11 ms·

Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

206 points by stasy 13y ago

krrishd 13y ago
This is pretty impressive :) What I would recommend is that instead of distributing your time and energy to this many apps, you should stick to one concept and channel all your time into it. I like the games, but they could use some improvement in concept and overall quality, which shouldn't be hard for you if you spend enough time on each and every one. Focusing on one app would allow you to spend enough time, and would help you succeed further in the Windows App Market :)
- stasy 13y ago
  That is what I want/am going to do. I was just seeing all the things I could make and get some experience in submitting an app.
  - pcharles 13y ago
    any iOS apps in your plans?
duked 13y ago
pretty cool portfolio for your age ! Did you use C#/XNA for your 2 games ? Which tutorial did you use, and how much supervision did you get? I'm asking because I'm trying to teach game programming to my son and he's 13 and I would like for him to do most of it as opposed to me doing it for him.
- stasy 13y ago
  I made the basic structure with scirra's construct 2 ( www.scrirra.com ), but I made the rest with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. To learn those, I got some books. O'reilly has some really good books if you know the basics.
Haul4ss 13y ago
Wow, you've certainly been productive! How was your experience with the Microsoft Store and getting apps approved? What language did you write all the games in? How much code got reused between the games (I noticed a number of them appear to be skins on top of the same underlying concept).
- stasy 13y ago
  I used JavaScript to make the apps. The only thing that was difficult about getting approved was making it support touch and keyboard inputs. Other than that, it was pretty easy.
InTheSwiss 13y ago
Good job! Have you look into Android apps? You will have a bigger audience. I am assuming you are using C# as they are Windows Store apps if so Java will be very similar for you to switch too.
- stasy 13y ago
  It is mostly made with JavaScript. I really liked making apps on Windows 8 because I can use languages I already knew from making websites.
  - jawns 13y ago
    You might be interested in PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com http://phonegap.com). You use HTML/CSS/Javascript to build the apps, and then Phonegap compiles them to work on multiple platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and more.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - mooreds 13y ago
      I think PhoneGap/Cordova (the open source base of PhoneGap) can be great for certain types of apps, and it definitely leverages your existing skillset. Here's a showcase: http://phonegap.com/app/ http://phonegap.com/app/ That said, I've never done a game with PhoneGap, and I'd worry about performance (for certain types of games)--I definitely worry about performance with javascript maps, which is closer to what we do). Just something to be aware of.
      - krrishd 13y ago
        I'd definitely worry about performance in Phonegap, as to me it seems more useful for static, informational apps rather than games. I'd be interested in seeing a Phonegap game though, it would be interesting to see its acceptance in any major app market.
  - 13y ago
j45 13y ago
Awesome! What you're learning from doing so many different things will serve you well in the future. Out of all of these different apps, one will either catch your attention, or others and you'll have a chance. Keep moving! Continue to cultivate and live live in a mindset of creativity and possibility, and be wary of doubt worshippers/haters who are busy doing nothing :).
- stasy 13y ago
  Thanks!
kumarski 13y ago
Well done. Keep going and creating stuff. Be sure to talk to your users as well. Wish you the best.
jmduke 13y ago
Jesus, this is impressive. When I was fifteen, I'm pretty sure my main accomplishment was hitting level 40 in Halo 2 matchmaking. You will probably get lots of valid and actionable advice about branching out to new platforms, focusing on one or two apps, or trying something new -- but more than anything else, keep building things! You've clearly got a ridiculously high level of aptitude and passion.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- atmosx 13y ago
  When I was 15 my parents hated computers. However, I had hot girlfriends, where one of the best player of my basketball team and was having really too much fun. I don't regret nothing, but I'd sure love being able to write code at that age - If that would make me a better programmer today, which means that I would have to continue writing code for another 17 years :-) Congrats to the kid.
chromejs10 13y ago
Kudos for learning to program at such a young age. It'll give you a leg up when you decide to get a job or start a company and need funding. However, I'd suggest taking some time and working on the quality and originality of the apps over the sheer number of apps that you can churn out in a year. A number of the apps seem almost identical. You want to get known for high quality apps and not as someone who just fills the app store with small apps.
primitivesuave 13y ago
Look for a summer internship. Clearly you're passionate about this, you should look for some real-world exposure to propel you to that next level of software engineering. Best of luck to you!
ovechtrick 13y ago
Awesome!! Great seeing young people being creative/learning and building. Keep going! :)
DaveSapien 13y ago
Totally impressive!!! You have a bright, bright future ahead of yourself!
abhi3188 13y ago
This is awesome! Great work dude, I wish I had such a productive sense at 15. While using javascript did you see any performance lag when playing on the actual device?
bratsche 13y ago
Great job! So what are your plans for 2014? 60 apps? :)
- stasy 13y ago
  My goal is to make 1 app. On all Windows 8, iOS, and Android. One that makes some revenue!
tmikaeld 13y ago
C'mon! No one here read the sourcecode? It's made without any programming using this app: https://www.scirra.com/ https://www.scirra.com/ ... still more games than i have done though :-P
- stasy 13y ago
  There were some aspects of the apps that were not supported on Scirra, so I had to do it myself. But yes, they were made with Construct 2.
- krrishd 13y ago
  It seems quite similar to Scratch, although if that's what it takes to get interested in software engineering, then good for him either way.
- bliti 13y ago
  May you please link to any of your projects? Were any built without using any third party tools or libraries?
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    Please. There is quite a difference between not using third-party tools/libraries, and (arguably) not programming at all. I mean, the tool's tagline is "Create Games. Effortlessly." This isn't an attempt to put the OP down, but let's keep things in perspective.
    - kenjackson 13y ago
      I just walked through some of their tutorials and it is still programming. It has a UI for a lot of it, but the concepts are probably more like what I consider traditional programming concepts than HTML/CSS (excluding JS).
      - BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Yeah, I expected a response like this. I really shouldn't have implied that this tool isn't a programming tool, but I think there's a difference between this tool and some C library.
pseudometa 13y ago
Now it is time to learn illustrator and photoshop.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Better yet, now is the time to create your own reusable Illustrator and Photoshop components, and write games that build them in to enable users to customize and create their own content. Oh, and 3D Studio Max, too. Not 100% of the features and complexity, just the 50% that you need 95% of the time. The same way many games and other apps use built-inn text editors to enable users to write their own text, instead of saying "oh just use Word for that".
mtrn 13y ago
Wonderful. And - nostalgia advances. And how, at 15 I probably was a more productive programmer than now, where I barely manage to wrap up a few miniscule open source projects per year, if any. Back then I wrote what looks like major projects to me now - in month, alongside school, friends, holidays and everything ... Any experiences or tips on how to get 15 again in terms of productivity? :)
- krrishd 13y ago
  I think it would be slightly unrealistic to 'get back to 15'. I'm 15, and I'm a developer; the main advantage I have right now is that I don't need to worry about rent, food, and other stuff, since I'm still with my parents. This gives me time to work on whatever project I want without any other worries. I guess in your case, you would probably have to get some sort of job where they are a lot more lenient and give you time for side projects.
  - radicalbyte 13y ago
    No chores, no kids, no girlfriend/wife. That's where time goes. I was crazy productive when I was 15 (and when I was 12). Now I'm 33 with a wife and kids I just don't have the time. But then again I work on problems that are two-three factors harder than this during the day, so it all evens out. Keep up the good work kid, try lots of stuff out now, find something you like, then go deep. It only gets more fun :)
    - dualogy 13y ago
      It's not about chores, kids, wives. I purposely avoided all those in order to "stay in my 20s even well into my 30s, ideally forever". Sad to report that simply doesn't work, even with zero money or chore worries whatsoever!
      - meddlepal 13y ago
        At least you tried to live the dream...
goshx 13y ago
Nice! At 15 I was just learning what a computer was :o (15 years ago)
bliti 13y ago
The minecraft-themed jump game has potential. I would skin it with more minecraft looking assets and include monsters. Maybe a creeper that explodes and takes away all surrounding blocks when you jump nearby? Or a skeleton that shoots arrows and nudges the player to the side (making it harder to control)? You may also vary the level by using the different biome textures from the original.
napolux 13y ago
Good job. Now focus only on one app (from design to store) and make it not just like a tutorial.
arasmussen 13y ago
Your paid link is broken :P
- stasy 13y ago
  I don't have any paid apps yet
  - arasmussen 13y ago
    Then you should say that instead of your 404 page :P
kybernetyk 13y ago
That's pretty cool. Somehow I wish there would have been app stores back then when I was 15 and making games. Not to earn money but to get people to play my games - which was pretty damn hard back in 1997. Nowadays you can get 100 users pretty easily just by releasing the game. 100 users back then was something I dreamed about reaching some day :)
- mynameishere 13y ago
  I remember the equivalent years ago. I would make (awful) games in turbo pascal, and submit them to BBSes. The sysops usually put them available for download. I doubt anyone ever did.
andrewljohnson 13y ago
Now that I have kids, I've been considering whether I want them to play as much Magic as I did (traveled a lot for it). My conclusion is I would encourage them to be more like this kid, but not actually force my will in the end.
- MrJagil 13y ago
  force my will...
  - andrewljohnson 13y ago
    I think I did that on accident, but I like the way you think!
MJR 13y ago
This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a friend who can draw and have them create some unique characters for you, write a little story and you've got an indie game that's all your own.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Speaking as a game developer, this is remarkably bad advice for a young gamedev to follow. It doesn't matter whether or not they're "his". It matters that he continues creating. That's the most important thing. He's not making money off of other people's work. He's building a skillset that will serve him for a lifetime. Wasting time fitting society's arbitrary moral standard is time not spent becoming a better gamedev. Even if he's served with a DCMA takedown notice for some of his apps, it doesn't matter even slightly, because the app isn't the end goal. Talent is. And the way to foster talent is to not stop working. I'd encourage him to pursue art if he wants to, as it's also a skill which will serve him the rest of his life -- the creators of Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, and World of Goo were all artist-programmers, which seems more than a coincidence -- but it's not a requirement to be a gamedev.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    Surely it matters for legal reasons? I thought that was what the parent was implying; he could get his games pulled for copyright infringement.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Note for readers: I edited my original comment just before Blahah's reply was written, and my edit makes it seem like they didn't read my comment. But in fact they had read an earlier version of it. So I figure I should mention that to avoid confusion... Anyway, it doesn't matter if his apps are taken down, because growing his skillset is the most important thing, not the apps themselves. No one will fine him or take him to jail, so as long as he's aware that maybe the app might get pulled, then using other people's characters is the best possible thing a young gamedev can do. And plus there's a good chance no one will care.
wushupork 13y ago
Just the fact that you are 15, reading hackernews and making apps and NOT spending your time kicking some middle-aged man at Halo is AMAZING. Kudos to you. I wish I was more like you when I was your age.
- caprad 13y ago
  When I was a kid we could only afford a cheap computer (VZ-300, Australia computer), with a z80, while all my mates had c64s. So they were busy swapping games with each other, I had to program my own, first in basic, from magazines (thanks APC), and then in z80 assembly. I still love developing today, things may have been different if we were not poor.
orik 13y ago
Nice use of Maplestory assets - I did the same sorta thing in the summer of my 7th grade year for a "intro to game design" class. Can't find the game anymore, but I had edited the chirppy sprite (http://i.imgur.com/ccSY4RE.png http://i.imgur.com/ccSY4RE.png) to be holding and firing a bow. I ended up getting a A- on my final for using assets that weren't mine. That's pretty small compared to the sort of things you could run into when you're actually putting this stuff on an app store. I'd recommend toying around with a sprite editor and getting familiar with pixel art techniques like dithering. You might even enjoy it as much as coding!
C1D 13y ago
EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what I hate people doing to me. Please keep it up and I hope you get even better; Also a little tip, check out Unity3D, it is costly but if you're into game deving it will let you develop games in 3D easily (though you're going to need to know basic Javascript or C) and it is multi-platform so it can publish to mobile. OLD POST: Quality not quantity. While it is impressive to see another 15 year old programmer (I've never met one in real life even though I've been to three schools in two different countries (I'm a expat kid) ), the actual programming skill required to make games like these are little to none and truthfully i'm not overly impressed. I too am 15 mind you and although I haven't developed any games I have created a RSA secure chatting social network website and app for it too which could communicate between each other using websockets and a node.JS server (this hasn't been published, while making it my partner quit :(, and I eventually lost hope that it would even be used since I was only 15). I hope this doesn't come off as criticism. Its actually great to see another young programmer such as my self but all I am trying to say is that this is not overly impressing.
- neilk 13y ago
  Hey, that's great for you, but don't be too quick to criticize how someone else hacks. You deserve credit for trying something hard, but so does this person for actually releasing stuff. And remember, it's not all about programming chops - doing lots of little projects teaches you a lot about the whole process, from UI to backend, how the app stores work, maybe even what users like. If nothing else you achieve "flow" more easily with short-term hacks, and that helps keep your mind in a creative state. Source: 40 year old programmer, started programming at 11, deeply jealous that there were no app stores back then for the zillion games I wrote.
- joebo 13y ago
  I disagree completely. I'm over twice your age and started programming when I was 12. My birthday present for my 14th birthday was a $99 retail copy of Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0. Back then I wrote a notepad clone, cab archiver (zip was a fad, really!), and various other utilities. I remember thinking how cool it was when I was 14 to have over 50,000 downloads. I've been a professional programmer (big corp, consulting, etc) for 15 years mostly doing web and desktop applications for businesses. I can't sit down and write a pacman clone or an asteroids game. Therefore, I can say that it takes more skill than "little to none". I am impressed.
Lilme 13y ago
15 is the new 25
osman123 13y ago
good work. Keep at it and branch out. Try and ignore the negative comments here. The IT industry is full of big egos.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
One tip: Ignore everybody and keep creating. If I'd done that at 15, then I wouldn't have started to doubt myself and stop working on ideas that later turned out to be very prescient. The most important thing you should do is the thing that's most important to you. Be sure it's not defined by other people's opinions. There will always be people in life like the guy who replied "While it is impressive to see another 15 year old programmer (I've never met one in real life even though I've been to three schools in two different countries (I'm a expat kid) ), the actual programming skill required to make games like these are little to none and truthfully i'm not overly impressed." Ignore 'em and keep working. EDIT: Oh, I should also mention: don't let the praise go to your head. Another mistake I made. In general, it's it's a bad idea to compare yourself to anyone else -- whether feeling smug and superior that you've accomplished all this at 15 (surprise, I know your secret!) or feeling weak and inferior that you're not as talented as some other person. They're not you, and you're not them. Relative comparisons like that don't matter one bit. Instead, it's far more advantageous to always be comparing your current self to your past self. That's how Carmack became so incredibly good, for example. He didn't wait for anyone to surpass him; he did it himself. That's only possible if you believe you're not as skilled as you could be, i.e. having no ego. Nor did he let people convince him he was wasting his time back when he was working on his early projects. It's complicated. Just keep working.
- Sakes 13y ago
  Yes, the op has done fantastic. Perfection is unattainable but a great motivator. You can always get better and should. This past year you have learned a very valuable skill, pump out product. Now you should reflect upon how well your apps performed in the store and determine if you want to continue with the same strategy, invest time in polishing your projects, or maybe simply review your quality standards. Great job OP, any parent would be proud, any person should show respect. Keep it up, iterate on your ideas and yourself.
- kyro 13y ago
  One thing I've learned is that if you've found yourself ruffling feathers and receiving criticism for something that you've done that isn't objectively bad or immoral, you're probably on the right track.
jorgecastillo 13y ago
Damn! now I am depressed. What more can I say the first sentence says it all. Adding to my comment would be pointless.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Here's a cookie ...
AfroDiva 13y ago
Amazing, i wish that my cousins would be as productive as you at that age.
sunseb 13y ago
Be proud of your work, that's nice ! Keep moving forward ! :-)
thinkersilver 13y ago
This is encouraging and I think it's great that you are interacting with the community and getting feedback on your work at an early stage. This will help you grow. I guess you've posted this for constructive criticism. You should look at challenging yourself further by finding a problem area that you are passionate about and digging deep into the data structures and the algorithms. Consider when I was 15. I was fascinated with computer graphics and games and wrote a raytracer in C, wrote a doom-like game-engine in pascal. Writing the game logic was always the easy part, dealing with limited memory and optimising for hardware were always a problem. My mates were all building their own graphics engines, dabbling with operating systems development and one kid was playing around with Classes and tree like data structures. We looked at him like he was a god. This isn't a put down but a push. You can do so much more kid and you have a good headstart but try something harder. Post your work here and most will be glad to give a helping hand. Ironically the most talented of us ended up being a musician when he left for University.
robert-wallis 13y ago
Nice work getting things done! I see your Minecraft and Mario games are "unavailable". I'm sure you'll keep creating your own IP in the future, like you did with the other 22 games instead of dealing with copyright and trademark infringement. Especially if you want to generate some revenue. I am not a lawyer. But it will be much better for you to keep doing your own thing (like you did with most of your games), than to be taken down by lawyers working for people who's characters, names, or art you "re-purposed".
SyneRyder 13y ago
This is awesome. And while there's some valid criticism in this thread (regarding quality over quantity & originality), that criticism shouldn't detract from a few points: * You're averaging a product a fortnight. Whoa. * You've learned to leverage 3rd party tools to increase productivity / output. * You've learned to actually -ship- product. * You made the front page of Hacker News. All of that is incredibly valuable. Who cares if it isn't written in Java or Objective-C or Haskell or Erlang, so long as your customers love what you're making? (And if they don't love it, at least you now know what to improve on next!) If you do follow the advice of taking longer to make a higher quality product, don't fall into the trap of becoming a perfectionist and never shipping. It's better to ship something and keep improving it based on customer feedback, than to make something that never sees the light of day. Did you join onegameamonth.com? If not, you definitely should.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Yeah, if we just ignore the products themselves (which may sound sarcastic but I genuinely think is valid), this guy's pumping out more completed projects over the past year than almost anyone posting here's done in their lifetime. That, alone, is huge.
beatboxrevival 13y ago
When I was 15, I was also creating code. I met some "smart" older guy who worked as a product manager for britannica.com before wikipedia and the first bubble. I asked him for some advice on how to make a career out of it. He said, "you don't want to build shit, you want to manage people. Writing code is for the losers." As a young impressionable kid with no tech mentors, I listened. It took ten years to come back to writing code. Anyways, like the sillysaurus2 said, ignore the critics and keep doing what you love to do.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jebus989 13y ago
It's worth noting that this isn't a cool github account someone's turned up of a surprisingly young programmer, it's a serial publicist [0-2] using primarily a game creation engine (which he doesn't acknowledge upfront) to build low-quality games and display them on an unsightly tumblr page. I think to heap praise on this because of their age alone is patronising. Encouragement absolutely, it's great to see young people interested in programming, but at what age would this has been flagged and removed quickly after posting, 17? 19? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864667 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800925 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799065
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I think it's great that he continued to search for a way to promote his own work. Your links demonstrate that he was asking us for help, received absolutely none, then figured out how to help himself. New programmers (of any age) aren't competing at the level of professional, kickstarter-funded projects. And most people don't know how difficult it is to do this kind of gamedev work when you're just starting out, so it seems like people are labeling this as low-quality just because it's the work of a newer craftsman. He's out there actually doing something and trying to make his own vision happen, and he hasn't resorted to spammy behavior. It looks like he kept his head down and continued to produce while looking for a way to promote his work, then correctly ascertained that the sheer quantity of work would intrigue people.
cvburgess 13y ago
While these apps are impressive for a 15 year old developer they are not really "high-quality" titles... yet MSFT allowed 30 of these games into the store by the same developer. If I were MSFT, I would've thrown a red flag up if not for QA, for potential spam. Great work and keep it up, OP! I wouldn't worry about co-founders just yet. Keep hacking till you find something you are really passionate about and a co-founder will join you when and if the time is right (probably a t least 3 years down the road for legal reasons)
zachlatta 13y ago
Hey, I'm around your age and very impressed with what you're doing. It's neat that you've released so many apps this year. As others have noted, it looks like you're using some form of game creation engine to make these quickly. I'd encourage you to try to move away from that and learn what's actually happening behind the scenes. Doing this will allow you to make more complex and impressive games in the future. It'll also serve as a tremendous learning experience. Also, it's really neat that you're young and doing incredible things, but I'd warn against relying on your age to impress people. Try to make things that are impressive regardless of who made them. I'm one of the developers on a fairly popular game in the App Store (800,000+ downloads). If you're up to it, I'd like to chat with you more about what you're doing. Shoot me an email at zach@zachlatta.com. I look forward to hearing from you!
sodafountan 13y ago
That's awesome, Keep it up! Did you make anything off of them?
BSousa 13y ago
Ok, first of all, congratulations! I remember being 15 and hacking away (It was Turbo Pascal for me). Ignore any naysayers that complain there is no code or it was done with a simple tool. Do what you like and enjoy. But now on a more serious note, I'm about twice your age, so not too old to be screaming 'get of my lawn', but old enough to hopefully give you some advice that will resonate. This projects mean an average of a game every two weeks, even if they are simple, I'm sure this is taking a lot of your time. I'm extrapolating here, so if I'm wrong just ignore me, but I'm assuming you are spending a lot of time doing these and not a lot of social activities. Please please please, do some socialisation with folks within the dev community and in your school and neighbourhood. I'm not going to say these are the best times of your life or whatnot, but believe it or not, when you are older and start looking for jobs, you will start understanding that social knowledge is as much, or more important that tech knowledge, and you will regret not developing those skills at younger age when it is easier to do so. Again, good work, keep producing, but find some balance.
suedadam 13y ago
I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.
- krrishd 13y ago
  I think the biggest difference here is that he has actually shown the world his work....
- zachlatta 13y ago
  Hey! I think it's really neat that you're doing incredible things at such a young age. I'm a little older than you, but would love to chat with you more about what you're up to. Shoot me an email at zach@zachlatta.com.
- deeteecee 13y ago
  Good for you man, I'm way behind. I'm 24 and haven't accomplished much. I'm just working my way to seeing what I want to use as my career. Just a note, though: "I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it." That's called bragging.
  - suedadam 13y ago
    Sorry for the confusion;I was rather simply stating that I had done some work in the 6-7th grade;however, in my comment it was meant to be, I don't make a thread about it;on that note, you should very well simply push yourself into doing something, a good way to start with this new era of technology is to learn how to program and learn the new tools that are being developed each day.
suedadam 13y ago
I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.
suedadam 13y ago
I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.
suedadam 13y ago
I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.
suedadam 13y ago
I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.
daemonk 13y ago
Nice. Keep at it. Following a project through to the end is very difficult and you've done it many times. Learning a game engine and implementing it is not a trivial task so don't get discouraged by the people saying it's not a big deal. The important thing now is to make progress with your skill. Do not become stagnant and be content with knowing the game engine. Start doing things from scratch and see where that takes you.
farabove 13y ago
You have shipped 30 times more then me, so all I can say is congrats :) have lovely new year.
enraged_camel 13y ago
I read this description of the zombie game and thought it was hilarious. "Zombies have taken over Earth. It is up to you to defend yourself as long as you can. The zombies have an infectious touch that kills you in one touch. Watch out and beware! Currently does not support touch support." (Not the grammar, but the irony that a game in which a zombie's touch kills you does not support touch. :P)
lcasela 13y ago
I'm not tring to be rude at all, but why did you have to mention your age? It's completely irrelevant.
- krrishd 13y ago
  I think its probably the only reason this link had any relevance at all. It probably would have otherwise just been another Show HN submission with not much response, as it still doesn't have much quality or use (not to downplay OP's achievement) until you realize who made it.
Antwan 13y ago
And that's why Win/Google store are full of crap. Come on, we all started a piece of website/soft/app/gamemaker/whatever trending techno atm when we were 14/15/16. That's undoubtedly worth these 140+pts.
yansuck 13y ago
I am sorry, I think your apps are really shitty.
chameco 13y ago
I have two pieces of advice. First, expand your horizons. Yes, Windows jumping games using a game creator are a great start, but there is so much more. At 12, when I started off, I was writing very similar games, albeit using Python and Pygame rather than JS. Your route is equally valid, with its own unique challenges, and hey, in the end you get the same result. However, from here, the paths begin to branch. While the Windows world you've embraced will lead you to Visual Basic and eventually Visual C++ and C#, you could take another path. At 11, I installed Ubuntu Linux for the first time; at 14, I switched to Arch. This was probably a bad decision, given I knew nothing about the OS and had to essentially re-learn everything. You might be intimidated. Don't be. Learning your way around Unix now will make a world of difference later. By 16, I had written my first compiler, a basic baremetal assembly kernel, and an interpreted language with a decent optimizing compiler and VM. I am still not an amazing programmer, and I still have a lot to learn. Don't doubt yourself because of your age. My second piece of advice ties into the first: don't try to use your age to gain an advantage. Not because it's unfair: because it will bring you more personal validation when people praise you because of the quality of your work rather than how young you are. It's the diffence between making a good program, and making a good program for a teenager. Also, it makes it far easier to find jobs. Source: My own experiences as the 16-year old (breaking my own rule here for the first time) author of the solid programming language. P.S. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I just don't want you to repeat my mistakes. Don't be afraid to do things that seem difficult: with research and a little elbow grease, you can accomplish anything, and nothing anyone says can take that away from you.
apunic 13y ago
> All writing, graphics, coding and publishing was done on a nexus 7 This deserves a dedicated blog post
philliphaydon 13y ago
I'm somewhat jealous. When I was 15 I was teaching myself to program so I could build features in the Ultima Online Shard I was running with a friend. We had quite a successful Shard for 2 years until he decided he didn't wanna pay for the server anymore. It made me want to get into programming to do games development, because I still think since UO / EQ, we haven't had a good MMORPG to date. I ended up in application / web development instead :( got to pay the bills...
ankurdhama 13y ago
To all comments which are either criticizing or motivating, the most important thing to remember is this : "We are standing on the shoulder of giants". The people have criticizing opinions needs to remember that similar criticism will be given to you by your preceding generation (it may be on any achievement). The people have motivating/amazement opinions needs to remember that "this seemingly amazing feet" is possible because of the exponential growth in technology and most importantly the exposure to it. If you had similar exposure to technology at your time, you could have achieved same thing. So, lets appreciate the fact that this 15 year old is "utilizing" his exposure to technology and at the same time don't make him too proud of himself by using words like genius etc which inevitably leads more show-off than learning.

206 points by stasy 13y ago

This is pretty impressive :) What I would recommend is that instead of distributing your time and energy to this many apps, you should stick to one concept and channel all your time into it. I like the games, but they could use some improvement in concept and overall quality, which shouldn't be hard for you if you spend enough time on each and every one. Focusing on one app would allow you to spend enough time, and would help you succeed further in the Windows App Market :)

stasy 13y ago
That is what I want/am going to do. I was just seeing all the things I could make and get some experience in submitting an app.
- pcharles 13y ago
  any iOS apps in your plans?

duked 13y ago

pretty cool portfolio for your age ! Did you use C#/XNA for your 2 games ? Which tutorial did you use, and how much supervision did you get? I'm asking because I'm trying to teach game programming to my son and he's 13 and I would like for him to do most of it as opposed to me doing it for him.

stasy 13y ago
I made the basic structure with scirra's construct 2 ( www.scrirra.com ), but I made the rest with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. To learn those, I got some books. O'reilly has some really good books if you know the basics.

Haul4ss 13y ago

Wow, you've certainly been productive! How was your experience with the Microsoft Store and getting apps approved? What language did you write all the games in? How much code got reused between the games (I noticed a number of them appear to be skins on top of the same underlying concept).

stasy 13y ago
I used JavaScript to make the apps. The only thing that was difficult about getting approved was making it support touch and keyboard inputs. Other than that, it was pretty easy.

InTheSwiss 13y ago

Good job! Have you look into Android apps? You will have a bigger audience. I am assuming you are using C# as they are Windows Store apps if so Java will be very similar for you to switch too.

stasy 13y ago
It is mostly made with JavaScript. I really liked making apps on Windows 8 because I can use languages I already knew from making websites.
- jawns 13y ago
  You might be interested in PhoneGap (http://phonegap.com http://phonegap.com). You use HTML/CSS/Javascript to build the apps, and then Phonegap compiles them to work on multiple platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and more.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - mooreds 13y ago
    I think PhoneGap/Cordova (the open source base of PhoneGap) can be great for certain types of apps, and it definitely leverages your existing skillset. Here's a showcase: http://phonegap.com/app/ http://phonegap.com/app/ That said, I've never done a game with PhoneGap, and I'd worry about performance (for certain types of games)--I definitely worry about performance with javascript maps, which is closer to what we do). Just something to be aware of.
    - krrishd 13y ago
      I'd definitely worry about performance in Phonegap, as to me it seems more useful for static, informational apps rather than games. I'd be interested in seeing a Phonegap game though, it would be interesting to see its acceptance in any major app market.
- 13y ago

j45 13y ago

Awesome! What you're learning from doing so many different things will serve you well in the future. Out of all of these different apps, one will either catch your attention, or others and you'll have a chance. Keep moving! Continue to cultivate and live live in a mindset of creativity and possibility, and be wary of doubt worshippers/haters who are busy doing nothing :).

stasy 13y ago
Thanks!

kumarski 13y ago

Well done. Keep going and creating stuff. Be sure to talk to your users as well. Wish you the best.

jmduke 13y ago

Jesus, this is impressive. When I was fifteen, I'm pretty sure my main accomplishment was hitting level 40 in Halo 2 matchmaking. You will probably get lots of valid and actionable advice about branching out to new platforms, focusing on one or two apps, or trying something new -- but more than anything else, keep building things! You've clearly got a ridiculously high level of aptitude and passion.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
atmosx 13y ago
When I was 15 my parents hated computers. However, I had hot girlfriends, where one of the best player of my basketball team and was having really too much fun. I don't regret nothing, but I'd sure love being able to write code at that age - If that would make me a better programmer today, which means that I would have to continue writing code for another 17 years :-) Congrats to the kid.

chromejs10 13y ago

Kudos for learning to program at such a young age. It'll give you a leg up when you decide to get a job or start a company and need funding. However, I'd suggest taking some time and working on the quality and originality of the apps over the sheer number of apps that you can churn out in a year. A number of the apps seem almost identical. You want to get known for high quality apps and not as someone who just fills the app store with small apps.

primitivesuave 13y ago

Look for a summer internship. Clearly you're passionate about this, you should look for some real-world exposure to propel you to that next level of software engineering. Best of luck to you!

ovechtrick 13y ago

Awesome!! Great seeing young people being creative/learning and building. Keep going! :)

DaveSapien 13y ago

Totally impressive!!! You have a bright, bright future ahead of yourself!

abhi3188 13y ago

This is awesome! Great work dude, I wish I had such a productive sense at 15. While using javascript did you see any performance lag when playing on the actual device?

bratsche 13y ago

Great job! So what are your plans for 2014? 60 apps? :)

stasy 13y ago
My goal is to make 1 app. On all Windows 8, iOS, and Android. One that makes some revenue!

tmikaeld 13y ago

C'mon! No one here read the sourcecode? It's made without any programming using this app: https://www.scirra.com/ https://www.scirra.com/ ... still more games than i have done though :-P

stasy 13y ago
There were some aspects of the apps that were not supported on Scirra, so I had to do it myself. But yes, they were made with Construct 2.
krrishd 13y ago
It seems quite similar to Scratch, although if that's what it takes to get interested in software engineering, then good for him either way.
bliti 13y ago
May you please link to any of your projects? Were any built without using any third party tools or libraries?
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  Please. There is quite a difference between not using third-party tools/libraries, and (arguably) not programming at all. I mean, the tool's tagline is "Create Games. Effortlessly." This isn't an attempt to put the OP down, but let's keep things in perspective.
  - kenjackson 13y ago
    I just walked through some of their tutorials and it is still programming. It has a UI for a lot of it, but the concepts are probably more like what I consider traditional programming concepts than HTML/CSS (excluding JS).
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      Yeah, I expected a response like this. I really shouldn't have implied that this tool isn't a programming tool, but I think there's a difference between this tool and some C library.

pseudometa 13y ago

Now it is time to learn illustrator and photoshop.

SimHacker 13y ago
Better yet, now is the time to create your own reusable Illustrator and Photoshop components, and write games that build them in to enable users to customize and create their own content. Oh, and 3D Studio Max, too. Not 100% of the features and complexity, just the 50% that you need 95% of the time. The same way many games and other apps use built-inn text editors to enable users to write their own text, instead of saying "oh just use Word for that".

mtrn 13y ago

Wonderful. And - nostalgia advances. And how, at 15 I probably was a more productive programmer than now, where I barely manage to wrap up a few miniscule open source projects per year, if any. Back then I wrote what looks like major projects to me now - in month, alongside school, friends, holidays and everything ... Any experiences or tips on how to get 15 again in terms of productivity? :)

krrishd 13y ago
I think it would be slightly unrealistic to 'get back to 15'. I'm 15, and I'm a developer; the main advantage I have right now is that I don't need to worry about rent, food, and other stuff, since I'm still with my parents. This gives me time to work on whatever project I want without any other worries. I guess in your case, you would probably have to get some sort of job where they are a lot more lenient and give you time for side projects.
- radicalbyte 13y ago
  No chores, no kids, no girlfriend/wife. That's where time goes. I was crazy productive when I was 15 (and when I was 12). Now I'm 33 with a wife and kids I just don't have the time. But then again I work on problems that are two-three factors harder than this during the day, so it all evens out. Keep up the good work kid, try lots of stuff out now, find something you like, then go deep. It only gets more fun :)
  - dualogy 13y ago
    It's not about chores, kids, wives. I purposely avoided all those in order to "stay in my 20s even well into my 30s, ideally forever". Sad to report that simply doesn't work, even with zero money or chore worries whatsoever!
    - meddlepal 13y ago
      At least you tried to live the dream...

goshx 13y ago

Nice! At 15 I was just learning what a computer was :o (15 years ago)

bliti 13y ago

The minecraft-themed jump game has potential. I would skin it with more minecraft looking assets and include monsters. Maybe a creeper that explodes and takes away all surrounding blocks when you jump nearby? Or a skeleton that shoots arrows and nudges the player to the side (making it harder to control)? You may also vary the level by using the different biome textures from the original.

napolux 13y ago

Good job. Now focus only on one app (from design to store) and make it not just like a tutorial.

arasmussen 13y ago

Your paid link is broken :P

stasy 13y ago
I don't have any paid apps yet
- arasmussen 13y ago
  Then you should say that instead of your 404 page :P

kybernetyk 13y ago

That's pretty cool. Somehow I wish there would have been app stores back then when I was 15 and making games. Not to earn money but to get people to play my games - which was pretty damn hard back in 1997. Nowadays you can get 100 users pretty easily just by releasing the game. 100 users back then was something I dreamed about reaching some day :)

mynameishere 13y ago
I remember the equivalent years ago. I would make (awful) games in turbo pascal, and submit them to BBSes. The sysops usually put them available for download. I doubt anyone ever did.

andrewljohnson 13y ago

Now that I have kids, I've been considering whether I want them to play as much Magic as I did (traveled a lot for it). My conclusion is I would encourage them to be more like this kid, but not actually force my will in the end.

MrJagil 13y ago
force my will...
- andrewljohnson 13y ago
  I think I did that on accident, but I like the way you think!

MJR 13y ago

This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a friend who can draw and have them create some unique characters for you, write a little story and you've got an indie game that's all your own.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Speaking as a game developer, this is remarkably bad advice for a young gamedev to follow. It doesn't matter whether or not they're "his". It matters that he continues creating. That's the most important thing. He's not making money off of other people's work. He's building a skillset that will serve him for a lifetime. Wasting time fitting society's arbitrary moral standard is time not spent becoming a better gamedev. Even if he's served with a DCMA takedown notice for some of his apps, it doesn't matter even slightly, because the app isn't the end goal. Talent is. And the way to foster talent is to not stop working. I'd encourage him to pursue art if he wants to, as it's also a skill which will serve him the rest of his life -- the creators of Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, and World of Goo were all artist-programmers, which seems more than a coincidence -- but it's not a requirement to be a gamedev.
- Blahah 13y ago
  Surely it matters for legal reasons? I thought that was what the parent was implying; he could get his games pulled for copyright infringement.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Note for readers: I edited my original comment just before Blahah's reply was written, and my edit makes it seem like they didn't read my comment. But in fact they had read an earlier version of it. So I figure I should mention that to avoid confusion... Anyway, it doesn't matter if his apps are taken down, because growing his skillset is the most important thing, not the apps themselves. No one will fine him or take him to jail, so as long as he's aware that maybe the app might get pulled, then using other people's characters is the best possible thing a young gamedev can do. And plus there's a good chance no one will care.

wushupork 13y ago

Just the fact that you are 15, reading hackernews and making apps and NOT spending your time kicking some middle-aged man at Halo is AMAZING. Kudos to you. I wish I was more like you when I was your age.

caprad 13y ago
When I was a kid we could only afford a cheap computer (VZ-300, Australia computer), with a z80, while all my mates had c64s. So they were busy swapping games with each other, I had to program my own, first in basic, from magazines (thanks APC), and then in z80 assembly. I still love developing today, things may have been different if we were not poor.

orik 13y ago

Nice use of Maplestory assets - I did the same sorta thing in the summer of my 7th grade year for a "intro to game design" class. Can't find the game anymore, but I had edited the chirppy sprite (http://i.imgur.com/ccSY4RE.png http://i.imgur.com/ccSY4RE.png) to be holding and firing a bow. I ended up getting a A- on my final for using assets that weren't mine. That's pretty small compared to the sort of things you could run into when you're actually putting this stuff on an app store. I'd recommend toying around with a sprite editor and getting familiar with pixel art techniques like dithering. You might even enjoy it as much as coding!

C1D 13y ago

EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what I hate people doing to me. Please keep it up and I hope you get even better; Also a little tip, check out Unity3D, it is costly but if you're into game deving it will let you develop games in 3D easily (though you're going to need to know basic Javascript or C) and it is multi-platform so it can publish to mobile. OLD POST: Quality not quantity. While it is impressive to see another 15 year old programmer (I've never met one in real life even though I've been to three schools in two different countries (I'm a expat kid) ), the actual programming skill required to make games like these are little to none and truthfully i'm not overly impressed. I too am 15 mind you and although I haven't developed any games I have created a RSA secure chatting social network website and app for it too which could communicate between each other using websockets and a node.JS server (this hasn't been published, while making it my partner quit :(, and I eventually lost hope that it would even be used since I was only 15). I hope this doesn't come off as criticism. Its actually great to see another young programmer such as my self but all I am trying to say is that this is not overly impressing.

neilk 13y ago
Hey, that's great for you, but don't be too quick to criticize how someone else hacks. You deserve credit for trying something hard, but so does this person for actually releasing stuff. And remember, it's not all about programming chops - doing lots of little projects teaches you a lot about the whole process, from UI to backend, how the app stores work, maybe even what users like. If nothing else you achieve "flow" more easily with short-term hacks, and that helps keep your mind in a creative state. Source: 40 year old programmer, started programming at 11, deeply jealous that there were no app stores back then for the zillion games I wrote.
joebo 13y ago
I disagree completely. I'm over twice your age and started programming when I was 12. My birthday present for my 14th birthday was a $99 retail copy of Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0. Back then I wrote a notepad clone, cab archiver (zip was a fad, really!), and various other utilities. I remember thinking how cool it was when I was 14 to have over 50,000 downloads. I've been a professional programmer (big corp, consulting, etc) for 15 years mostly doing web and desktop applications for businesses. I can't sit down and write a pacman clone or an asteroids game. Therefore, I can say that it takes more skill than "little to none". I am impressed.

Lilme 13y ago

15 is the new 25

osman123 13y ago

good work. Keep at it and branch out. Try and ignore the negative comments here. The IT industry is full of big egos.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

One tip: Ignore everybody and keep creating. If I'd done that at 15, then I wouldn't have started to doubt myself and stop working on ideas that later turned out to be very prescient. The most important thing you should do is the thing that's most important to you. Be sure it's not defined by other people's opinions. There will always be people in life like the guy who replied "While it is impressive to see another 15 year old programmer (I've never met one in real life even though I've been to three schools in two different countries (I'm a expat kid) ), the actual programming skill required to make games like these are little to none and truthfully i'm not overly impressed." Ignore 'em and keep working. EDIT: Oh, I should also mention: don't let the praise go to your head. Another mistake I made. In general, it's it's a bad idea to compare yourself to anyone else -- whether feeling smug and superior that you've accomplished all this at 15 (surprise, I know your secret!) or feeling weak and inferior that you're not as talented as some other person. They're not you, and you're not them. Relative comparisons like that don't matter one bit. Instead, it's far more advantageous to always be comparing your current self to your past self. That's how Carmack became so incredibly good, for example. He didn't wait for anyone to surpass him; he did it himself. That's only possible if you believe you're not as skilled as you could be, i.e. having no ego. Nor did he let people convince him he was wasting his time back when he was working on his early projects. It's complicated. Just keep working.

Sakes 13y ago
Yes, the op has done fantastic. Perfection is unattainable but a great motivator. You can always get better and should. This past year you have learned a very valuable skill, pump out product. Now you should reflect upon how well your apps performed in the store and determine if you want to continue with the same strategy, invest time in polishing your projects, or maybe simply review your quality standards. Great job OP, any parent would be proud, any person should show respect. Keep it up, iterate on your ideas and yourself.
kyro 13y ago
One thing I've learned is that if you've found yourself ruffling feathers and receiving criticism for something that you've done that isn't objectively bad or immoral, you're probably on the right track.

jorgecastillo 13y ago

Damn! now I am depressed. What more can I say the first sentence says it all. Adding to my comment would be pointless.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

Here's a cookie ...

AfroDiva 13y ago

Amazing, i wish that my cousins would be as productive as you at that age.

sunseb 13y ago

Be proud of your work, that's nice ! Keep moving forward ! :-)

thinkersilver 13y ago

This is encouraging and I think it's great that you are interacting with the community and getting feedback on your work at an early stage. This will help you grow. I guess you've posted this for constructive criticism. You should look at challenging yourself further by finding a problem area that you are passionate about and digging deep into the data structures and the algorithms. Consider when I was 15. I was fascinated with computer graphics and games and wrote a raytracer in C, wrote a doom-like game-engine in pascal. Writing the game logic was always the easy part, dealing with limited memory and optimising for hardware were always a problem. My mates were all building their own graphics engines, dabbling with operating systems development and one kid was playing around with Classes and tree like data structures. We looked at him like he was a god. This isn't a put down but a push. You can do so much more kid and you have a good headstart but try something harder. Post your work here and most will be glad to give a helping hand. Ironically the most talented of us ended up being a musician when he left for University.

robert-wallis 13y ago

Nice work getting things done! I see your Minecraft and Mario games are "unavailable". I'm sure you'll keep creating your own IP in the future, like you did with the other 22 games instead of dealing with copyright and trademark infringement. Especially if you want to generate some revenue. I am not a lawyer. But it will be much better for you to keep doing your own thing (like you did with most of your games), than to be taken down by lawyers working for people who's characters, names, or art you "re-purposed".

SyneRyder 13y ago

This is awesome. And while there's some valid criticism in this thread (regarding quality over quantity & originality), that criticism shouldn't detract from a few points: * You're averaging a product a fortnight. Whoa. * You've learned to leverage 3rd party tools to increase productivity / output. * You've learned to actually -ship- product. * You made the front page of Hacker News. All of that is incredibly valuable. Who cares if it isn't written in Java or Objective-C or Haskell or Erlang, so long as your customers love what you're making? (And if they don't love it, at least you now know what to improve on next!) If you do follow the advice of taking longer to make a higher quality product, don't fall into the trap of becoming a perfectionist and never shipping. It's better to ship something and keep improving it based on customer feedback, than to make something that never sees the light of day. Did you join onegameamonth.com? If not, you definitely should.

diminoten 13y ago
Yeah, if we just ignore the products themselves (which may sound sarcastic but I genuinely think is valid), this guy's pumping out more completed projects over the past year than almost anyone posting here's done in their lifetime. That, alone, is huge.

beatboxrevival 13y ago

When I was 15, I was also creating code. I met some "smart" older guy who worked as a product manager for britannica.com before wikipedia and the first bubble. I asked him for some advice on how to make a career out of it. He said, "you don't want to build shit, you want to manage people. Writing code is for the losers." As a young impressionable kid with no tech mentors, I listened. It took ten years to come back to writing code. Anyways, like the sillysaurus2 said, ignore the critics and keep doing what you love to do.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jebus989 13y ago

It's worth noting that this isn't a cool github account someone's turned up of a surprisingly young programmer, it's a serial publicist [0-2] using primarily a game creation engine (which he doesn't acknowledge upfront) to build low-quality games and display them on an unsightly tumblr page. I think to heap praise on this because of their age alone is patronising. Encouragement absolutely, it's great to see young people interested in programming, but at what age would this has been flagged and removed quickly after posting, 17? 19? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864667 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800925 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799065

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I think it's great that he continued to search for a way to promote his own work. Your links demonstrate that he was asking us for help, received absolutely none, then figured out how to help himself. New programmers (of any age) aren't competing at the level of professional, kickstarter-funded projects. And most people don't know how difficult it is to do this kind of gamedev work when you're just starting out, so it seems like people are labeling this as low-quality just because it's the work of a newer craftsman. He's out there actually doing something and trying to make his own vision happen, and he hasn't resorted to spammy behavior. It looks like he kept his head down and continued to produce while looking for a way to promote his work, then correctly ascertained that the sheer quantity of work would intrigue people.

cvburgess 13y ago

While these apps are impressive for a 15 year old developer they are not really "high-quality" titles... yet MSFT allowed 30 of these games into the store by the same developer. If I were MSFT, I would've thrown a red flag up if not for QA, for potential spam. Great work and keep it up, OP! I wouldn't worry about co-founders just yet. Keep hacking till you find something you are really passionate about and a co-founder will join you when and if the time is right (probably a t least 3 years down the road for legal reasons)

zachlatta 13y ago

Hey, I'm around your age and very impressed with what you're doing. It's neat that you've released so many apps this year. As others have noted, it looks like you're using some form of game creation engine to make these quickly. I'd encourage you to try to move away from that and learn what's actually happening behind the scenes. Doing this will allow you to make more complex and impressive games in the future. It'll also serve as a tremendous learning experience. Also, it's really neat that you're young and doing incredible things, but I'd warn against relying on your age to impress people. Try to make things that are impressive regardless of who made them. I'm one of the developers on a fairly popular game in the App Store (800,000+ downloads). If you're up to it, I'd like to chat with you more about what you're doing. Shoot me an email at zach@zachlatta.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

sodafountan 13y ago

That's awesome, Keep it up! Did you make anything off of them?

BSousa 13y ago

Ok, first of all, congratulations! I remember being 15 and hacking away (It was Turbo Pascal for me). Ignore any naysayers that complain there is no code or it was done with a simple tool. Do what you like and enjoy. But now on a more serious note, I'm about twice your age, so not too old to be screaming 'get of my lawn', but old enough to hopefully give you some advice that will resonate. This projects mean an average of a game every two weeks, even if they are simple, I'm sure this is taking a lot of your time. I'm extrapolating here, so if I'm wrong just ignore me, but I'm assuming you are spending a lot of time doing these and not a lot of social activities. Please please please, do some socialisation with folks within the dev community and in your school and neighbourhood. I'm not going to say these are the best times of your life or whatnot, but believe it or not, when you are older and start looking for jobs, you will start understanding that social knowledge is as much, or more important that tech knowledge, and you will regret not developing those skills at younger age when it is easier to do so. Again, good work, keep producing, but find some balance.

suedadam 13y ago

I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping you from succeeding;age seems to be the only factor of which has limited me and my company from succeeding, I've put through the efforts and work required;however, investors and actual business men believe the level of maturity is too little as put per my age. tl;Dr: I agree;don't brag and I don't like how people brag about how you've done so much as per your age group as if that would have limited you. I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it. on another note;congrats on your efforts and I urge you to continue to in your path.

krrishd 13y ago
I think the biggest difference here is that he has actually shown the world his work....
zachlatta 13y ago
Hey! I think it's really neat that you're doing incredible things at such a young age. I'm a little older than you, but would love to chat with you more about what you're up to. Shoot me an email at zach@zachlatta.com.
deeteecee 13y ago
Good for you man, I'm way behind. I'm 24 and haven't accomplished much. I'm just working my way to seeing what I want to use as my career. Just a note, though: "I've done much more when I was in 6-7th grade yet I don't brag about it." That's called bragging.
- suedadam 13y ago
  Sorry for the confusion;I was rather simply stating that I had done some work in the 6-7th grade;however, in my comment it was meant to be, I don't make a thread about it;on that note, you should very well simply push yourself into doing something, a good way to start with this new era of technology is to learn how to program and learn the new tools that are being developed each day.

suedadam 13y ago

daemonk 13y ago

Nice. Keep at it. Following a project through to the end is very difficult and you've done it many times. Learning a game engine and implementing it is not a trivial task so don't get discouraged by the people saying it's not a big deal. The important thing now is to make progress with your skill. Do not become stagnant and be content with knowing the game engine. Start doing things from scratch and see where that takes you.

farabove 13y ago

You have shipped 30 times more then me, so all I can say is congrats :) have lovely new year.

enraged_camel 13y ago

I read this description of the zombie game and thought it was hilarious. "Zombies have taken over Earth. It is up to you to defend yourself as long as you can. The zombies have an infectious touch that kills you in one touch. Watch out and beware! Currently does not support touch support." (Not the grammar, but the irony that a game in which a zombie's touch kills you does not support touch. :P)

lcasela 13y ago

I'm not tring to be rude at all, but why did you have to mention your age? It's completely irrelevant.

krrishd 13y ago
I think its probably the only reason this link had any relevance at all. It probably would have otherwise just been another Show HN submission with not much response, as it still doesn't have much quality or use (not to downplay OP's achievement) until you realize who made it.

Antwan 13y ago

And that's why Win/Google store are full of crap. Come on, we all started a piece of website/soft/app/gamemaker/whatever trending techno atm when we were 14/15/16. That's undoubtedly worth these 140+pts.

yansuck 13y ago

I am sorry, I think your apps are really shitty.

chameco 13y ago

I have two pieces of advice. First, expand your horizons. Yes, Windows jumping games using a game creator are a great start, but there is so much more. At 12, when I started off, I was writing very similar games, albeit using Python and Pygame rather than JS. Your route is equally valid, with its own unique challenges, and hey, in the end you get the same result. However, from here, the paths begin to branch. While the Windows world you've embraced will lead you to Visual Basic and eventually Visual C++ and C#, you could take another path. At 11, I installed Ubuntu Linux for the first time; at 14, I switched to Arch. This was probably a bad decision, given I knew nothing about the OS and had to essentially re-learn everything. You might be intimidated. Don't be. Learning your way around Unix now will make a world of difference later. By 16, I had written my first compiler, a basic baremetal assembly kernel, and an interpreted language with a decent optimizing compiler and VM. I am still not an amazing programmer, and I still have a lot to learn. Don't doubt yourself because of your age. My second piece of advice ties into the first: don't try to use your age to gain an advantage. Not because it's unfair: because it will bring you more personal validation when people praise you because of the quality of your work rather than how young you are. It's the diffence between making a good program, and making a good program for a teenager. Also, it makes it far easier to find jobs. Source: My own experiences as the 16-year old (breaking my own rule here for the first time) author of the solid programming language. P.S. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I just don't want you to repeat my mistakes. Don't be afraid to do things that seem difficult: with research and a little elbow grease, you can accomplish anything, and nothing anyone says can take that away from you.

apunic 13y ago

> All writing, graphics, coding and publishing was done on a nexus 7 This deserves a dedicated blog post

philliphaydon 13y ago

I'm somewhat jealous. When I was 15 I was teaching myself to program so I could build features in the Ultima Online Shard I was running with a friend. We had quite a successful Shard for 2 years until he decided he didn't wanna pay for the server anymore. It made me want to get into programming to do games development, because I still think since UO / EQ, we haven't had a good MMORPG to date. I ended up in application / web development instead :( got to pay the bills...

ankurdhama 13y ago

To all comments which are either criticizing or motivating, the most important thing to remember is this : "We are standing on the shoulder of giants". The people have criticizing opinions needs to remember that similar criticism will be given to you by your preceding generation (it may be on any achievement). The people have motivating/amazement opinions needs to remember that "this seemingly amazing feet" is possible because of the exponential growth in technology and most importantly the exposure to it. If you had similar exposure to technology at your time, you could have achieved same thing. So, lets appreciate the fact that this 15 year old is "utilizing" his exposure to technology and at the same time don't make him too proud of himself by using words like genius etc which inevitably leads more show-off than learning.