

CodeSpells – Craft Magical Spells Using Code [video] - healsdata
http://codespells.org/

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michaelmior
This is incredibly cool although I think it would be even better if there was
some sort of objective to the game. Perhaps it's just me, but I would quickly
lose interest. Then again, I feel the same way about Minecraft, and that's
certainly caught on.

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codespells
CodeSpells team member here! Our goal is to make the environment & gameplay as
rich as possible with lots of different kinds of magic & ways to interact with
the world.

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shostack
Man do I wish I had something like this to play when I was in high school.

That quote at the beginning of the video is fascinating to me too. With all
that is happening around wearable devices, the internet of things, etc., we're
not too far away from a future of people gesturing and incanting various
things and having their environment respond to them.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (and of
course the corollary).

Reminds me of a (somewhat cheesy but fun) fantasy book called The Wiz Biz[1] I
read once.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Wiz-Biz-Rick-
Cook/dp/0671878468/re...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wiz-Biz-Rick-
Cook/dp/0671878468/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1W3HNY2A9P2WJNABX89R)

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arethuza
The idea that magic is a branch of maths (mixed with heavy doses of
Lovecraftian horror and dour cold-war spy thrillers) is the basis for the
splendid Laundry series of novels from Charlie Stross:

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheLaundryS...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheLaundrySeries)

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seanmcdirmid
I really liked the magic system of the Eragon trilogy, which was based on
being able to say a phrase in some ancient language that didn't allow for
lying. Ok, so that is more natural language, but if you take programming as
more speaking in an artificial language than doing math (as I do), then its a
more apt analogy.

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arethuza
I forget the name of the language that the Laundry uses to program its
zombies^M^M^M^M^M^M^M "Residual Human Resources".

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hawkw
Enochian?

Also, I recall there being a reference to an Enochian Metagrammar at one point
or another...

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arethuza
Thanks, that's the one:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian)

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forestgreen
This finally brought me from lurking HN to registering so I could post.

First of all, I just bought into the Kickstarter, go ThoughtSTEM!

I'm a coder and parent in the San Diego area and a scout den leader (2nd
graders) and I've run into parents whose kids are in the ThoughtSTEM program
and they all love it. ThoughtSTEM and Sarah Esper are VERY well thought of
around here and have been actively branching into the community to offer more
and more coding classes for kids.

I supported Robot Turtles as a gateway to programming and have a 7 and 5 year
old who are now doing code.org. The 7 year old has also done Python turtle
programming as well. Many of our cub scouts are on code.org and the technical
parents have been very involved in furthering their STEM exposure and
Codespells looks absolutely great! I'm going to email it around.

I was thinking of hitting up the ThoughtSTEM folks and seeing if I could
arrange a whole class at our school next year. I know I could round up the
people and computers, but now it sounds like they might be pretty busy for the
next 18 months or so. I wish those folks at ThoughtSTEM the absolute best and
encourage everyone to support them, parents around here consider themselves
lucky if they can get their kids into the ThoughtSTEM classes!

I've also been aware of CodeSpells for a while and it is clearly a long-term
passion for these folks.

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empressplay
I just played the alpha I downloaded from their website and it was great, has
the player crafting actual code. Not sure what happened between that version
and what they have now.

I realise they're trying to lower the barrier-to-entry with the blocks and
whatnot but I'd expect that if I bought my kid a game called CodeSpells they'd
be writing code, so I'm not sure barrier-to-entry is really much of an issue
in this case.

I wish they'd have kept at their original concept.

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codespells
Actually, players WILL be able to choose between typing in actual code or
using Blockly! Sorry, it's not clear in that video, but we did want to show
that this is a low-barrier entry into coding. If students want to code more
complicated spells than in the alpha version, typed code will be difficult.
Through our research, we've found students are able to make incredibly complex
code using Blockly though. We think students will be able to learn with
Blockly until they become comfortable typing with all the syntax.

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empressplay
While I love anything that encourages kids to learn basic computer science
skills (since this is also my niche) this isn't the approach I would take, and
I question whether such a simple "recipe" construction of primitive, limited
algorithms will really provide any real skill development over what a child
would learn from a chemistry or electronics set or even a cooking course.

Based on this, calling your game "CodeSpells" is a bit of a stretch. You've
made your definition of "code" so vague that MineCraft may as well call itself
CodeCraft and market itself as a computer science education tool.

Sorry to be harsh and I applaud the effort but where you're currently at is
like saying "I'll teach people to drive and then they can become automotive
engineers," which is, while somewhat true, obviously not going to be all that
effective.

Now, "something" may be better than nothing but if you really want to have an
impact you desperately need to broaden your concept. What you have isn't
enough, from my perspective. That said, you obviously know the whole "teaching
code" thing is trendy and maybe you might get something out of your
Kickstarter. Best of luck with that.

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seanmcdirmid
This is not only harsh, but close minded. MineCraft and Legos provide
tremendous values to kids in developing at least creativity, and often fire
technical interests that drive kids to learn "real skills" later on in life.
CodeSpells is just pushing that to the next level.

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empressplay
I'm not discounting that CodeSpells has a certain value, but many other things
in this context do as well. If it really wants to succeed in its "vision"
CodeSpells needs to become much more than what it is. Hope it does.

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gourneau
Never forget Code Hero:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Hero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Hero)

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thoughtstem
We never will. That Kickstarter was a huge disappointment for the coding
education community. I hope we can prove ourselves to be more communicative &
reliable than "Primer Labs". I think our team has more experience following
through on projects...

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Wintamute
I'd like to see a mechanic whereby player level/experience dictated the amount
of physical power players could add to their spells. Low level players could
push rocks around, while super high level players with advanced spells could
be capable of ripping apart planets (if they had the coding chops). That would
be cool :)

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codespells
Yes! We love this idea too! Leveling up will definitely be an aspect of
gameplay! We're thinking players will have different "mana bars" for each kind
of magic (earth, fire, water, air, life). Then, they can level up their
different kinds of magic to become more powerful (more mana available).

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Quequau
This is based on MIT's Scratch language, right? If so, I think using it as an
embedded DSL is a really good idea.

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codespells
Thank you!! We're using Blockly, which is essentially an open-source version
of the Scratch language!

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CmonDev
Is it scripted in something like Unity3d/UDK or actually developed from
scratch?

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thoughtstem
We're using the Unity game engine!

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drhouse_md
The code it teaches is java :(

