kodu

Code with your kids

Here's a world I built under my daughter Milena's (5) direction. She sits on my lap and tells me what to build and I build it.

I make some land

"It's an island! Where's the ocean"

I make some ocean. What should be in the ocean?

"A submarine! Make it swim"

"A boat should be there too and follow it"

"Why aren't there trees on the island?"

tree..tree...treee

Should we see from the submarine? I add a clause that if you're holding the left trigger you get the sub's POV.

Eventually we added a hot air balloon, some blimps floating around on the island. I showed her a wall and she insisted "the trees need more privacy" so eventually the wall encircled the island.

Posted: 06-18-2009 6:41 PM by mattmac | with 11 comment(s) |
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Comments

Armageddon1212 said:

Looking good!

What is that thermometer thing on the right side of the screen? Is it the limit of how much stuff you can put into your level?

# June 18, 2009 9:30 PM

Heyds said:

Amazing job with Kodu! I'm so excited. At about what stage are you in the releasing process? I know its in June but I was just curious. And yes what is that thermometer about? If it is a limit about how much stuff are we expecting to be able to put in our levels?

# June 18, 2009 9:35 PM

skine99 said:

Haha the trees need privacy. Very cute. Glad to see you're alive too! I'm also wondering what the thermometer is and WHEN ITS GOING TO BE RELEASED AND FOR HOW MUCH? :D

# June 18, 2009 9:38 PM

Spuz said:

Nice to see you're alive and kicking!  I got my hopes up too much when you mentioned daily blogs, haha, I've been checking every day.

This looks quite nice.  I like the fact that you can add some fog to hide the edge of the world.

I'm also curious if you are able to link levels together... i.e. make a larger game than a single level can provide?  If so, can character stats be carried over?  For example, in the instance of an RPG where you want a main character's stats to be persistent over all levels.

Can't wait for some more info.  Hope it still makes the June release.

# June 18, 2009 9:48 PM

mattmac said:

1. Yes, that thermometer shows how crowded your world is. Different things cost different amounts. It's really about us trying to help you keep your level nice and fast to render, but it's a balancing act - the more constraints we put on it, the faster it goes, but the fewer options you have. At a certain point you can't add anything more to your world. Note that this applies both while you're working on your world and while your world is running...since bots can create other bots.

Walls are particularly expensive because they use some fancy procedural geometery and wind up being fairly high-poly.

2. Linking levels together - not in this version. We want it, too, but it introduces a lot of complexity to file management. Some guys have done some stuff having different sections to a world and teleporting around. Our focus is really on minigames, though - once you start doing really big worlds you want some pretty powerful tools that can be intimidating to beginners.

End of June's looking pretty good. We don't have any serious showstoppers and haven't for a while.

# June 19, 2009 2:22 AM

Heyds said:

Thats a little dissapointing, but I guess its required. So does this mean we won't be able to make super long complex games?

# June 19, 2009 7:15 AM

guttertalk said:

I showed my kids (7 and 9) this a couple of weeks ago, and they're very interested. My son has a summer research project and thought it'd be good to also create a game for it using Kodu.

So, it already seems to have uses. The hard choice will be 360 or PC. If we want to distribute to friends, the PC version is probably better.

# June 19, 2009 9:11 AM

darthuvius said:

yeah that thermometer thing is disappointing but I'm sure there's enough processing power to make good worlds. also the amount of stuff we can put in worlds should double in a few years or sooner too ;)

# June 19, 2009 11:27 AM

mattmac said:

Generally, Kodu is oriented towards smaller games. Because we're trying to keep it simple, we didn't want to get into a lot of performance management features. You can make your own call as to whether it's more important to have more land, more characters, more complex lighting, etc. There's definitely enough room to do cool stuff.

BTW, this is an XBox-only release for now.

# June 20, 2009 7:06 PM

squibell said:

Nice to see you doing the same "daddy - build me a world" sessions as us.  Evan (our 5.5 year old) and I have had many of these sessions.  Most enjoyable, is it not?

The sessions sound very much the same indeed, very cool !    Although Evan has insisted on shooting control and POV control of his favorite character, the pushpin (crab to him).   Is this the boy-girl difference showing up?  :-)

To share with the others on here, he has moved into simple programming and can handle the tasks of adding his crab to the world and then the simple logic of movement and shooting with the trigger button.  Those two lines are his development max at this point.  :)  

The more advanced features he asks for as he understand them but can not implement them.  (can't remember how, or his reading ability isn't up to par, not sure, would be fun to explorer that cognitive connection)

Most fun with the kids.

# June 21, 2009 11:17 AM

Leonard McCoy said:

Nice and cute. Can't wait to try it myself.

# June 21, 2009 11:52 PM