character by typing its selection command. For example, to join as Sailor Moon, a player could type in /moon. The host could optionally display a list of characters. However, due to the size of some datasets, this character list was often large enough to flood the screen and delay character selection.

Rune/Weapon Selection
Rune/weapon selection normally takes place during character selection. Each character picks a rune and/or a weapon, depending on the game configuration. Over fifty runes were available. Each rune gave the player a certain power, such as increased agility or strength, or strange off-the-wall effects such as the "Rune of ChUB Bugs".

Weapon selection depended on the dataset in use. Each weapon expanded the default skillset of a character. There were no restrictions on weapon use; any type of character could equip any type of weapon. This opened the doors to cheesefest weapons such as the "Really Good Sword", which turned any playable character into a master swordsman with healing and status boosting skills. Some weapons could only be used a limited number of times before they were completely expended and destroyed.

Team Selection
After character and rune/weapon selection was closed, the host had the option to set up team play. Most games were played in a free-for-all. However, some games allowed players to form teams using the /defect command. Players who joined a team had their kills and deaths pooled into a team total. Depending on who was on the team, this could be either good or bad.

Pre-Battle
After team selection, the host starts the pre-battle phase. At this point, the battle is ready to go. All characters are displayed with their screen name, rune selection, weapon selection, and current Hit Points, Super Points, and Cheese Points. The pre-battle phase was often used for last-minute team changing.

Battle
During the battle phase, characters fought each other. Characters used their special moves, weapons, and runes to attack, heal, cause status changes, or defend from attacks. Some characters had more exotic moves that allowed them to perform special feats such as mimicking the moves of others, creating clones, or revive fallen allies.

Characters had Hit Points (HP), Super Points (SP), and Cheese Points (CP). HP determines how much more damage a character can take before he or she is KOed and rendered unable to fight. Characters usually started with 600 HP. Whenever HP hits zero, the character dies.

As characters deal and take damage, their SP increases. For every 100 SP a character has, he/she can perform a Super Move of that level. Super Moves generally maxed out at Level 3, but the host could optionally enable Super Moves all the way up to Level 6. Super Moves were usually powered-up versions of normal moves, and they dealt a far greater amount of damage. Super Moves were always attack moves, they could never be healing moves.

Cheese Points replaced the old Magic Points (MP) system from Kamek Ultra Battle. The CP system was implemented due to the ability of character editors to create insanely-powered characters who could kill anything in one hit. When a character starts dealing exessive amounts of damage, his/her CP would rise. After a certain point, the character would pass out and fall asleep, and forced to wait until the CP gauge returned to zero before he/she could move again.

Battle continues until a time limit or a set number of kills, configured by the host. Endless games were also possible.

Post-Battle
After a winner has been decided (or the host terminates the game prematurely), the game displays the final results, including the name of the winner and the kill tally for all characters.

Issues
Chibot Ultra Battle had several issues.

Flooding
Due to America On-Line's stringent anti-flood detection, Chibot Ultra Battle had to be configured to delay output to the channel so as not to trip the flood kick. Even with the proper configuration, hosts could still be flooded off when using the built-in chat line. The delayed output also confused several users and required the game speed settings to be reduced vastly. Games with a large number of players were difficult to play due to all the information being sent to the chat room in a delayed manner; in some cases there were information delays of minutes or more.

Host Advantage
Hosts could play in their own games. Due to the delayed output, they held an inherent advantage to other players, as they could see the game events unfolding in front of them long before the other players could. Additionally, there was a game monitoring window that showed all information for all players. The host could exploit this information easily, whereas other players would have to enter commands and wait for the output before using that information.

Additionally, the host had several advanced options at his or her disposal which could allow him/her to blatantly cheat by giving him/herself additional HP, weapons, or items.

God Mode Bot
When Neo-Kamek first released the game to the public, he gave some of his friends a bot referred to as the "God Mode Bot". It could be used to remotely terminate the games of disruptive hosts, as well as directly alter games in progress by editing character information, removing fighters from the game, or unlocking things such as the Level 6 Super Combos.

The God Mode Bot was eventually distributed to the wrong people. Unscrupulous chatters with the god mode bot could use it to mess up games in progress or even crash the host's computer. This was remedied by updating Chibot Ultra Battle to lock out the initial god mode bot, but the bot was still distributed to Kamek's friends, and the cycle continued anew.

The god mode bot was probably the biggest criticism of the game due to the power it held over the host's game, and sometimes his/her computer as well.

Versions
There have been many different versions of ChUB.

Chibot Ultra Battle
This is the original version by Neo-Kamek. It features the Rune system. The latest version released was ChUB 2000 Final.

ChUB Talisman
This version was made by Noah K 17 using the ChUB source code. It features the Talisman system.

ChUB Annihilation
The sequel to ChUB Talisman. Also uses the Talisman system.

ChUB Resurrection
A version of ChUB made by the original author (Neo-Kamek). This one used Internet Relay Chat as a communication medium instead of the original AOL. Not to be confused with Ganon's ChUB Resurrection, which is a different project.

Project CR
A Multi-User Dungeon made by Zeno, based loosely on Chibot Ultra Battle.