Hello! For my composition lesson in school last week, we were suppose to make a “pros and cons list” of something we do often, and being the addicted fan-boy I’m I decided to do one of Codea, constructive criticism is wanted
Codea
Most of you have probably played a game on the appstore, Angry Birds, Candy Crusher, or Cargo Bot. Without realizing it, some of these games were made on the Ipad, and you can make one to!
Most kids like to play video games, let it be Minecraft, Angry Birds, Call of duty, etc. But now kids are wanting to make games themselves, usually with no directions where to go to make them. But thankfully, the team at Two Lives Left have made Codea, an app for the Ipad that allows you to make games, and share them on the appstore.
Now, there are some downsides to this program, but before I scare you off, let me talk about some of the advantages, one of the major ones being you can make games for the appstore, while most app developers use Macs, Codea has the advantage where you can make games wherever you are, let it be a plane, train, road trip or another place where you usually won’t have a computer.
This software also has a clean, more word driven programming language called Lua. If you aren’t familiar with programming, a language is how you tell a computer what to do, most of them are based on numbers and symbols, but since it’s the Ipad, the makers of it have used Lua, which is mostly using words.
If you ever get stuck in your project, and need some help, it also has a forum, where you can talk to experienced, helpful people who will try to help you and your problems.
While this may sound fine and dandy, there are some negatives about Codea, including there are few tutorials on it, while there are some good ones, most are written towards people who are already familiar with programming, mostly because this app has a steep learning curve, so even if you do find tutorials, it will take some time to come familiar with Lua. If you ever manage to complete your first app on it, you will have to buy a Mac and a developers licenses from Apple, which if you don’t have these things at hand can, at cheapest cost five-hundred dollars.
But if you are willing to invest in these things, and take the time out of your day to learn the app, I guarantee you, you won’t regret it.