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My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

armaansahni.com

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Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#341

Post by veesahni »

gzambonibr wrote: post #316

First, Congrats to both of you, mom and dad, for your parenting skills. About the game, 1 - It is fun to play! Awesome ideia to make it turn based attacks and math problems 2 - The artwork is fun! good jobs. Suggestions: What about add difficulty levels? like: Easy: simple addition/subtraction problems Medium: +- / problems Hard: +- / problems with a timer (10 to 20 seconds to awnser)

great feedback. So far the hardness of the problem increases with stronger attacks -- today the implementation switches from addition to multiplication, but that could be improved to be more nuanced.

thanks for checking out the game!

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#343

Post by ksassnowski »

Most of my feedback has already been mentioned by others (charging indicators, seeing what the enemy is "thinking", etc.). I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is.

The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden.

I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'm probably thinking that AI wrote the game for him really made me chuckle. That's exactly what I was thinking when I first read the blog title! Granted, it still would have been cool for a 9-year old, just not as cool as the alternative. So great job in immediately addressing this in the introduction. That seems like a really good use-case for AI (and I'm generally not the biggest fan of AI).

The "Dad's comments" throughout the post are also a great way of providing some additional context without editorializing the kid's own writing.

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#344

Post by phtrivier »

This is just insane. Congrats to your son.

I would love to see the code, and some of the interactions he had with the AI.

I would have been embarrassed to death if anyone had posted what I was barely able to code as a teenage, and I started older than him...

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#345

Post by veesahni »

gardenhedge wrote: post #315

Curiosity as to why you use gemini instead of ChatGPT or Claude?

Great question!!

Months before starting this game, he wanted to create AI images for a story he was writing. At the time, ChatGPT didn't provide free access for image generation but Gemini did. So he got comfortable prompting Gemini.

When it came to writing code, Gemini was the natural and obvious LLM to him. At the time, I also showed him ChatGPT but he said that Gemini understands him better.

He primarily "talks" (dictates) to Gemini and his words are not precise dev-speak, so between voice-to-text & finding the right contextual info (he uses a singe long chat for development), it seems Gemini worked better for him.

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#346

Post by heresie-dabord »

ksassnowski wrote: post #343

Most of my feedback has already been mentioned by others (charging indicators, seeing what the enemy is "thinking", etc.). I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is. The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden. I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'…

> I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is.

I will add this although it is well beyond the OP's child to fully understand... Congratulations on delivering something that people like!

Cheers ^_^

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#347

Post by veesahni »

phtrivier wrote: post #344

This is just insane. Congrats to your son. I would love to see the code, and some of the interactions he had with the AI. I would have been embarrassed to death if anyone had posted what I was barely able to code as a teenage, and I started older than him...

He talks about how he uses the AI in his blog post.

Regarding the code - just view source. It's all on one page, no compilation step. There's even a variable called Utah (lol, because we visited Utah months before he was working on the game)

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#348

Post by veesahni »

ksassnowski wrote: post #343

Most of my feedback has already been mentioned by others (charging indicators, seeing what the enemy is "thinking", etc.). I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is. The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden. I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'…

Kids dad here.

I was not expecting animations for v1 either! But one day he asked me what the extra buttons were in Piskel and I explained frames + layers. His eyes lit up and the flying snake was born an hour later. Originally with 4 frames, but mom gave him feedback that he needs more frames for it to be smooth. Thus I believe it is currently 8 frames!

And we have talked in depth about how not to use AI. He has a healthy mistrust of it because he's seen first hand how it hallucinates.

v2 has sounds, which got us into a long discussion around copyrights. He's recording his own! ;)

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#349

Post by veesahni »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #346
ksassnowski wrote: post #343

Most of my feedback has already been mentioned by others (charging indicators, seeing what the enemy is "thinking", etc.). I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is. The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden. I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'…

> I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is. I will add this although it is well beyond the OP's child to fully understand... Congratulations on delivering something that people like! Cheers ^_^

Appreciate your comments. At this point, he definitely doesn't understand the depth of the attention his game is getting, but it will be good fuel for keeping him moving towards the next version!
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