All About: Game Dev Club Modder

Here at The Code Zone, we have two distinct yet similar clubs for our members: Hacker and Modder. We thought we’d take a little bit of time this week to talk to you a little more about the latter of the two, our Modder clubs!

Our Modder Clubs work in an engine called “Microsoft Makecode” which has three varying levels for our members to try out! We start every single one of our Modder Members in the blocks, jigsaw puzzle pieces reminiscent of working in Scratch. (Which a lot of our members have started their journey with in Hackers!) This gives a solid start to learning the foundations upon which the games we play are built. This is what level 1 and 2 members work with.

The next stage, once our members are comfortable and masters of the blocks, is Python! Python is a globally used programming language and helps to learn transferable skills to either bigger python projects down the line; or, to other programming languages! The written code comes with its own set of challenges, introducing pseudocode, an almost English, human readable set of instructions that tell us what code should be doing! Level 3 and 4 members will be working with this!

Our third stage of Makecode is Typescript. Typescript is a javascript based language, but suited more towards our game development side of things. Typescript has a little more freedom when it comes to changing how games work, and can look a little intimidating at first, so we save it for those who have gotten comfortable working with python! This is what level 5 and 6 members will be playing with!

Our Modder games also tend to be a bit more complex, with us working on some of them for a couple of weeks to let our members' creativity shine and add in all the cool features and ideas we work on!

And that’s it! We hope you enjoyed this look in to the inner workings of a Game Dev Modder club, and if it’s inspired you to start your own journey, come along and sign up for a free taster session for one of our clubs!