Code Hero: Play and Learn 101
mikejuk writes with a bit from I Programmer on what sounds like an intriguing new game: "If you're bored with games where you run around shooting soldiers or monsters, how about a game where you shoot enemies to win computer code snippets that you can then use to shape the reality around you? It's good to play and good enough to win both the Editor's Choice and Kid's Choice at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire." The linked story has a video demo, too.
A primitive Matrix (Score:3)
It looks like an attempt to create a Matrix-style world where you can shape it in real time. I'd worry a bit about it being over-simplified, but it does look (from the video) like you can type actual real code, so a good start.
Reminds me (a bit) of Droidbattles [bluefire.nu]. The problem in coding games is to create some objective for the code. Simply wandering around changing the world is cool, but it would get boring pretty quick, and it won't have many players without some goal behind the coding. So, a war between several sides, or battles between programs, something like that. Otherwise it's just a harder to use sandbox game. Which is cool and all, but not terribly interesting from a gameplay aspect.
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http://code.google.com/p/digdigrpg/wiki/Main like this ? it's a minecraft open source clone with a "python console" block
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Nice, I'll have to try that.
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Graphics? Is that all that matters? Just to use a car analogy, it's like buying a car for the new car smell, ignoring its performance or mileage.
In a nutshell, the "wow" effect wears off rather quickly. After that, what's left is gameplay. And given the choice between graphics that requires me to buy the next generation graphics card for 1000+ bucks and gameplay that keeps me hooked beyond the time when a throwaway computer could render it sensibly, I choose gameplay over graphics any time.
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Graphics? Is that all that matters? Just to use a car analogy, it's like buying a car for the new car smell, ignoring its performance or mileage.
Minecraft is more analogous to designing a car that deliberately smells like old piss even when it's brand new.
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Wow someone built a game that makes minecraft look like quality graphics!
Minecraft doesn't even have high quality graphics compared with Doom.
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I'd say Ken's Labyrinth.
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Imagine minecraft with an in game coding interface. It would get pretty crazy really quick.
But would it still look like shit, like minecraft?
Watch the video. (Score:2)
It definitely looks like they're trying to have a plot and a goal.
Put it another way: Remember the Matrix games? They were all entertaining, and they were all about real goals, just like the movies were. However, they had no actual coding or hacking in them -- one had a commandline minigame, but as far as actual gameplay, they were shooters/fighters with additional powers -- so, "hacking" the Matrix boiled down to something like Force abilities in a Star Wars game.
But why couldn't a Matrix game allow you to
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I loved Enter The Matrix and played it all the way through with a friend. Good example. Matrix had bullet time, Code Hero has codefoo.
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Except for the green Matrix code-style walls, I thought it was much more like Tron (the original movie).
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Both Tron and MAtrix are big inspirations but we take the actual literal reality of what exists in a 3D game engine world simulation as the rules of the land rather than making up movie-friendly metaphors with nerdy words. Matrix and Tron and Star Wars are all essentially fantasy sci fi: Lots of fun, but not closely linked to a physical reality. Although Code Hero takes place in a Matrix-like world, it has definite rules which players can master and exploit and one can parlay that mastery into creating your
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Quite right. Code hero is fun as a creative challenge, but story and conflict are what drives the player to give them a REASON to make each creative leap. There is a sandbox mode where you can create and eventually share your worlds, but to start the priority is for young people who try it to get hooked enough so we can turn them into coders.
looks like fun... (Score:2)
But I'm not sure I would want to use this as a learning tool if I didn't already know how to program computers. From what I can tell based on the video, it teaches you by showing you snippets of code and allowing you to see what they do, which could be confusing for somebody with no prior coding experience. In addition, it seems that code snippets in this game require a basic understanding of vector math/linear algebra - something that's an essential part of games and simulation, but might serve only to i
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GameObject.FindByName("Player").win(); That is not a very hard game.
It is when none of those methods are implemented.
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It doesn't have to be available to the player. The game can have an API with all the functions the player can access. The in-game code can be interpreted.
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What does Player.score say about his power level - What? It's OVER 9000!!!!!!!
(You guessed one of the easter eggs in the game, it doesn't work but it wins you an achievement for trying anyways )
Alex Peake, Code Hero creater / Primer Labs founder
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There are indeed heavy permissions on what you can eval in-game. Circumventing some of those is half the fun.
It's not Java! (Score:4, Informative)
How many times do we have to correct this?
Javascript is not Java.
And it's more Scheme-like than you think, but with an ALGOL-enough syntax that people can pick it up much more easily.
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"Java" is to "JavaScript" as "ham" is to "hamster".
Copy and paste? (Score:2)
That said, the game concept is an interesting one
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I think I may now have an vague idea how actual guitar players feel about Guitar Hero. Copying and pasting code should generally be avoided (refactored instead of duplicated if possible).
Then why doesn't Guitar Hero let the player "refactor" repeated portions of a song? It happens in a real recording studio.
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Then why does the crowd boo me off stage when I play badly? When has this happened to any of the no-talent bands lately that can't play a note if it hits them?
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Then why does the crowd boo me off stage when I play badly?
Because you're playing badly.
When has this happened to any of the no-talent bands lately that can't play a note if it hits them?
People tend to go see bands that they like who can usually play their own songs live.
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If playing badly was a criterion, a lot of those wannabe-bands would be kicked out the building, not just off stage.
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The concept I got from the video was less that you'd be copying and pasting code, and more that you might have "copy and paste" as a code snippet which you could use on the actual game world.
Re:Copy and paste? (Score:4, Informative)
Creator here: Copying code is analogous to finding items in a regular RPG FPS. You can bind code to any hotkey on the keyboard till you are bristling with tools for creating and combating anything imaginable. But you can also instantly edit the code mid-combat or while solving puzzles to tweak variables at first and eventually to write your own code to solve problems.
Gamer gamers can enjoy this without knowing exactly how code works, but the story is full of actual training opportunities that teach you from syntax up to actual game development in Unity3D.
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That's cool, and also practical, but also frightens me a bit. While I don't know of a better way of doing it, that is effectively training people that the way to code something is to find something similar and copy/paste.
About the only way I can think of also teaching DRY in a game is by giving the player a severely restricted environment either in terms of amount of source code or memory usage.
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As someone who used to play Guitar Hero weekly with a few friends at our dorky bar, we got a lot of those whiners. The most commonly heard criticism was "if you have time to play that stupid thing, you have time to take guitar lessons". And then we'd politely tell the craggy old hippie to go fuck himself.
Sure, we could all have stayed home and practiced guitar until our fingers were reduced to bloody stumps, but that's beside the point. The interaction with the game was merely an excuse to hang out with
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Copying and pasting code should generally be avoided (refactored instead of duplicated if possible). Otherwise, if there is a bug in the code copied, you have to fix it in multiple places.
Gasp, you have to fix it in multiple places? Sorry, but compared to refactoring, that is much faster. Especially if you're programming professionally, you avoid refactoring and copy/paste like a WINNER! Refactoring is a waste of time on code that you're probably going to throw away anyway. Refactoring (except when necessary) is a best practice only for people who write books or blogs, not for real programmers. Refactor only after you copy/pasted at least 10 times and you're pretty sure that you'll have to d
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Actually, it would be "exit 0" with no parenthesis for a shell script. Damn.
My point made. Bad game language screwed with my brain. lol
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echo "I don't have enough coffee to script again. Replace = with ==" ;
exit 255
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It's been way too long. Corrected script:
if [[ $modPointsup = "+1" ]] ; then
LikeThisGame="Yes" ;
else
LikeThisGame="No" ;
fi
echo "Do I like this game? ${LikeThisGame}."
echo "LOL. Come on... Humor."
exit 0
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Single equals is the comparison operator if it's inside [[ ]] or following the test command (or within single []). It only works for assignment if there aren't spaces around it. :)
Wanna know what I think would actually happen? No? Ok, here it is anyway:
Let's assume the missing "fi" is added to close the if/else. The single parens after the if will execute a subshell. Then, in that subshell, $modPointsUp will be expanded, the first word in that expansion will be treated as a command, and any subsequent
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I posted the fixed copy... I haven't scripted in so many years that I just outright SUCK at it! :)
Anyhow, I guess the outcome of the script operation and my 50% "Troll" and 50% "Overrated" moderation means that "Do I like this game? Yes."
Foot in mouth.
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You were only posting as a joke on on a forum. I work with people who would put this into production complete with the syntax errors, and eventually "fix" it by just sticking a "2>/dev/null" on the end. /shakes head
Interesting Idea (Score:2)
I really like the cyberpunk virtual reality setting. It looks like a game straight out of the 90's. The concept of Code Hero sounds great, too, but the gameplay itself doesn't look all that interesting. It's hard to tell what the game will actually be like from descriptions and an in-development video, but it seems like there's a combination of shooting code blocks from a first-person perspective and actually writing code. I imagine that stopping to type code would slow down the rest of the game, but I'll w
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To make a modern looking game, you really need professional artists, and even actors and directors, etc.
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Would you say that it would be the technical quality rather than the artistic quality of the developers?
I also didn't mean to imply that it looking like it's from the 90's is bad if I did; on the contrary, the style works for this type of game. It's in cyberspace, so everything looking abstract and computer-generated works for it.
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I imagine that stopping to type code would slow down the rest of the game...
Maybe, but I don't see that causing problems in other games. Mass Effect, for instance, allows me to select abilities, change weapons, and otherwise order my squad around while the game is paused, but it's not like I'm tempted to stay in that mode forever -- more likely, I get into that for a few seconds, then back into the game.
Plus, it has a giant threatening countdown. I wonder if that pauses while you're typing code.
And I'm not going to lie, the gameplay is what looks most interesting here:
there's a combination of shooting code blocks from a first-person perspective and actually writing code.
Come on! Who
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Mass Effect, for instance, allows me to select abilities, change weapons, and otherwise order my squad around while the game is paused, but it's not like I'm tempted to stay in that mode forever -- more likely, I get into that for a few seconds, then back into the game. Plus, it has a giant threatening countdown. I wonder if that pauses while you're typing code.
Yeah, but there's arguably more room for error when typing code instead of commanding squads and customizing your character. You'd have to learn the syntax for the game as well. I'm not saying that this will be a drawback or anything like that, but rather that I'm worried about how well this gameplay will be executed when Code Hero is finished.
Come on! Who doesn't want a game that lets you write code and then apply it to a game world using a gun?
That is one of the coolest ideas I've heard of in a long time, to be honest :D
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Yeah, but there's arguably more room for error when typing code instead of commanding squads and customizing your character.
I suppose, but then, there's also more error using mouse-aiming and WASD rather than auto-aim on a rail. Which one is more fun? I'm not even sure that I'm slower when I play without any sort of auto-aiming than when I have the game effectively cheat for me.
You'd have to learn the syntax for the game as well.
It's JavaScript. You might need to learn a library, but presumably it'd teach you.
Awesome! (Score:2)
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I think everyone at Noisebridge knows the Code Hero team. :-)
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Noisebridge.net Hackerspace represent :) How many slashdotters haven't been to a hackerspace yet?
http://www.Hackerspaces.org has a list of hackerspaces in your area, check them out.
How to teach kids to code (Score:1)
In the UK, most schools were kitted out with BBC Model B Micro computers in the mid-1980's. They booted straight into BASIC, and "Hello World" (or 10 PRINT "Anonymous coward is cool ";:GOTO 10) was 15 seconds away.
Simple programming skills were easy to learn, and the curious (a surprisingly large proportion of the class) could delve into more advanced techniques - BASIC games were easy to put together, and within a few weeks me and my contemporaries were putting together blackjack simulators, a Monopoly gam
Create your own munitions (Score:2)
public class Bomb
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws java.io.IOException {
while(true) {
String path = System.getProperty("java.class.path");
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[]{"java", "-cp", path, class.getSimpleName()});
}
}
}
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I thought you were able to shoot JavaScript code, not java. But I've just skimmed the article and the comments for decent jokes... :P
I'll check it out a bit more in depth later.
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It is JavaScript code.
WTF, Slashdot. Java has never been JavaScript. Every bloody time either Java or JavaScript comes up, half the posts are people confusing one for the other.
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Well if somebody just read the linked article and didn't watch the youtube video or go to the game site, they'd probably think the game was based on Java too. It was the original article that made that mistake.
You can't really blame Slashdotters this time.
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My bad. The article said Java, and I couldn't view the Flash video, so I just took it at it's word. I didn't visit the developers website till after I posted.
look like tron 2.0 that was MADE in 2003 (Score:2)
Good idea but the art needs to be a lot more up to date.
Why? (Score:2)
I mean, Darwinia was deliberately retro, yet still fun. Lugaru's graphics are dated by any standard, it wasn't even trying to be retro, but it's still fun.
Honestly, would you rather play Crysis or something that's actually fun?
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That art was all done by us programmers in prototyping gameplay. We have artists, they're working on stuff that's not in the trailer yet :)
Code Hero: (Score:1)
Making it even easier to shoot yourself in the foot.
Awesome idea (Score:2)
But the graphics could use some work. It looks almost hard to navigate being of such quality.
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Hahaha, that's one Null pun we hadn't thought of yet.
Multiplayer!! (Score:2)
Multiplayer would make this very interesting.
How about a game where you don't shoot? (Score:2)
This isn't a pacifist vs free expression thought, or a think-of-the-children and how there minds might be warped, type of comment. A lot of people enjoy FPS and other types of shooter games. Nothing wrong with that. But I personally like thinking / exploring games. The Myst series was my ideal type of game. I don't want an adrenalin fix. I want an immersive environment that presents me with challenges and puzzles which allow me to think quietly and not fight a clock. But based upon what is available on the
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We're working on a balance between puzzle exploration and action so both kinds of players will be happy.
Eval() (Score:1)
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It's a very proactively secured eval but when players do crash the game in interesting ways we want to give them achievement points so at least they get something after they restart.
IAMA Code Hero Creator Alex Peake Ask Me Anything (Score:1)
Hi! I tried to post earlier but I probably got tab-sidetracked after hitting Preview.
I founded Primer Labs and created Code Hero.
Thanks for all your excellent feedback!
This is our second time on Slashdot in a month as my talk about autocatalyzing mentor AI was linked here to the article based on the transcript of the video:
http://primerlabs.com/slashdottedaccelor8r
In a nutshell, game AI that teaches kids how to code better game AI that teach kids how to code better game AI until the kids start to pick up th
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Well it looks like this time we got well and truly slashdotted. Our site is down! It's an honor.
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Servers fixed. Sorry for anyone who couldn't get to the site.
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We're developing on Unity3D, which is free but not open-source. As much of the game code as possible will be open and exposed to the player in-game without breaking the security model and content created in Code Hero will be importable to and exportable from Unity3D. There's a code.license and code.permissions field, so it is possible that player could choose how to license the code they create.
Cool (Score:2)
Interesting idea, and the "cyberpunk" theme certainly fits the theme. I was somehow expecting more coding though, something like Core Wars [wikipedia.org]...
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The theme fits the theme. God, i need more coffee.
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Ahhh...Core Wars! I played that when I was like 11. It was awesome.
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How about a flight simulator where you dodge skyscrapers?
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Code Hero is about creating the future, and we definitely care about making it fun for players who want to build and accomplish things that really mean something for humanity. First and foremost, Code Hero is designed to spur real accomplishment so the conflicts and challenges in the game are spurring the player to acheive real code mastery and creativity that could set lives in new directions and spur invention and achievement which benefits us all.
Slashdot has been the place I connected with my fellow gee