April 10, 2019

Teaching your teen to code a starfield in PICO-8

Kids love starfields. It’s a perfect coding session with a nice visual result and basic highschool math. We’re going to build this: When coding with kids, always keep it simple and at their level. I know most of you reading this are math wizards but kids tend not to be super impressed by your vector math and matrix calculations (believe me, I’ve tried). You’re going for quick results and simple code, on their math level. Read more

April 8, 2019

Teaching kids game development with PICO-8

Growing up I loved to play Crazy Comets on my C64. The magic starfield seemed almost impossible to code for a 14 year old and the music by Rob Hubbard totally blew me away. I decided to code a pico8 remake of it together with my 6 year old daughter in order to show her how to make games. We had a fantastic time! Pico8 has the simplicity needed in order to show how everything fits together. Read more