So about 4 or 5 years ago we picked up a book called “Coding for Beginners Using Python” from Usborne so I could start teaching my sons some Python. You can find it here…
https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Beginners-Using-Python-Stowell/dp/0794539505
It’s a fun book and I recommend it for parents that want to spend some time with their kids working through some fun little programs.
While we were working on it, my older son and I started talking about text adventures (like Zork) and how fun it would be to write one.
So we started really simple. Then more things got bolted on. JSON for the dungeon map, item attributes, monsters. Random placement when the dungeon was initialized, that sort of thing.
We had a lot of fun working on it and meant at some point to go back and refactor it. Well, I’ve mentioned a book called Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom elsewhere on this site, and it’s time to dive in.
(More details about that book here: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com)
For me, my goal here is to work through the book and first revisit the code and do a simple refactor with my son. See how we think about this years later, and what we can do with it.
Some other things we wanted to do, but never got around to involved persistence, random dungeon map generation and the like.
Eventually I think it might be fun to migrate this to an AWS app as I start to go down a path toward AWS Solution Architecture and get him involved in cloud stuff too.
Since I started that Udemy streak in Jan 2024 – I’ve really been geeking out about all the things I want to learn and try – and need to settle in on one.
So over the coming weeks or months, I’ll post about textDungeon and its refactor and see where it goes.
It’s easy to get sidetracked with new tech and want to learn everything, but I’ll do my best to work on this with my son and get it to its next evolution!
For now, if you’ve read this far – you might as well have a link to our first versions!
https://github.com/wem003/textDungeon
Stay tuned!