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Ask HN: A programming co-op game?

3 points by molly0 ↗ HN
I know of a couple of “code writing games” on Steam, mainly the ones produced by Zachtronics. But they are all single player games, maybe competitive in some sense.

How would a co-op “programming game” work? Does any such game exist?

7 comments

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schemescape
I don’t know of any. Factorio and Satisfactory don’t involve programming (as far as I know—-I’ve only played Satisfactory), but involve planning and automation, and are fun for coop.

The only idea I have is a game where one person programs and the other uses the programs somehow. Maybe a real-time strategy game where one person builds bases and the other automates them. That probably wouldn’t end up being fun.

Curious to see other responses!

schemescape
Actually, maybe I need to think bigger. When you said “coop”, I was thinking a small number of people playing in real-time, but what about a large number of people playing asynchronously?

Maybe you’re just creating programs/automation and anyone can come along and make them run faster or use less memory.

“Community coop”

schemescape
After thinking about this more, I like the idea quite a bit! I might implement this in my subleq programming game. Just credit each marginal improvement to the author and have a leaderboard of top contributors to the (currently) optimal solution set.

Edit: sorry for polluting the post with all my errant thoughts. This just caught my imagination!

Leftium
Minecraft is a multiplayer-game, and the [ComputerCraft] mod adds programming (Although it's not clear if the mod works in multiplayer, you could imagine how it would work.)

I want to do something similar in VR; that ComputerCraft video trailer captures the essence of my vision very well.

[ComputerCraft]: https://www.computercraft.info/download/