Looks interesting in the vein of Robocode. One thing I noticed that slightly turned me off was that it takes 7 lessons before you get to move around, and you don't get to start eating anything until lesson 10. I understand that there's a lot of ground work that needs to be laid before you can really create something, but it does seem to miss the mark in my opinion.
How many teams of programmers are there that need to learn Scala all at once from a base skill set of 0, are able to/interested in taking the time to use a simple game with each other to learn it, and already have a good understanding of Java and/or C++?
Maybe I'm too far removed from the programming world, but I would think a better implementation of this would be for teachers helping an entire class of high schoolers/college kids learn Scala together. Not teams of professional developers.
I downloaded the stable build and movement came on Lesson #3 (pretty short lessons too)
I agree the audience might be pretty niche, although there are a lot of Java devs out there, and probably a lot of Java devs who want to learn Scala to get access to functional programming without leaving the safety of the JVM and all those Java libraries.
I also find tiny games/programs you can modify are a great way to learn a language, so maybe they are onto something. I'm having fun tinkering
I see that you can manually control the robot on step 3. Not really a robot at that point, but you're right that it is motion. I was looking at step 7, where the bot starts moving on its own.
I like the fact that they have instruction on how to run your own tournaments. I what I didn't like about a few other AI games I have seen is they require either the use of someone elses server or they have no easy way to set one up.
How many teams of programmers are there that need to learn Scala all at once from a base skill set of 0, are able to/interested in taking the time to use a simple game with each other to learn it, and already have a good understanding of Java and/or C++?
Maybe I'm too far removed from the programming world, but I would think a better implementation of this would be for teachers helping an entire class of high schoolers/college kids learn Scala together. Not teams of professional developers.