20 ms·
Show HN: I'm 14, I learned Objective-C, and this is my first iPhone game
- tkahn6 14y agoCongrats! Would you consider putting the source on github?
- Omicron3141 14y agoI might, I'm not sure yet.
- cdestroyer 14y agoWow!!! Well done!
- Zombieball 14y agoDid you also do the artwork?
- Omicron3141 14y agoI did the concept work, but the guys at makegamewith.us provided the artist.
- bobdole2 14y agoThe concept work is about all you did. Try writing an app that gets more than 0 downloads a day.
- ecubed 14y agoCongratulations on your first game. Keep up the hard work and you'll have some pretty competitive stuff on your resume for college applications!
- Omicron3141 14y agoThanks, I appreciate the kind remarks.
- ThePinion 14y agoLooks good, congrats and keep it up.
- Jonanin 14y agoGood work, I'm jealous; I wish I was doing things like that when I was 14.
- jamesjguthrie 14y agoI know, right? Me too!
- dave84 14y agoGreat stuff. How did you find MakeGamesWithUs? I know a few people your age who want to learn Objective-C etc. would you recommend this route for them?
- Omicron3141 14y agoHey, thanks. I was referred to MakeGamesWithUs by my cousin. I certainly would recommend this route; It's great to not have to worry about art and promotion while you learn, and to have someone to fix your horrible mistakes.
- stewie2 14y agoHow did you make game graphics?
- Omicron3141 14y agoI got the art through MakeGamesWithUs.
- randartie 14y agoThat's great, art shouldn't be a bottleneck or discouraging when learning to program a game.
- swiety 14y agoSeems good ;)
- jetsnoc 14y agoGreat job. The world is your oyster. Keep learning and don't let anyone ever tell you something is impossible.
- filipmares 14y agoCongrats!
- remixz 14y agoAs a fellow teenager who is also programming, this is great! I'm glad that there are sites like MakeGamesWithUs that are encouraging our generation to do this sort of thing. Really, great job!
- dbh937 14y agoAs a fellow fourteen-year-old programmer, congrats! The game looks great!
- allforJesse 14y agoWell, now I feel old. But more importantly, congratulations!
- scottchin 14y agoWow! Nice job! I haven't had a chance to download it, but just by looking at App Store page, the app looks fun and makes me want to download it! How much time did you spend making it?
- Omicron3141 14y agoThanks! The game took me give or take 100 hours over about 4 months.
- ovechtrick 14y agoVery impressive! Keep at it! You have a great future ahead of you!
- pooriaazimi 14y agoI was writing/learning HTML with FrontPage 2003 and Flash 5 (6? 7? I thankfully don't remember anymore) when I was 14 - while knowing almost no English (thus, not understanding even what the menu items and controls mean!) and without a manual or teacher and just clicking around and seeing what happens to the code :-( Hard, hard times it was. But I enjoyed it nevertheless. But still, I'm jealous of you. If you were to seek my advice, I'd tell you to watch some OCW (OpenCourse Ware). http://cs50.tv http://cs50.tv <-- great for starting out. I am ready to bet $50,000 that you'll learn soooo much (while not being overwhelmed) that you can't believe it http://cs75.tv http://cs75.tv <- great for starting web development (php, mysql, javascript, css, ...) http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx (CS106A is good for now or a little later, CS106B and CS107 are way more advanced but you might find them very educating in a year or two) http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/#electrical-engineering-and-computer-science http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-courses/#electrical-e... (I've heard good things about 6.00SC) All in all, I'd suggest you start watching cs50.tv right now (if it's not a whim and you're really interested in programming as a career, or if you at least enjoy programming right now). Best of luck.
- gnarbarian 14y agoGet off my lawn. I first learned HTML and JavaScript using Notepad in 96 when I was 14.
- nirvana 14y agoWhen I was 14, you couldn't just go buy a "personal computer", as the minicomputer revolution was underway. So, I had to build my own computer... and I did. (I think I started at 13, and finished at 15). When I say, I built my computer, I mean I designed a PCB, laid it out, etched it, assembled it, then needed to build a display board to output to a TV, which was another several months of design, etc. And when I had all that... then I had to start writing some sort of software for it! (EG: I had to write software, build an EPROM programmer (because they were expensive) burn EPROMS ..... all to get to the point where I could start working on making an implementation of BASIC! So, when people complain that "kids can't hack on iPhones" ... well, I think its silly. You buy a Mac and you get a fantastic IDE and development platform for free, etc. To the OP: Congrats on making your game! It looks very professional. Keep at it!
- BklynJay 14y agoGreat job! Congratulations. It takes a lot of persistence and drive to see a project through to the end.
- pacomerh 14y agoSometimes I'm a bit skeptical about these kinds of posts "I'm X age, I made this". I feel like, why would a 14 year old want to make sure his age is on the post title?. It's not that extraordinary I think, I mean it's great that his doing this, but it's not that un-ordinary, sometimes it seems like someone else is driving this for promo.
- michaelgrafl 14y agoBecause he's 14 and super stoked about accomplishing something that many people twice his age couldn't do, so he's showing off a bit. Sometimes I'm baffled by how hard it is for seemingly intelligent people to grasp very simple human behavior. Spend an afternoon with a kid once. I promise you they'll let you know when they think they've done something cool.
- AndreasFrom 14y agoYour first paragraph explains it perfectly, but the tone in your second one is too harsh. Being polite and remaining calm is more appealing than attacking someone like that.
- michaelgrafl 14y agoI'm feeling kinda harsh tonight. Guess an apology is in order. Sorry.
- chris_p 14y ago> Because he's 14 and super stoked about accomplishing something that many people twice his age couldn't do So what? Why does age matter so much? A 28 year old may have less programming experience and help from sites like MakeGamesWithUs and still complete similar projects. Why is it so important that he's 14? He obviously isn't the only 14 year old coding and completing a project, it's not even that rare anymore. Probably not as rare as a woman making iPhone app, at least. With today's technology, everybody over the age of 12 can learn programming, build apps and complete university classes. I post my projects to HN too, I have only once reached the front page. I never mention my young age, and I won't do it here, because it doesn't matter and it's not relevant.
- zobzu 14y agoI was doing 68k asm at 14. Kids those days! :) (now then again anyone who's done 68k asm would know this is extremely easy to code and understand, more than objective-c in fact. But then again, I had Codewarrior [which I won at metrowerks] and powerplant, and those, are hell.)
- rsuttongee 14y agoNice, pretty good for a first game! Now that you've started writing some code, you can start talking to users! Here's some quick feedback I've got: -It's a little hard to tell where on the screen I can touch to move the miner vs. where I can shoot. Perhaps but a line on the bottom demarcating where touches will move instead of shoot? -Perhaps the game would be more fun if the movement was faster? If you sped it up, it would make it easier to grab 2 pieces of cheese on the same row. It's up to you to decide how to balance control responsiveness vs. difficulty, but it's worth testing it out. At any rate, good job and congratulations!
- Omicron3141 14y agoThanks for the feedback. Good to know, I'll try and put this in for the next version.
- jaf12duke 14y agoI'm so unbelievably impressed with you Jonah.
- dysoco 14y agoHey! Really cool stuff. I'm 15, and have been programming since I was 9, but I'm more focused in stuff like Systems Programming and Machine Learning, thus I have not really released anything interesting.
- bradhe 14y ago> Systems Programming and Machine Learning Oh? What are you working on? Do you have any code available?
- dysoco 14y agoI'm currently working in a Revision Control software in Go (While learning the language), I'll push it to Github when I have a somewhat working prototype.
- leif 14y agoYou're the coolest 15 year old. Email me (profile) when you upload, I'd love to check it out.
- bradhe 14y agoInteresting. What from those fields are you applying to revision control?
- scrumper 14y agoI'm curious too. Semantic diffs maybe? (This change affects control flow, this one doesn't; this change adds complexity, this one removes it.) Something like that would be useful for getting an overview of a project's evolution, instead of highlighting major commits only in terms of lines changed (often just a meaningless refactor.)
- dysoco 14y agoBasically I started with the things I like from Git, I simplified them and I ditched everything else: It's a personal project so I can learn Go.
- ceol 14y agoSeriously, congrats on both learning Objective-C and publishing a videogame in a marketplace. I can't wait to see what other awesome stuff you do!
- chris_wot 14y agoNice! Did you do the artwork yourself?
- tisme 14y agoA very heartfelt congratulations, I would give up a lot to trade with you at the moment, you must be feeling on top of the world. Games are a great area to work in, you get to learn a lot more about systems level programming from building a game than you'd get from building a web-app. Games are never finished either, you can always improve on them, add levels and so on so they're a great way to grow your skills in managing progressively larger codebases. Once again, congratulations! And I hope to see much more of what you've made here.
- mmcnickle 14y agoFantastic, it takes a lot of effort and motivation to get something like this out the door. Hope to see the next one on here soon. Is it games that you're most interested in, or just programming in general?
- photorized 14y agoNicely done.
- SurfScore 14y agoWhen I was 14, I walked uphill to school at 4 AM, in the snow, both ways, while carrying an IBM mainframe in my backpack!
- kgabis 14y agoObligatory Monty Python: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAtSw3daGoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAtSw3daGoo
- vostrocity 14y agoWhen I was 14, I didn't have $99 to give to Apple. So I made games that no one ever knew about.
- jvrossb 14y agoShameless plug: if you publish through makegameswith.us, we cover the $99 fee. You do need a Mac though.
- jnazario 14y agocheese! and ObjC! and app store! rock on!
- phatbyte 14y agoImpressive, keep it coming ;)
- socialist_coder 14y agoDoes it use Cocos2d or another game engine from makegameswithus.com ?
- jvrossb 14y agoIt was done in Kobold2D, a version of Cocos2D that's also free.
- songgao 14y agoGreat job! I was busy with homework and tests when I was 14. Kids in China are not as lucky :-( I did play a bit with Visual Basic 6.0 at 11. It was a lot of fun for me. I also got a VC 6.0 on my family computer but never managed more than running an MFC window that does nothing. But it turns out not to be important anyway.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jimwalsh 14y agoGreat job, keep it up! At 14 I didn't even have a computer yet.
- bradhe 14y agoThis is the worst thread I've EVER seen on HN.
- dm8 14y agoCongrats!! Keep it up.. Why are so many HNers being dismissive of this young fella? He has done something cool and he is really proud of that. He learnt something that is considered very hard for the majority of population and put his work out there on app store for real test (by real users). Lets applaud him (like some of the posters). EDIT: Don't forget to contact your users. They will give you feedback and it will help you improve your game and write newer games/apps.
- chris_p 14y ago> Why are so many HNers being dismissive of this young fella? I feel like I should explain my reasons: He acts as if his age is very important in his accomplishment. Why is it in the title? Why does it matter so much that he is 14? Maybe he has been programming for much longer than the 30 year old who released a website yesterday. Nowdays, anybody over the age of 12 can take online university classes, publish apps (especially when they get the art from sites like MakeGamesWithUs) and learn programming much more easily than 10 or even 2 years ago. 14 year old programmers aren't that uncommon anymore. I've posted some of my projects to HN a few times. I only got to the frontpage once. I never mentioned my young age, because it's not relevant. I've probably sat in front of a computer many more hours than the Average Joe. If anything, I'm under accomplished. The success/experience ratio matters more than the success/age ratio in my opinion. But the game is cool indeed, and it's always nice to see somebody complete their first project.
- DanBC 14y ago> I only got to the frontpage once. I never mentioned my young age, because it's not relevant. You didn't get to the front page. This person did. Why do you think the problem is with the way that he describes his project, and not with the way that you describe your project? Your marketing needs work.
- chris_p 14y ago> You didn't get to the front page. I did, but that's not the point. > Why do you think the problem is with the way that he describes his project, and not with the way that you describe your project? Because successful marketing isn't everything, and because he is not describing his project. The title doesn't say anything about the game. The developer's age doesn't describe a game. I think a community like HN should value the quality of the product over the age/gender/awesomeness of the developer. But obviously I'm in the minority, and I'm just stating my opinion. If people are going to use something I make, I want it to be because they enjoy it, not because of the number of years I've lived on this planet.
- marshallp 14y agoThe last kid getting overambitious with computers is now serving time in federal prison (Aaron Swartz). You might want to peace out on the hackz.
- jweather 14y agoCongrats... my first iPad game is about 14 years old now and still not released yet... sigh. Enjoy the piles of free time while it lasts, and be sure to take some time to explore different areas to find out what you're really interested in.
- keyboardP 14y agoCongrats! Keep working hard and releasing more games!
- capsicum 14y agocongrats
- pclark 14y agoI wish I had had this kind of drive to learn to code when I was 14. Amazing job Omicron3141, your parents must be blown away.
- JunkDNA 14y agoMan to be your age and feel what you're feeling right now! I had grandiose plans as an 11 year old to write games on the Amiga. But without the Internet and relying only on books learning was a slow process. It ultimately never happened. I hope your parents support and recognize your achievement. 90% of success is just showing up and actually doing something. It's important to do things like this because you just never know where it will lead, who you will meet, what you will learn. Keep it up!
- sonabinu 14y agoFantastic ... You are truly an inspiration.
- ekn 14y agoWell done, Congrats!
- j45 14y agoYou're awesome. If you aren't, the nicest gift you can give yourself in 10 years is a blog, even if it's private and you write all the crazy stuff you're learning and doing and how scary it felt at first and how great it felt after. Some things I had someone said to me and I hope you'll say to someone at 14 one day: As you get older you'll meet so many subtle doubt worshippers that spread their doubts because they can't get over their own self-doubt. Be a man of action and launching. Haters and doubters are busy doing nothing. Don't ever let anyone poison this ability to build, and launch. Don't ever let anyone tell you you can't figure out anything and build something. Do laugh, while you launch and ship often while everyones busy optimizing their stack.
- willholloway 14y agoGreat job! Parlay those skills into some lucrative consulting gigs. Earn early, and earn often. Compound interest, especially at your age, is the most powerful force in the universe.
- ianstallings 14y agoAnyone that's had to submit an app will be impressed that you went through that process successfully, let alone made a cool little game for the iphone. Good job.
- mbenjaminsmith 14y agoCongratulations. I'm going to echo the more pleasant half of HN and say don't let anybody dismiss your accomplishment. Shipping is all that really matters and shipping is hard.
- armenarmen 14y agoThat is so awesome.
- xxiao 14y agoif you're my kid, I encourage you learn more STEM, doing game is just evil and a waste of time.
- hashpipe 14y agoAt 14, I was busy playing soccer. I didn't get to computers and coding till I was 17-18, when my brother bought a PC. So jealous of you guys who build such awesome stuff at this age ! Way to go..!
- damniatx 14y agoYour father must be proud. /s
- tsieling 14y agoAwesome concept, looks great, and you're in the app store. Congratulations, totally impressed.
- general_failure 14y agoWhen I was 14, I got laid
- mani27 14y agoCongrats on your first game. This is awesome work for an 14 year old. I have downloaded and played this game for some time. I feel movement needs to be little faster.
- viviantan 14y agoGreat work! Can't wait to try it :)
- toutouastro 14y agowhen I was 14,I started learning pascal and c I think :p
- donebizkit 14y agoAm I the only one who was playing gameboy and watching cartoons when I was 14.
- olalonde 14y agoAmazing work! I remember when I was about 15 I started selling my first software (a billing web app for shared hosting companies). I developed it in maybe one or two months during the summer, set up a website and started getting payments through Paypal. My English was so-so at that time and there were no Hacker News or StackOverflow. I remember one day suddenly realizing that "if"/"for"/"while" were actually English words. Sales quickly averaged ~150$/day and despite that, my parents still wanted me to get a summer job (at McDonald's maybe) like "the other kids". I also had a computer usage quota and was often going over at my friend's house just to cheat the quota :). Looking back at those days, I think they just wanted me to spend more time with my peers. Anyways, I turned out fine! To conclude, I truly hope your parents are supportive and if they are not, feel free to get in touch with me for advice (can't help with game development though, you are way more advanced than me). PS: You have a bright future in front of you!
- bobdole2 14y agoTry making an app that isn't some cookie cutter code handed to you by another group of people that won't let you fail. No credit is deserved here. Look ma, someone did my math homework! I'm awesome and young!
- bobdole2 14y agoYou are so cool and amazing. Oh wait, this app sucks ass.
- alen 14y agoBrilliant work! Where did the sounds/artwork come from? It all fits together very nicely. I'm looking forward to seeing what you make next!
- sojorn 14y agoI started using Internet when I was 10 and started to dabble in HTML and then PHP3 and later 4. Earned a decent amount of money (for a kid), but then I just stopped because of workload in highschool and college. Man, my skills got rusty I can barely write something these days. So, dont you ever stop doing that because returning to programming can be hard - your brain wont function at this ultraspeed it is functioning now.
- napolux 14y agoEvery now and then here on HN someone is claiming that he's a teenager building an iPhone game. Is just a coincidence that the platform is always the same? MakeSpamWithUs :P
- scrumper 14y agoThe premise alone is enough! Brilliant whimsy. Congratulations on shipping!
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoWell, I'm 16 now, and I'm writing a chatroom/game thing in HTML5 with WebSocket (http://ponyplace.ajf.me/ http://ponyplace.ajf.me/) But when I was 14, I was programming a TCP Minecraft server. (http://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SchnitzelCraft0 http://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SchnitzelCraft0)
- FlightOfGrey 14y agoImpressive, where did you find the information for your TCP server and why choose that as a project?
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoThe folks on #mcdevs on Freenode had done the hard work for me, they had reverse-engineered and documented the Minecraft Classic protocol. It's a very simple binary TCP protocol with only 16 packet types. And why as a project? Well, I saw the protocol was simple enough, and it seemed like a fun thing to do since I liked playing Minecraft Classic. There were already loads of other Classic servers, but I wanted to make my own so I could do things my way and add silly features. Yes, there's plugins, but sometimes I like reinventing the wheel. I added some features, for example, "Zombies", imitating those in Minecraft Survival/Indev/Infdev/Alpha/Beta/Release. I sent packets as if another player had spawned, and I set up a minecraft account with the right skin, so that when a player with the same name as that account was spawned, they would look like a zombie. The AI was very, very stupid. It would always turn at right-angles, making them easy to trap. Still, it was fun. Also, at the time I did not understand recursion, so the "physics" for things like spreading water didn't work properly. The code I ended up writing, in C using WinSock and zlib was... horrible. Ridiculous levels of nesting, and almost everything was in the main function. This was a result of getting it working before getting it right. However, I never really refactored it much, and it became an unmaintainable mess. At various times I have refactored it a bit, as recently as a year ago, and it's the refactoring-in-progress version you can find on my GitHub page.
- ctvuybiunomp 14y agoTHIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED!! HONESTLY I JUST PUBLISH A GAMER BOOK AND GAVE THIS 5 STARS AND I AM 9!!
- tete 14y agoDon't stop now. I remember, when I was 11 I was also really nerdy and in many ways much smarter then now. My mistake was that I at some point dropped all this, because I couldn't find stuff that interested and excited me. It's really a flaw. As long as you are a teenager, you are able to find what excites you. It's really hard to describe, but it is extremely bad to come out of practice and it happens so quickly. If you must find some kind of job or something that will make you practice every day. P.S: Stuff that looks boring at the beginning usually isn't when you really get into it.
- kyle1997 14y agoSo? What do you want? A balloon?
- evandrix 14y agopls release source and provide link on github.
- gdonelli 14y agowell done!
- rietta 14y agoExcellent job! Keep your drive, motivation, and by all means keep launching your software! You will go much farther than most people. I also started teaching myself programming at 14. 16 years later, I cannot imagine doing anything else.
- ravin455 14y agoThat's awesome, I'm 14 too and I made an iPhone app, happy to know I'm not the only one!
- jiggy2011 14y agoGood job, I don't have an iDevice to test it but it looks more professional than what I managed at 14!
- Omicron3141 14y agoHi everyone, thanks for all of the great feedback. Honestly, I feel lucky to have the tools, technology, and support to build games like Cheese Miners. Sorry that I haven't responded to all of your comments yet, I will get caught-up later this weekend. My school has a camping trip and I have been prepping for the trip most of day and walking out the door now and will have no internet access while camping (no phones allowed, and I agree!). Such is the life of a 14 year old at boarding school. When I get back I would love to continue this discussion. Your comments have been very inspiring and there are some really good suggestions I need to follow-up on. Thanks for the great discussion. HN rocks!
- justplay 14y agothanks for sharing . I really didn't even thought about copying unix. Anyhow,i think if you're learning domain specific language then it is not good to implement unix . Consider php,it came up for web . so it would be nice if we solve challenges or do stuff which matters. I use to check stackoverflow question and try to learn it . Anyway i will mind your advise . thanks
- nickporter 14y agoThe game looks very polished! Did you create the art as well?
- dmritard96 14y agolegos from the beginning .in elementary school they had a cool program in my neighborhood run by motorola engineers where you could take courses on logic design and build simple cricuits (combination locks, tic tac toe...). when i was 12 i built and electric go kart, 13/14 - a minibike. 15/16/17 - a solar powered car (from scratch http://www.sphssolarknights.org/ http://www.sphssolarknights.org/). Moved into more CE/CS type projects now but once you start building you will never stop! Keep it up. :)
- dmritard96 14y agoalso - as much as my fiance hates it. I still have all my legos! ;-)
- lazyjones 14y agoCongratulations! A nice slap in the face too for those people who constantly rant about kids/young people being distracted too much and unable to learn much nowdays (by the Web/new technologies/gadgets). It's the adults who get distracted and become unproductive, kids' brains adapt more easily.
- jerryjerko 14y agoMh, something seems weird about this... Looked up his profile here at HN and checked out the domain of his email address... http://innolution.com http://innolution.com Huh?
- xenonysf 14y agoWhen I was 14 I was crying for a computer, but I had to wait until I was 17... I never had a commodore, although I wanted so much... I don't have stories about those days, like some talk about commodore disks and etc... were poor days... still luckily I am Software Engineer ... Good job man! Keep going with your passion!