Great little game! I never imagined a game would be so effective to get you to learn hjkl, but makes sense, most people learn wasd by playing games too.
I'm using a Macbook Air with Mac OS X Lion and Google Chrome and the gameplay is very smooth.
After finishing the maze there is a roadblock at the bottom of the screen after talking to the girl who tells me about what happens if I step into water and there is no column above me... Is there a game beyond there?
I already know vim keybindings and this part stumped me for a little bit. I think that, while the rest of the tutorial makes sense without listening to the people, this is the only part where it isn't obvious from the environment what you're supposed to do. Just a thought.
has a bug with option "start searching when I start" enabled on firefox, clicking cursor keys makes firefox open up quick search and the game becomes unplayable unless you keep clicking escape after every other button click.
The game looks fine! I already see how my kids will learn vim :)
Congratulations to that very nice and useful game! I loved to play around with the first 2 levels.
It's a pity that the project's state is totally unclear (at least to me, a casual visitor). Is it meant to become a community project? Is it a demo of something that will be sold in the future? The explaining text behind the "Unlock Levels" button adds even more confusion:
> Additional levels are currently being developed for you to play and enjoy. The 3rd level will be available for FREE only for players who sign up for my email list. Sign up now! You'll be notified as soon as the level is up. The level won't be available for unregistered users.
On the one hand, it sounds as if it is free, with some "forcing" to make more users join the project mailing list. On the other hand, this is totally discouraging contributions (because you aren't allowed to see the work-in-progress version), so maybe it's meant to become for-sale in the future.
I'd love to see it developing either way (although I think the community way is the more appropriate for this project). But as of now, it seems to unify the disadvantages of both worlds: Advertising the mailing list in a way that appeals neither to people who are willing to pay (as there's no clear pricing plan), nor to people interested in contributing (as it seems to more about announcements/"newsletters" than about how to improve and to help).
Although I agree that both terms are not exactly equal as they emphasize different aspects, those differences are totally irrelevant to the argument at hand:
If you advertise your project by stating you are convinced of the "power of Open Source", but don't make use of that "power", how much credible is that?
No matter if you find this argument convincing or not, it has nothing to do with the difference between Open Source and Free Software. It's just about adverticing a proprietary project with "power of Open Source" versus advertising it with, say, "power of Vim".
Instruction and service are some of the cornerstones of mainstream open source. No, it's not something RMS is a fan of, I believe, but it's what has allowed companies like Red Hat, and Canonical to stay alive, and to employ a large number of open source contributors.
There's a nasty double standard here - just because it's "software", people seem to be complaining that it's not free.
However, I'm sure the same people will happily spend $100 for a book that teaches some open-source tool. Or at least they would never complain that there's a price for it.
If I had the choice I'd rather spend $20 bucks on a wiki or website that was CC licensed so that it could be updated and improved without reliance on one individual. Same for software.
At the moment we seem stuck in the middle of this transition and you either pay for a locked down copy or you get the Free copy for free. But Kickstarter seems like it's getting mainstream so the concept of paying in advance for something that is built to the specifications of the user may at last become common in software.
Books are physical things, programs are not. Physical things are often thought to have more intrinsic value than virtual things because the money was transformed into something you can touch and feel versus a vague collection of bits somewhere on your gargantuan hard drive.
You are confusing Free Software [1] with Gratis Software. Free Software usually does have a price, although not a price per license. Here's an official statement [2] from the GNU project:
Many people believe [...] that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.
In other words, it is important to distinguish paid software from proprietary software, otherwise the situation and arguments become confusing, indeed.
Right when the second level ends, it says "You learned some word navigation and managed to get here. But you have to buy a license to unlock the rest of the game and continue learning VIM!"
I'm happy that you loved the game and finished the first two levels! Thank you for your feedback. That kind of feedback is what I'm looking for in this stage. The project is intended as an educational game, but for a price. The first stages and the email list was meant for me to get a better understanding if there is a demand for such a game (as I hoped, since I would like to play it :) ) The reason that it's not clear yet is that I didn't finish enough levels and didn't set the price yet - so there is no "Buy License" button, only the mention in the end of the second level. I'm not trying to force anybody, just trying to get a feeling if it's a good thing to invest time and money in, besides love. I hope to have enough levels soon and a clear pricing plan will follow. Thanks again for your comment.
On a side note, several times when playing through the game I noticed that my motions weren't working, and traced it back to this: that for me, the home row is jkl; and not hjkl. I don't know very much about vim -- is there a reason that you have to put your hand in the "wrong place" on the keyboard?
Ah. So it's a sort of Big Software Syndrome type thing -- "we could do it in a more intuitive way for new people, but it would break all of these existing programmers who learned it the less intuitive way, so let's leave it the original way" -- or am I missing something?
That may have something to do with it, but in practice, I find myself moving up/down (j/k) files far more often than I need to backtrack by a single character, and when I do, as often as not my pinky flies up to backspace (note this works by default only in Vim). It ends up being the most natural to keep your hands on the home row anyway.
This is also an important point because it strikes me that as I play this game I am learning that as an antipattern. Perhaps I should just stick with not-vim.
Your fingers should stay on JKL;. Going left involves lifting your index finger and moving it the the left, pressing H, and returning it back to J. When you're more proficient in VIM, you usually don't use h much, but ^ or 0 or T or F or b, lots to choose from :)
Nice! I got bored before I finished the first level, but not before I was trying to use stuff like ^,$ and ctrl+f, ctrl+b, 5l to get to the end of the tunnels faster and those didn't work. Is more advanced editing unlocked in later levels? or is this just for getting off the arrow keys? I can imagine some cool things in a more advanced vim game like * for teleporting between words, mm to drop a bookmark, :badd to get to a new level ...
The target of the first level was to cover hjkl. I know it's a pain and when you're proficient enough you usually don't use them but use tf*#/ and such, but it's the basics... The motions are working only on text areas (There are some on the 2nd level). Bookmarks are indeed planned for teleporting back to places, and I have plans for /Hello if you look at the first screen ;)
I've gotten to the end of the level. Then I remembered that in the top corner of the Maze is another treasure chest. I go back there to the !! marks and type b but cannot enter that area.
The message reads "Remember: these are not words"... so how do I get in there? Can that part of the game not be solved?
I've tried Shift-B, ^ etc. Is anyone else able to get into there?
It wasn't meant to work on mobile devices. It can and everything work as expected besides the fact that you must have a fully functional keyboard to use it and learn VIM.
This is core problem with learning VIM, many people are off-put by VIMs complexity.
I think this game does a great job of letting the player explore vim commands, while complete objectives that are common to many video games.
What makes this game great isn't the fact that it's a video game that lets you learn VIM as you play. It's that it simply incorporates VIM commands into a game that could appear on any popular flash game site.
Wow. I've been aching to learn Vim for years, struggling through the rare occasions I have to use it while SSHing in to a machine. I've picked up more in 5 minutes with this game then I have in all that time. Very impressive!
I learned how to use the controls of VI decades before I actually learned that VIM existed, through Hack/Nethack. I thought the controls were ridiculous, but I was a kid, so I just accepted it and learned them, little did I know how useful they would become later on in life.
128 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadIt's awfully slow and thus unplayable. :(
I'm using a Macbook Air with Mac OS X Lion and Google Chrome and the gameplay is very smooth.
The email address box however didn't show my email as I typed it in
The game looks fine! I already see how my kids will learn vim :)
It's a pity that the project's state is totally unclear (at least to me, a casual visitor). Is it meant to become a community project? Is it a demo of something that will be sold in the future? The explaining text behind the "Unlock Levels" button adds even more confusion:
> Additional levels are currently being developed for you to play and enjoy. The 3rd level will be available for FREE only for players who sign up for my email list. Sign up now! You'll be notified as soon as the level is up. The level won't be available for unregistered users.
On the one hand, it sounds as if it is free, with some "forcing" to make more users join the project mailing list. On the other hand, this is totally discouraging contributions (because you aren't allowed to see the work-in-progress version), so maybe it's meant to become for-sale in the future.
I'd love to see it developing either way (although I think the community way is the more appropriate for this project). But as of now, it seems to unify the disadvantages of both worlds: Advertising the mailing list in a way that appeals neither to people who are willing to pay (as there's no clear pricing plan), nor to people interested in contributing (as it seems to more about announcements/"newsletters" than about how to improve and to help).
Only it should be mentioned clearly.
If you advertise your project by stating you are convinced of the "power of Open Source", but don't make use of that "power", how much credible is that?
No matter if you find this argument convincing or not, it has nothing to do with the difference between Open Source and Free Software. It's just about adverticing a proprietary project with "power of Open Source" versus advertising it with, say, "power of Vim".
He's not, indeed, but that's why the GFDL was created. [1]
Interestingly, the GFDL is designed to be appealing to commercial publishers. [2]
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-gfdl.html
However, I'm sure the same people will happily spend $100 for a book that teaches some open-source tool. Or at least they would never complain that there's a price for it.
Why?
At the moment we seem stuck in the middle of this transition and you either pay for a locked down copy or you get the Free copy for free. But Kickstarter seems like it's getting mainstream so the concept of paying in advance for something that is built to the specifications of the user may at last become common in software.
Many people believe [...] that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.
In other words, it is important to distinguish paid software from proprietary software, otherwise the situation and arguments become confusing, indeed.
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
It is not free.
http://www.catonmat.net/images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/lsi-adm-3a....
http://www.catonmat.net/images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/adm-3a-hjkl...
The message reads "Remember: these are not words"... so how do I get in there? Can that part of the game not be solved?
I've tried Shift-B, ^ etc. Is anyone else able to get into there?
it's an interesting project none the less.
This is core problem with learning VIM, many people are off-put by VIMs complexity.
I think this game does a great job of letting the player explore vim commands, while complete objectives that are common to many video games.
What makes this game great isn't the fact that it's a video game that lets you learn VIM as you play. It's that it simply incorporates VIM commands into a game that could appear on any popular flash game site.
Very well done, keep up the good work.