I am a brand new member, I just discovered codecombat while preparing to teach the hour of code event to my 6th grade class. The kids loved it! It was the biggest hit among all the activities we tried. I have spent some time using the site now, and have finished all the single player levels. I have been searching for some kind of documentation or users guiide to explain the process of codecombat, but haven’t had much luck. For example, is there somewhere that explains the difference in play style between the multiplayer and singleplayer games? What are the two semi-multiplayer levels on the forest map all about and how are they related to or different from the multiplayer mode? What does running a simulation mean, and what is the humans vs. ogres thing all about? I am sure these are all redundant questions, but I am not seeing a FAQ or documentation. Any help?
I can try to help you out. First of all, no, I don’t think there is a guide out there yet. I’m sure they would love to have one written up!
Basically, you work your way through the levels, learning to code as you go.
The basic difference between the multiplayer and the single player games is that in multiplayer your code will battle against the code of other players. You start by fighting against a very basic AI, once you beat the AI you are allowed to submit your code to the ladder for ranking. At this point simulations are run to pit your code against all the other code and you received a rank. This is where the “Human” and “Ogre” code come in. That is a holdover from the earlier multiplayer levels where you actually had the two different races battling (see http://codecombat.com/play/ladder for these levels, but they are MUCH more difficult than the current campaigns.) Basically if you submit code as a human you battle against any code submitted as ogre. You can submit code for both sides, it may be the exact same code, or you may make do two different strategies.
Hope that helps you out!
This was extremely helpful! I also found the “old campaigns” section which has more levels to play. I am also curious about the functions we use while coding…… I am new to programming, and have only limited background knowledge, so it took me a long time to figure out that
self. findNearest…()
returned a string. Is there any documentation for the programming side of things?
I don’t think findNearest returns a string, it returns the actual object, though this object is probably easily translated to a string for the purposes of self.say()
Best documentation for the functions is to mouse over them in the palette and view the popup that appears.