Congrats Nick, Scott, and George! I can't wait to see where you guys go with this.
Thanks kgodey, we are (understandably) extremely excited to be a part of YC and have the opportunity to really push this project to reach it's full potential.
CodeCombat in Y Combinator
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#22And every company after them in Office Hours walked just a little bit slower leaving the stage...
Yeah, a bit awkward for those guys
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#23This is the same guy from skritter.com. Wonder what's happening to skritter?
Hi Ryan, we've been working on stabilizing the Skritter code base for the last year, and have hired a team of extremely dedicated and intelligent folks to continue running it. We're planning to make an announcement about our commitment to CodeCombat in the next month or so when we get all the team changes finalized, but needless to say that Skritter is still moving forward.
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#24Congrats, it is a very nice initiative and a novel idea. I am trying to get back into coding, I do have experience with MATLAB programming (and also VB6 some 10 yrs back), but this website makes it so much easier. I would like to see some UI changes as you progress through your Y Combinator phase, the coding editor sometimes disappears for me, and I don't know how to get it back and have to restart the level and some…
Hi iamshs, we just noticed that we are getting traffic from HN, pretty wild, we've barely stabilized things and now traffic is picking up again. Yikes. When you say the code editor disappears, do you mean the entire right pane of the player screen? Could you send me a screenshot and any steps to reproduce it at george@codecombat.com? Would love to get that fixed for you. What browser are you using by the way? Althoug…
Sure, I will chronicle the bug next time and send you the screenshot and steps. I am on FF 23 on Win 8. Basically, after the code finishes auto-casting the whole right coding pane disappears. It has happened two times out of maybe 20-25 sessions, and I do not know what triggers it.
Awesome. Looking forward to new additions.
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#25I didn't get it when you where on stage, but seeing your website I have to give you thumbs up. It looks great, it's fun to play (even for me as experienced dev), and overall very promising. Congrats on YC!
Thanks for the kind words iamkoby, it was a complete rush to be on stage and as Nick's post suggests, it was even more crazy that we got accepted there and then. We can't wait to be a part of the program!
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#26Hi, gamedev here. At one point on stage, you brought up the possibility of open sourcing your code, and Paul cautioned you that you may want to follow game industry conventions. There are two reasons the game industry tends to keep their code closed-source. 1) It has been lucrative for game studios to sell licenses to their closed-source engine. Some game studios, such as Id Software, have made hundreds of millions o…
Hi Sillysaurus, thanks a lot for the feedback. We've been talking to gamedevs and VCs and so far nobody has raised a flag about opensourcing everything, which is what we're thinking we're going to do. In the words of one VC we spoke to "it's all about the branding and community, who cares who has the code?" It feels risky, but we really think that it's consistent with the intention of the game to make it easy for peo…
For what it's worth - I'm in the process of reading the biography of John Carmack and John Romero of id software (interesting read...recommend it!) and apparently Carmack is a pretty big proponent for open source software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack#Free_software
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#27So glad you posted this video. I didn't get to see your interview live and had been looking for it. Fantastic job! Imagine the pressure for the next team up :)
Yeah, it certainly wasn't our intent to up the ante for those coming after us, we spoke with both teams right before on stage, and liked both of them a great deal, smart folks with good ideas.
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#28Was chatting with a someone from CodeCombat on olark. they had no idea it was on HN but the traffic was booming. Ah startups...
Ha, Nick pointed it out to us about 30 minutes ago, the analytics have been so crazy we've largely stopped watching them for the time being. It's not quite the Techcrunch effect, but the traffic has been through the roof for the past 4 days, HN was sort of lost in the noise. I didn't ask Nick how he figured it out, but I maybe one of the Olarkers mentioned it. :)
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#29That is a pretty cool idea. Actually, my girlfriend has been wanting to learn how to code yet I haven't been able to find something to motivate her. Maybe her love of RPGs and this will get her down on that path.
Funny you should mention that woud420, we started this to teach me (gsaines) because I wanted something more engaging than online lessons. But when choosing the artwork, genre, and overall style, we went more cartoony/cutesy because of Nick's wife's gaming preferences. We also made the main character a strong female figure so that girls could associate with story that we're putting together (not currently in the levels). We've got a half dozen new units we'll be adding shortly, and 4 of them are female to sort of balance things out a bit. In short, we're hoping it is something your girlfriend will not just feel comfortable using, but actually enjoy!
Re: CodeCombat in Y Combinator
#30And every company after them in Office Hours walked just a little bit slower leaving the stage...
Yeah, we felt pretty bad about that too. PG wasn't kidding about the surprise, we thought that if we did well we might get an interview, it was a complete shock. We had met the other teams backstage, the founders of both startups impressed us quite a bit and we hope we get to see them in this batch.