By Craig Pearson on February 20th, 2012 at 3:24 pm.
I thought writing about else { Heart.break() } would prove to be a novelty, but three days later here I am, telling you about another game that lets you fiddle in its innards. I am now the official RPS expert, sorry “expert”, on games that allow you to alter their code: Code Hero is a Unity engine game where you have a code gun that shoots Javascript, and hopes the players learn enough from the action. According to the the devs: “Code Hero is an FPS where your Code Gun shoots code directly at a target and executes on impact. It references the target so you can act upon hitObject in your code or just hit.point if permissions are denied.” If you could see the face I’m making trying to comprehend that, you’d probably be calling for an ambulance. Video of it below.
It’s,m you gueessed it, a Kickstarter hopeful (although it sadly looks likely to fall short of its funding goal), but it’s already playable and I presume it’s not going to collapse if they don’t reach their goal. The game’s levels teach you how to build your own game, and the final level allows you to publish the finished work.
(Quick note from the RPS Hivemind for any Kickstarter-funded devs hoping we’ll post about their game: we do ask that there’s something playable for us to nose at, if you’re not a well-established studio. We have a duty to our readers, so can’t seem to blindly suggest they offer money to all sorts of unproven projects).
20/02/2012 at 15:28 QuasiBelgium says:
Yo dawg…
20/02/2012 at 15:30 Teddy Leach says:
I heard you like videogames…
20/02/2012 at 15:42 Quasar says:
But then I took an arrow…
20/02/2012 at 15:47 alex@codehero.org says:
I usually start my public talks about Code Hero with “Yo dawg” just to nip the jokes afterwards in the bud.
20/02/2012 at 21:11 Gary W says:
Yo alex, I heard you make videogames, so I put my arrow in your videogame so I know where to go in your game while I game, dawg.
21/02/2012 at 02:43 cxaopiqw says:
I-Is that the same guy they hired to play mole in gold member? http://1ul.com.ar/3154
20/02/2012 at 15:36 hench says:
This is how games can be used for education and schools, unlike Minecraft
20/02/2012 at 15:38 Kdansky says:
Considering the alternatives to Minecraft would be Bulletstorm and Gears of War, I think Minecraft is splendid!
20/02/2012 at 15:43 The First Door says:
There are a few projects on the go to change that, luckily. I’ve been helping out on a really nice project where university computing students take simplified level editing tools from Neverwinter Nights into primary schools. Schools are using these tools across Computing, English, Foreign Languages and Design classes to engage the students in new ways.
20/02/2012 at 15:44 MasterDex says:
Unlike Minecraft? But you can make a 16-bit ALU in Minecraft! As a way to teach logic gates, Minecraft seems to be a great tool, allowing the player to visualise how they work and what they’re good for.
20/02/2012 at 17:06 jrod says:
And making logic gates is much much much closer to the real thing using a wonderful plugin called ‘red power’ – check it out
20/02/2012 at 15:37 Llewyn says:
Pronoun.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Seriously, we’re entitled to expect a video of the face you’re making. Oh so entitled.
20/02/2012 at 16:05 romanmir says:
My keyboard would like to thank you for the water that I sprayed across it when I saw this.
20/02/2012 at 16:46 Craig Pearson says:
Heh.
20/02/2012 at 15:40 MasterDex says:
I’m surprised there aren’t more games that dive into coding. It seems that a game that thought you how to code, etc would be a great boon for software development programmes focused on second level education.
20/02/2012 at 15:43 Unaco says:
Dark Signs.
Dark Signs Online.
20/02/2012 at 15:46 Tylerr says:
I-Is that the same guy they hired to play mole in gold member?
20/02/2012 at 17:11 alex@codehero.org says:
Thanks for checking out Code Hero and pledging for all those who’ve backed us! I’ll try to answer any questions you might have at alex@primerlabs.com. We’re going to make it one way or another and any pledges help us reach it. If we fall short they’re returned automatically, then we’ll restart and you can re-pledge and still get your rewards in the end. We’re not going to let anything stop us from making Code Hero. There are literally thousands of kids who are counting on us to make this, and watching our students play and learn to make their own games is pretty much infinite motivation to keep going. The beta you can play right away is a proof of concept I worked hard on, but it’s nowhere near polished and I’ve recruited a team of MMO-experienced developers and a legendary demo scene and game dev artist gIZmo so that the final game will be the best it can be.
20/02/2012 at 17:56 Cryo says:
Did somebody say Goto? Release the raptors!
20/02/2012 at 21:36 captain nemo says:
Nice
25/02/2012 at 04:24 emertonom says:
Woah! When I pledged (after reading this article), there were 3 days left and it was at about 60k, but it actually made its goal–it must have got a bunch of money at the last minute!
I’ve played through the beta, and it’s so-so. It’s hard to tell how good it’ll be. The UnityEngine bits are very basic, and only deal with creating, destroying, and moving objects, all of which are fairly closely related to shooters to start with. So it’s hard to tell how well they’ll do more abstract topics. They seem a bit buggy, too. The Javascript tutorial room is much more tedious–more like a “Program Javascript in 12 days!” sort of book, but read aloud by a second-rate text-to-speech program. (The beta desperately needs an option to turn “Ms. Lovelace” off. At times there’s even an encoding problem; in one case she pronounces the word “they’re” as having the word “trademark” in the middle of it.) The “boss battle” is sort of a combination of the two, but adds an aspect of danger and excitement that sort of sabotages the idea that this calls for reasoned analysis–it’s hard to run in to a room to face a baddy armed only with the power to write code, and have him rush across the room and blow you up while you’re still futzing with trying to take names. It’s harder to go in and die a bunch of times testing code you know won’t do the whole job.
We’ll see how it turns out once it’s more fully coded, I guess.