

Show HN: My first Open Source project -- Teaching my son Lua - shawndumas
https://github.com/shawndumas/adventure.lua

======
shawndumas
A Lua Text Adventure Engine: Having settled on lua as a first 'real'
programming language to teach my son I created a text adventure engine for him
to code up some games. (He had a blast with MIT's Scratch and Lego's
MindStorms.)

There are two complete, albeit short, examples for him / you to get started
with. I am learning Lua as well and so far I love it. Since I am a beginner to
Lua I am certain that I am not coding idiomatically; any suggestions are
welcome.

~~~
dividuum
You might have a look at two projects of mine related to gaming and lua:

<http://geolua.com/> \- Allows you to develop mobile games for the browser
using lua. <http://geolua.com/adventure/all-widgets-demo-132> shows a basic
example.

<http://github.com/dividuum/infon> \- A multiplayer game where players control
ant-like creatures using lua. They fight, evolve and compete for food.
<https://github.com/dividuum/infon/tree/master/contrib/bots> has some example
code.

~~~
shawndumas
I will totally be checking them out. Thank you.

~~~
dividuum
Feel free to contact me (email in profile) if you have any questions.

~~~
shawndumas
Will do. Thanks again!

------
christianbryant
My daughter's almost 5 but she's shown a strong interest in programming from
early on. I had an XO for a time, and she was absorbed with Turtle from the
get-go. Still a little young, I think, for Lua but your experience has got me
thinking about it. Cheers.

------
leke
I have an 8 year old, who is video game crazy. Lua is a tidy little language
which I had a hard time deciding it against python and javascript. The Löve 2D
game engine for Lua eventually settled it for me.

~~~
shawndumas
For me it was Codea and iLuaBox. My son was stoked to know that he will soon
be getting an iPad.

~~~
shawndumas
BTW: I also made a little game to check out Codea --
<https://gist.github.com/gists/2762088/>

------
shawndumas
I added a Getting Started [1] page to the GitHub wiki and I included a very
simple example adventure [2].

\----

[1]: [https://github.com/shawndumas/adventure.lua/wiki/Getting-
Sta...](https://github.com/shawndumas/adventure.lua/wiki/Getting-Started)

[2]:
[https://github.com/shawndumas/adventure.lua/blob/master/xamp...](https://github.com/shawndumas/adventure.lua/blob/master/xampleLand.lua)

------
laacz
I'm sorry, if this is off topic, but is it common to put your project files
into version control system? I'm talking about .sublime-project and .sublime-
workspace.

~~~
shawndumas
Don't rightly know. I did it because I work on the project from multiple
computers using SublimeText and found it convenient.

------
xxiao
I chose python and html/css/javascript for my kid, who is 9, the python game
book got him started and now I was challenged at dinner table by various
Python module questions...

first thing after he started html, is: why can't html have if-else?

~~~
cschmidt
Which python game book? This one...

<http://inventwithpython.com/>

or some of the others. I'm thinking of doing the same with my son this summer.

~~~
xxiao
yes it's this one, I bought one for him so he can read anywhere he wants to,
this is a great book for his age.

