Lightbot 2

Is it possible to download Lightbot 2? The only site I have found that lets you download it does not work when you run it.

 

Is it possible to download Lightbot 2? The only site I have found that lets you download it does not work when you run it.

 

It probably checks back. In Flash you can check the URL it is run from, and match it against the owner's page. It is not that difficult to remove, most flash can be decompiled.

 

I have to say a big thank you to whoever posted about Light Bot - it's fantastic! I've just run through it with my Year 7s and it's fantastic. They loved it and I've picked out a few potential G+T students who I'd never identified before. None of them were able to get their heads round recursive functions, but hey, maybe by Y8

 

Light Bot 1 can be nabbed and run locally with no (technical) issues. Light Bot 2 needs to be able to talk back to the Armor Games server. If you have a half decent techy team they can pinpoint the exact URL (I did this but no longer have it to hand) and unblock it specifically without opening up the entire site.


I spoke to the developer some time ago about the possibility of releasing a version for schools that didn't need to talk back but while he was happy for schools to use it (in fact he thought it was great) he either didn't have the time or Armor Games didn't have the inclination (and I believe they own the intellectual property, or at least the code). I suspect it was a bit of both.

 

HH excellent, I told my 7's when we used lightbot (to smash into subs and functions) that the lightbot guy Coolio Niato (He's quite young and a CS student/graduate) is the first person to make a flash game I really really wish I'd made, it kind of makes my stab at an asteroids type game (from 2000) look as sad as it actually is :-(

Obviously I should wish I'd made one of those awful FB multiplayer flash games just for the money they rake in, but lightbot has that sense of reverence for my fave isometric games of the past, whilst introducing programming concepts in a way so accessible to kids, I could only dream of making it. Frankly it's nerdvana and Coolio is all kinds of smart. Also it fills several gaps I can't see how to cover in scratch at all.

 

I wouldn't claim to be authoritative on this but my understanding is that the line between function and subroutine is defined differently by differing languages/ways of working. I have usually considered that line defined by a return value = function, no return = sub (taking in parameters common to both). However this was from a Microsoft development perspective (cant remember if C++ did the same) and I don't think wikipedia, and/or all languages draw that line.

Either way I'd ideally bill them as sub procedures in light bot, as that's what I've seen the technique called in the sequencing instructions parts of the National Curriculum. I'd agree about the difference between light bot and light bot 2, the scope and ambition of 2 is greater, of course some of the concept in 2 just can't be taught in a game. For instance you can try to use it, but "to understand recursion; you must first understand recursion"

 

Indeed.