CodeCombat's live coding level editor | Hacker News Reader

CodeCombat's live coding level editor

blog.codecombat.com

26 pointsnwinter14 comments

That level editor is awesome(and the 2.5D physics must have been painful to program.) When the source is released, I can't wait to see what people do with it!

Me neither! It should be possible to build hugely different levels with it, kind of like the StarCraft II map editor (which lets you build first-person shooters, underground, or like 2D sidescroller arcade games.)

I really want to get it so that people can create campaigns for younger students, or for advanced developers.

Played through the first levels and I really like the idea. I've been thinking about how I could get my kids started and this seems like a great way.

I also see possiblities for some really cool stuff for more experienced coders, especially in multiplayer.

Mentioned earlier: make it completely playable through keyboard. When I got the first alert that I had to use "enter" to continue I was thinking how great it was it was just keyboard and then it started mixing up.

I understand the server being hammered so errors pop up that shouldn't be there. But if I didn't have the knowledge level I have (simply being sure that the error was wrong and the code was right I might have bailed out in the first couple of lessons by not being sure what to do. So I think you should also put some thought in helping people new to coding navigate the errors also when they are not due to server error.

I will play it through as I'm curious how you'll make it more difficult, or better put, make it so that the player needs to program more instead of just putting the right commands in the right order. I can see it getting out of hand rather quickly on the development side :) But things like different classes that you can execute based on stuff happening on the screen would be great.

Good luck!

Great Job!!! I am working on an after-school programming club for my son's elementary school. Scratch is currently the main focus of the curriculum, but I could see this being a very enjoyable way to introduce text-based programming without resorting to HelloWorld-style tutorials. What is the best way to provide feedback?

Sending us emails through the contact form on our site (or just to team@codecombat.com) is a great way to get the discussion going. Eager to talk about how we can make this awesome for your son and his friends!

I'm often asked for recommendations on how to learn to program and this will probably be perfect for nerdier types (but looks like it assumes zero initial knowledge, which is awesome). What other things do folks recommend? Coursera? Code School? Khan Academy?

Hi Dreeves, here's a partial list of the projects we've seen:

ONLINE VIDEO LECTURES

Let's Code Test Driven JavaScript: http://www.letscodejavascript.com/

One Month Rails: https://onemonthrails.com/

Learnable: https://learnable.com/

Code School: http://www.codeschool.com/

Treehouse: http://teamtreehouse.com/

CodeHS: http://codehs.com/ - "Computer science class in a box" for k-12 schools

Learn Street: http://www.learnstreet.com/

CODE CHALLENGES

Top Coders: http://www.topcoder.com/

Hacker Rank: https://www.hackerrank.com/

Interview Street: https://www.interviewstreet.com/

OTHER

CodeCombat: http://codecombat.com - online game that teaches Javascript

Codecademy: http://codecademy.com/

CodeAvengers: http://www.codeavengers.com/ - Pay-per-module coding game

Hakitzu: http://www.kuatostudios.com/games/hakitzu/ - Paid iPad game that teaches coding

Kodable: http://www.surfscore.com/ - iPad game that teaches coding

Full disclosure, I run CodeCombat.

There are dozens upon dozens of other not-for-profits and pre-monetization projects out there, but this list covers most of the major players.

I am teaching a class for 4th graders to learn to code. We will definitely be trying out CodeCombat!

Glad to hear it tarr11, if you guys find anything that's busted or could be improved, please let us know, we're always looking for ways to improve!

I thought the "taste my longsword" snippet on the second level a little risque for my own kids. That said, maybe it was meant completely innocently and my minds in the gutter.

I love the fact that you can continue past certain things by pressing enter. It'd be REALLY nice if you could do most things from the keyboard (pause/resume time, cast the spell, etc)...having to grab the mouse is disruptive when you're trying out code.

Good work all around though. Very fun game and I look forward to its future!

Huh, we hadn't thought of that, but it's almost incidental to the plot, we could change that dialogue no problem.

I agree about the keyboard/mouse confusion. I find myself switching far too often. We need to figure something out that works better.

Thanks for the kind words, we'll definitely be working to continue improving the game!

I was just trying the first level and it seemed broken. Kept complaining about a missing semicolon where I don't believe there were any errors.

Our servers are getting hammered and the multiplayer code sync feature is now getting stuff a bit garbled up. We have a fix, but we have to take the site down for a bit to implement it, unfortunately. So when that kind of thing happens, reloading the page can often fix it. Sorry about this!

Cool. I'll try again later. It definitely looks fun.

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