A great start! Congratulate them on keeping the scope small. That's important when starting out. Leaves room to build on later as they're learning.
Recommendations:
- It's hard to tell when health is altered. Perhaps add a temporary color change to the health bar to inform players of the change. Or start to build in animated health that reduces the red fill with the number.
- Some abilities require charge, but I couldn't find where that was tracked. Another counter could be added to show this number and any increase.
- Add score for the battle. It could track correct answers, or hits, or anything that might be fun. Later versions could include a score/tracker for total monsters fought.
Seconding this. Not as a qualified frontend dev, but as a backend dev forced to learn frontend in a short time frame.
Work required some frontend tools with no devs available and I was assigned the work. The folks who would usually do that work were pushing me towards React, Vue, and Jquery solutions. I took a look at each, knew I would be responsible for understanding and maintaining the whole systems, and went with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JS instead.
Started out returning simple pages. Added styling to meet requirements. A lot of it was embedded in <style> tags until I found a way to organize it into separate classes. Then added JS for event handlers, listeners, and scripting the simple the pieces that needed to be automated.
That system has been running in production for years now. New features and bugs are easy for me to identify and add or resolve. It's also given me a solid base understanding to migrate components to JQuery and build other systems in required framework. Zero regrets about that choice. It was simple to learn, quick to build, and solid.
I have tried a lot of split keyboards. Haven't tried the Glove80, but I have used the Kinesis (Advantage and 360) and other scooped keyboards. They feel very naturally ergonomic. Allowing your fingers to move in a way that feels more comfortable to your hand. The split design furthers that by putting your hands at the distance they should be separated. The pros: very comfortable resting position, minimal hand, wrist, and finger travel. The cons: Size and dedicating yourself to a unique layout. The Kinesis (even the 360) takes up a lot of space. The bigger issue for me though was that I had to retrain my brain for standard layouts every time I sat at a computer with a normal keyboard. Imagine building the most comfortable bike in the world, but then not being able to ride in other cities because 'your' bike is at home.
Long story, I found the UHK to be the best option. While it doesn't have the scooped or natural key placement, the layout being standard staggered allows for existing muscle memory with all the benefits of the split and tilted design. I now have two UHKs for home and office. And I would buy another if they weren't so easy to travel with.
Responding to you because Masters of Doom is the right answer here. It shares a lot of details from Doom Guy, but gives a more complete timeline and better views, from multiple sides. It's a book that just makes you want to hack a game together. That's coming from someone who wasn't old enough to idolize the devs when they hit celebrity status.
Other books I really enjoyed:
- Spelunky by Derek Yu: Written by the sole developer of the game. Covers idea to development to release. Really captures a nice feeling of indie solo game making.
- The WoW Diary: Focused development 'journals' from one of the WoW level designers. Has a lot of original concept art and early alpha images. Goes over a lot of history and is just a fun read with some good insight.
- Half-Lift 2: Raising the Bar: Concept art, journals, iterations, and details from devs and HL2. Simply a fantastic insight into what they went through progressing from Gold Source to the Source Engine. Where Masters of Doom gives the written history of Doom, this book gives the nuts and bolts of HL2 and CSS. It is highly sought after by fans and developers alike and can be hard to come by.
I've done similar group gaming. I would recommend the following two games. The first is more casual and just fun to watch. The second is one of the greatest narratives communicated through game design. Haven't played the recent remake that came out this year, but I will stand by that statement for the original. Make sure everyone has a chance to try the controls to fully appreciate it.
I may be reading too far into it, but I think he _is_ mocking his colleague by responding to questions with similar questions.
> Are your emotions pure?
Are you thinking through this with clear thought and emotion?
> Are your nerves adjustable?
Do you feel so strongly about this that it has affected you this whole time, since spring?
> How do you stand in relation to the potato?
Can you not support yourself? Are you as wellrounded or less so than a potato?
> Should it still be Constantinople?
Can the outcome not change even when history repeats itself?
The last one to me seems like the indicator that these questions are not nonsensical. As it is is direct reference to the colleague's question about history repeating itself and refers to a location which changed back and forth numerous times.
My use-case is slightly different, but I use Proxmox for my home server and would recommend it. Especially if you're familiar with linux systems or want to learn about them which I've done through the years I've been using this setup.
My server was originally a single debian installation set up to host local services for things like git. That grew into hosting a site, vpn, then some multiplayer game servers. When I reached a point where too many things were installed on single machine, I looked at vm options. I've used VMWare/VSphere professionally, but settled on Proxmox for these main reasons: easy to set up and update, easy to build/copy vms, simple way to split physical resources, monitoring of each vm, and simple backup and restores. All without any weird licensing.
That server houses 4 vms right now. That might be a bit much for your mini pc but you could do a couple. The multiplayer servers are the main hog so I isolate resources for that. The windows machine is only for development which isn't your exact use case. I can say however that I've never had issue when I need it. Only thing I can't speak for is the need for graphics passthrough.
My kid started with computers around the same age. Using mostly text editors to type in random things on my computer. It was a great way to explore letters and learn to use a keyboard.
Following that we 'built' a computer together out of paper. This allowed me to show each part and what it did to give a base understanding. Then I let them hook up the RPi to a monitor and keyboard. The device was configured beforehand and had all the updates and software needed.
I chose not to connect it to the internet. That's how I learned computers and I thought it would be a good way for my kid to learn. Turned out really well and documentation is available on the device if you show them how to search for it.
As for educational software, I highly recommend GCompris[1]. It's just an awesome set of tools disguised as games. Accessible for a wide range of ages. I let my kid run wild in there and I'm blown away by the things it's helped teach them.
Last thing I'll mention is very specific to my interests, but I installed a few roguelikes. Easily accessible terminal games. Some well known like Nethack and others simple browser games I've made myself. All of them have gotten play time. In an age where graphics have overtaken good gameplay, I wanted to present games that weren't all lights and colors. Most of them are stripped down to learning the world and problem solving. Being turn based helps give time for them to think about each obstacle. And I feel like the constant death and resetting has helped alleviate early troubles they had with failure.
I would not recommend Blood Sweat and Pixels. While it does have details on publishing decisions and crunch of making games, it has little insight into any actual game development. It's more of a sensation piece on how difficult games are to make. GP seemed to be looking for design and pattern references.
Your line of thinking isn't wrong. It is very common for the new hot game, taking up all your kid's time, to be vilified. Especially by those who don't understand its appeal. However, I think there is a bit of a gap between the Satanic Panic and modern SAS games. I don't have the exact words for it. The psychological drive to play is there for both. D&D would better fit into a long-timeline hold where you have fun playing and still enjoy the thought of playing even if you haven't played in years. Fortnite, and many other modern multiplayer/live service games, have a constant, short-timeline hold. Where there is an addictive drive to continue every second. Playing nonstop even if you're not enjoying it.
Recommendations: - It's hard to tell when health is altered. Perhaps add a temporary color change to the health bar to inform players of the change. Or start to build in animated health that reduces the red fill with the number. - Some abilities require charge, but I couldn't find where that was tracked. Another counter could be added to show this number and any increase. - Add score for the battle. It could track correct answers, or hits, or anything that might be fun. Later versions could include a score/tracker for total monsters fought.