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CheckIO is a videogame you play by writing Python. (checkio.org)
87 points by brownbat on Dec 8, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 22 comments




15 days ago, 30 days ago, 43 days ago... oh well, at least they wait a while.


I tried it and really wanted to like it. The graphics are great, the polish (aside from English) is high. Dive in!

Then I got to the first task. And it's annoyingly complicated for a first task (which should be Hello World).

I'd propose something like the following for the first two tasks:

* 1) Message : you get a message, but you can't see what it is... It's stuck in a variable! Perhaps you should print out the message? "print checkio()"

* 2) 2 Messages : it looks as though you have a message, but it seems to be broken in two and stuffed into two variables! Print them out, but compose them first. "print checkio(1) + checkio(2)"

Then step through all the annoying things like "if-then" and "for".

Or something really simple. I'm an experienced Python developer, so, although I wouldn't learn anything about Python, I would learn about how to work within your learning system. As it is, I won't invest time in reading some confusing ATM instructions/story if I don't know how to work with the system.

In addition, it'd be great if you would move the registration to after early interactions. e.g. "You've completed the first two challenges, so please register now so that we can save your work!"

But it's damned lovely and exhibits a lot of hard work. Focusing back on the early interactions and on the early puzzles will be more valuable than polishing the app further.


It is about practice more then about learning.

I think it is not a problem ti find in internet something about you told ( codecademy ).

We are trying to get practice in real world tasks and to find unusual solutions.

What do you think about this&


CheckIO guys, the very first task (ATM) is annoyingly unclear. One shouldn't need to try to understand what you meant. You might want to look at the way problems and objectives are laid out in Rice's excellent interactive python class on Coursera : https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython

Also, from a pure "story" game design standpoint : there's no initial hook, and the story is fairly bland (I came in curious and 2 lines were enough to bore me). I believe you shouldn't try to do a backstory for the sake of it. Either think it through and do something good, or keep it very very very short.

Hope this helps, I know this kind of playtest feedback is always hard to listen to, but if you're gonna do something great, you need to pay attention... Plus I'm a business/product cofounder type of guy, currently learning Python, so I imagine I'm pretty damn close to your target audience.

Anyway, this is interesting and I'll be back to try it more and see if it gets better. Good luck and lots of courage on this!


The artwork is beautiful and I love the concept, but the English is atrocious! In a case like this, it might make sense to make the story portions editable or have some kind of crowd-sourced assistance.


Yes. Thank you for your feedback. We are working on better English now.

We also have opportunity for user to feedback about text mistakes. Select wrong text, then ctrl+enter, and propose your version.

Thanks again


I've ran into similar troubles as a foreigner developing an English app. I've looked into Amazon Mechanical Turk for spell checking but unfortunately they only accept US customers (money laundering laws - I'm sad not even a big corp like Amazon can put a legal framework in place to cover at least some European market - I'd even get a UK address and CC for that matter).

There's also Soylent[1] in the pipeline for which I hope they'll release an API such that you can integrate it into apps other than word. It's also based on mechanical turk but I hope they'll accept non-US customers as an intermediary.


Does Soylent actually offer multiple levels, from red to green?


I wish I had something like this 10 years ago.


)) believe me it is fun for all ages :)


Kind of cute, a game-oriented Python koan/exercise site. There's a lot of broken english though.


Yes. Thank you for your feedback. We are working on better English now. We also have opportunity for user to feedback about text mistakes. Select wrong text, then ctrl+enter, and propose your version. Thanks again


Hi, Guys!

We are still working on this game. :) SO if you will find some problem with working with it please contact with us using live help button or email.

Thanks all you :) For your support and feedback! It really helps to keep working and making this service better


Hate, hate, hate the UI. Gave up after looking at a few completely unhelpful screens.


Thank you for your replay


we are working on UI. Sorry for this temporary problems.


I am waiting for the time that I can write python by shooting baddies in the head.


I think this is as close as you can get for the moment: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/


Someone posted recently a hack where someone programmed gameboy bytecode by moving around objects in game to cause controlled buffer overflows...


The goes my weekend ;-) Level 7 already


thanks, never saw that before. what a beautiful idea




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