5 ms·

Introducing Competitive Multiplayer Programming

58 points by schmatz 13y ago

dajohnson89 13y ago
As if programming culture wasn't hyper-macho and competitive enough.
- gsaines 13y ago
  That's a really valid concern, although we were surprised by how many of our users specifically requested this feature set.
  - dajohnson89 13y ago
    Well it looks like a cool concept, and all the best!
    - gsaines 13y ago
      Certainly, thanks for checking it out. I hope it goes without saying, but if you find anything that's terribly, broken, or in need of improvement, shoot me a line at george@codecombat.com and we'll get it resolved for you.
- pgt 13y ago
  Measuring your skills against others and peers could be a great deterrent for impostor syndrome.
  - derekp7 13y ago
    Actually, in my opinion, this could actually increase the feeling of impostor syndrome. Because no matter how good you are, there will be many people better than you. So any forum which puts your skills up against a random selection of others skilled in your craft will clearly show how far from the top you are. Unless, of course, you are consistently the best, but then it really stinks for everyone that you beat.
    - schmatz 13y ago
      This will be a very interesting thing to study. Our leaderboard rankings tend to be extremely fluid, and I wonder what the net effect tends to be in terms of impostor syndrome.
    - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
      This reads like it has an assumption that people's programming ability is some hidden constant that gets compared. In reality it depends a lot on the task, motivation, current physical health, and mental exhaustion.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
AUmrysh 13y ago
I like this, it reminds me a little bit of corewars. Is there a way to get an enemy's type when programming from the base?
- schmatz 13y ago
  Thanks AUmrysh! If you use `this.getEnemies()` it will return an array of enemy objects, and each one of these objects has a `type` property.
dkhenry 13y ago
This is awesome. hey @schmatz since I see your reading this. See if you guys can figure out a way to make it persistent and Massively Multiplayer. I want to write a program to defend my tower while I am at work, then hop on at night and tell my minions to attack someone else.
- abstrct 13y ago
  The Schemaverse (http://schemaverse.com http://schemaverse.com) is massive multiplayer game that you play through programming, although the gameplay is no longer persistent and is now played in one day rounds. I would love to make a better persistent version one day but it needs a lot of hardware to support most users complete lack of optimization (or deliberate resource hogging attacks). Schemaverse isn't nearly as polished as this is but if you are looking to battle some AI, give it a chance.
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
    Why not hard limit amount of time people's algorithms can spend?
    - abstrct 13y ago
      At some point there is so much data available to work with that even nicely optimized queries become too slow. This may have also been a limitation of hardware but either way the game quickly became not fun when it was persistent.
- nwinter 13y ago
  Yeah, it's going to be awesome when we can do this: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Summer-Project-Ideas-List#sandbox https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Summer-Project... It'll be hard, but not as hard as what we've already done with sandboxing and live-coding user programs, and it'll be truly epic.
  - toki5 13y ago
Robadob 13y ago
It would be great if you could view the source for the existing functions such as getNearest(), It would save much time reimplementing modified versions of them. For example if I wanted to make a getNearestArcher() method to enable my archers to focus the enemy nearest enemy archer at certain points, I'd take the existing function and just add an additional type check rather than writing my own function from scratch. These types of games are really interesting and having this one available in the browser gives it a significant advantage over others such as http://aisandbox.com/ http://aisandbox.com/ which when tried was a little too complicated to setup for casual usage.
- Robadob 13y ago
  (AISandbox was available for download at one time, but it appears they have since gone back into a semi-closed Alpha)
- schmatz 13y ago
  Hi @Robadob, great suggestion, thanks for pointing this out! You can actually view the code for these functions in the Level Editor, but obviously it would be much more awesome to have a way to view them from inside the game. We have to strike a balance with the UI to make the learning curve less steep while at the same time providing a wide range of features. I'll bring this up and see what the rest of the team thinks.
riggins 13y ago
it'd be cool if you made it so I could customize the characters eyes ... then I could make my guy look like a jawa.
sireat 13y ago
This looks awesome(if a bit slugging right now, probably because of HN). Reminds a bit of my darker days working with Macroquest.

58 points by schmatz 13y ago

dajohnson89 13y ago

As if programming culture wasn't hyper-macho and competitive enough.

gsaines 13y ago
That's a really valid concern, although we were surprised by how many of our users specifically requested this feature set.
- dajohnson89 13y ago
  Well it looks like a cool concept, and all the best!
  - gsaines 13y ago
    Certainly, thanks for checking it out. I hope it goes without saying, but if you find anything that's terribly, broken, or in need of improvement, shoot me a line at george@codecombat.com and we'll get it resolved for you.
pgt 13y ago
Measuring your skills against others and peers could be a great deterrent for impostor syndrome.
- derekp7 13y ago
  Actually, in my opinion, this could actually increase the feeling of impostor syndrome. Because no matter how good you are, there will be many people better than you. So any forum which puts your skills up against a random selection of others skilled in your craft will clearly show how far from the top you are. Unless, of course, you are consistently the best, but then it really stinks for everyone that you beat.
  - schmatz 13y ago
    This will be a very interesting thing to study. Our leaderboard rankings tend to be extremely fluid, and I wonder what the net effect tends to be in terms of impostor syndrome.
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
    This reads like it has an assumption that people's programming ability is some hidden constant that gets compared. In reality it depends a lot on the task, motivation, current physical health, and mental exhaustion.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

AUmrysh 13y ago

I like this, it reminds me a little bit of corewars. Is there a way to get an enemy's type when programming from the base?

schmatz 13y ago
Thanks AUmrysh! If you use `this.getEnemies()` it will return an array of enemy objects, and each one of these objects has a `type` property.

dkhenry 13y ago

This is awesome. hey @schmatz since I see your reading this. See if you guys can figure out a way to make it persistent and Massively Multiplayer. I want to write a program to defend my tower while I am at work, then hop on at night and tell my minions to attack someone else.

abstrct 13y ago
The Schemaverse (http://schemaverse.com http://schemaverse.com) is massive multiplayer game that you play through programming, although the gameplay is no longer persistent and is now played in one day rounds. I would love to make a better persistent version one day but it needs a lot of hardware to support most users complete lack of optimization (or deliberate resource hogging attacks). Schemaverse isn't nearly as polished as this is but if you are looking to battle some AI, give it a chance.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  Why not hard limit amount of time people's algorithms can spend?
  - abstrct 13y ago
    At some point there is so much data available to work with that even nicely optimized queries become too slow. This may have also been a limitation of hardware but either way the game quickly became not fun when it was persistent.
nwinter 13y ago
Yeah, it's going to be awesome when we can do this: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Summer-Project-Ideas-List#sandbox https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Summer-Project... It'll be hard, but not as hard as what we've already done with sandboxing and live-coding user programs, and it'll be truly epic.
- toki5 13y ago

Robadob 13y ago

It would be great if you could view the source for the existing functions such as getNearest(), It would save much time reimplementing modified versions of them. For example if I wanted to make a getNearestArcher() method to enable my archers to focus the enemy nearest enemy archer at certain points, I'd take the existing function and just add an additional type check rather than writing my own function from scratch. These types of games are really interesting and having this one available in the browser gives it a significant advantage over others such as http://aisandbox.com/ http://aisandbox.com/ which when tried was a little too complicated to setup for casual usage.

Robadob 13y ago
(AISandbox was available for download at one time, but it appears they have since gone back into a semi-closed Alpha)
schmatz 13y ago
Hi @Robadob, great suggestion, thanks for pointing this out! You can actually view the code for these functions in the Level Editor, but obviously it would be much more awesome to have a way to view them from inside the game. We have to strike a balance with the UI to make the learning curve less steep while at the same time providing a wide range of features. I'll bring this up and see what the rest of the team thinks.

riggins 13y ago

it'd be cool if you made it so I could customize the characters eyes ... then I could make my guy look like a jawa.

sireat 13y ago

This looks awesome(if a bit slugging right now, probably because of HN). Reminds a bit of my darker days working with Macroquest.