My 12 year old loves this. One, it's free, two it has a large community of supporters. Three it reflects many useful aspects such as modularity, extensibility, object oriented principles, shared code, and graphic development environments. I'm not saying it's the most robust language, nor full of best practices - but you cannot beat it's WOW factor for young teens.
In a few short months my son has made tremendous progress. At first he just wanted to generate a gun and explosions. Then he became concerned with the graphics and spent days combing websites for just the right ogre icon to tweak. Then he discovered arrays and decided he wanted to generate all the monsters from an array. Next he decided his code would be much easier to manage if made all the functionality reside in scripts that he attached to the objects. Now he says he's focusing on revising his physics engine! It's a beautiful thing.
My son turned me on to this platform puzzle flash game (http://entertainmentfans.com/ngame/). Its like loderunner with terrific analog control and an edge. The user community does a lot of custom levels and my son says it's his favorite game for 'getting in the zone'
Yes yes yes. I'd been saving my shekels for months and i stood in line saturday night so i could take one home and play all day sunday.
One) It worked easily. Synching up controllers, connecting to my wifi network, aligning the sensor bar -- all these things happened with no goofing around, push a button or select a menu item and it happened, first try. Thank you nintendo for _not_ choking my game machine with 'not ready for prime time" features.
Two) Audio environment. I love all the lounge music. I'm happy leaving the Mii parade running in the background while i make lunch.
Three) Controllers - they work beautifully. As easy and intuitive as i'd hoped. When i figured out how to hook (spin) my bowling ball in wii sports, I was sold. This is satisfying and i'm pretty sure my great aunt, whose fingers are too arthritic to hold a bowling ball anymore, will be able to play this game and enjoy herself.
Four) Zelda looks beautiful, the control scheme is satisfying, and the beautiful scale of the thing is inspiring. (spoiler alert!) When my son was asked, after entering his name for the game, to enter a name for Epona (Link's horse) we both whooped with pleasure. Small touches make such a difference. Over and over again we said to each other 'yes, that's the way to do it.'
Five) Rayman raving rabbids. Yes yes yes. Dozens of minigames with excellent use of the controls and a crazed style that is both amusing and a little disturbing. You can tell that the developers loved what they were doing. All the polygons in the world are useless if you can't get the developers excited about making great games.
Er, i don't believe any life forms were discovered in The Core. Although they bent physics and chemistry beyond the breaking point, biology seems to have been mercifully spared.
Slashdot Mirror
My 12 year old loves this. One, it's free, two it has a large community of supporters. Three it reflects many useful aspects such as modularity, extensibility, object oriented principles, shared code, and graphic development environments. I'm not saying it's the most robust language, nor full of best practices - but you cannot beat it's WOW factor for young teens.
In a few short months my son has made tremendous progress. At first he just wanted to generate a gun and explosions. Then he became concerned with the graphics and spent days combing websites for just the right ogre icon to tweak. Then he discovered arrays and decided he wanted to generate all the monsters from an array. Next he decided his code would be much easier to manage if made all the functionality reside in scripts that he attached to the objects. Now he says he's focusing on revising his physics engine! It's a beautiful thing.
My son turned me on to this platform puzzle flash game (http://entertainmentfans.com/ngame/). Its like loderunner with terrific analog control and an edge. The user community does a lot of custom levels and my son says it's his favorite game for 'getting in the zone'
Try it and you'll have a great time.
ciao
Yes yes yes. I'd been saving my shekels for months and i stood in line saturday night so i could take one home and play all day sunday.
One) It worked easily. Synching up controllers, connecting to my wifi network, aligning the sensor bar -- all these things happened with no goofing around, push a button or select a menu item and it happened, first try. Thank you nintendo for _not_ choking my game machine with 'not ready for prime time" features.
Two) Audio environment. I love all the lounge music. I'm happy leaving the Mii parade running in the background while i make lunch.
Three) Controllers - they work beautifully. As easy and intuitive as i'd hoped. When i figured out how to hook (spin) my bowling ball in wii sports, I was sold. This is satisfying and i'm pretty sure my great aunt, whose fingers are too arthritic to hold a bowling ball anymore, will be able to play this game and enjoy herself.
Four) Zelda looks beautiful, the control scheme is satisfying, and the beautiful scale of the thing is inspiring. (spoiler alert!) When my son was asked, after entering his name for the game, to enter a name for Epona (Link's horse) we both whooped with pleasure. Small touches make such a difference. Over and over again we said to each other 'yes, that's the way to do it.'
Five) Rayman raving rabbids. Yes yes yes. Dozens of minigames with excellent use of the controls and a crazed style that is both amusing and a little disturbing. You can tell that the developers loved what they were doing. All the polygons in the world are useless if you can't get the developers excited about making great games.
Well, gotta go play some more.
Er, i don't believe any life forms were discovered in The Core. Although they bent physics and chemistry beyond the breaking point, biology seems to have been mercifully spared.