Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Kids, parents and free software

  • Four-year-old son suddenly gets crazy about breakout/arkanoid-type games.
  • Father downloads five game variations for the son to check out.
  • Son picks the one he likes the most.
  • Father hacks the game to start with 999 balls.
  • Profit!

Ahh rainy weekends are just not a problem anymore. :)

Addendum:

The breakout game he picked, xbreaky, is a fairly simple and small game that most likely appeals to kids much more than the gorgeous-looking and noisy lbreakout2. xbreaky has simple basic colors and cute block patterns, but it does have a problem: the ball ALWAYS bounces at 90 degrees.

No matter what you do with the beam to try and hit the ball sideways, spinning, on the edge or whatever, it always bounces off at 90 degrees. Now, Lucas at 4 years cannot understand the simple geometrical patterns the ball describes in the screen and mentally project the next N moves, but any grown up (especially a computer nerd) just KNOWS it will take about 2^13 bounces for the FSCKING BALL to hit that FREAKING LAST BLOCK.

Sometimes it feels like I'm watching a Lorenz Attractor. Really.