Xbox game lets children become programmers
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, said development of Kodu was created to help children learn how to program, but evolved into a way they could create their own games. Though, obviously, anyone could use it, it's geared toward children.
Kodu is built around a game-friendly programming language that is simple and icon-based. Players can choose from 20 different game characters – including flying saucers, submarines, and a Pac Man-like Kodu main character – then use an interactive terrain editor, a bridge and path builder, and other tools to create their own game world. Players also have the option of using pre-loaded worlds.
The program was developed over the past two years in Microsoft Research by principal program manager designer Matt MacLaurin. All he wanted, starting out, was a game his then-four-year-old daughter "could use to both have fun and learn something about programming."
So Microsoft Research partnered with Girls Inc. and the University of Santa Barbara on researching the influence educational games have on math and science comprehension.
Players begin by choosing from a set of almost 200 visual building blocks and then use an image-based creator menu to build a world based on physical action and reaction – when a character performs an action, the game world reacts to it. Gamers have the ability to use hearing, vision and time to control their character's behavior.
Kodu can be played on PCs or on Xbox 360 and has apparently gotten the thumbs up from children, parents and teachers alike.
Comments
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As long as it doesn't teach kids the DirectX API, I'm for it. :p I will definitely be checking this out for my kids. |
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Maybe I should get it for myself --- since I am terrible at programming and all.... :p |
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Practice makes perfect. Looking at other peoples code to see how they approach things helps a lot too. I don't mean the examples that MS puts in their knowledge-base either; half of that is garbage and very little is practical. Find a modest project on sourceforge or one of the other OSS sites written in your language of choice and take it apart to see how it works. |
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Part of my problem is that I get overwhelmed with my programming classes -- I get confused with my C# programming after doing a few C++ projects. This then in turn makes me have trouble doing my SAS projects....
Anyway, the syntax takes me a few minutes to get a hang of.....I am horrendous with structs, arrays, and pointers mostly |
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Learning how to use pointers is kind of like riding a bike: Suddenly it just clicks, and it will never be a problem again. I actually missed them when I started writing 'safe' code in C# (well, at first). Don't sweat the syntax stuff - It's natural that when you start a project in a language that you know fully well but haven't used in a while, you'll have to pop open a web browser or look at your old code to refresh your memory on the syntax/functions/framework. At least, that's what I have to do. :) |
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The girl in the CES video is the daughter of the guy that developed KODU, FWIW |
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