CODE4FUN student launches his first iPhone app on Apple App Store

Hi everyone, my name is Zander. I am 12 years old, and I have just launched my very first game on the Apple App Store. You can play it on your iPhone or iPad, it costs $1.49. The game is a 3D geometric puzzle with 20 levels, so I hope you enjoy solving it!

It had always been a dream of mine to put an app on the Apple App Store. I would play other mobile games such as Monument Valley and Minecraft and be inspired by these worlds that other developers had managed to create, wishing I could do the same. I came up with the concept of Slidez just over half a year ago. I was talking to my dad about an old board game he used to play that he really enjoyed. I thought it would be cool to develop my own game but for mobile devices. I was hoping to bring back the old memories of playing board games in a new way. I started experimenting with Unity and managed to get a little prototype working.

My 3D puzzle game is called “Slidez”. It has 20 levels with 2 different themes. At each level, a player has to move different blocks with a joystick to release one block to hit the gold block out. I also arranged and composed the music for this game.

The development of this game took much longer than expected because I encountered many bugs and had to research along the way in order to fix them properly. However, I know that what I learned from my experience will be useful in the future. In total, Slidez took about 6 months of work. I eventually got to a point where I could release the game. I was very excited at the thought of having a mobile game like the others I played when I was younger. However, it still had to pass Apple’s testing and lodgement program to get on the App Store. I sent in the application to Apple and two days later I found that my game had passed all the tests and had gone onto the App Store. I was very happy that I finally accomplished one of my dreams: I have been recognised by Apple as a Software Developer and I am authorised to develop further Apps for the App Store.

My journey in programming started 5 years ago, when I joined CODE4FUN Scratch beginner class in Castle Hill. Since then I’ve completed four CODE4FUN coding courses: Scratch Beginner, Scratch Intermediate, Intro to Java and Java Pro, and currently I am studying Unity 3D and C# game development course in The Granville Centre. It’s been a long and exciting journey, and I would like to thank all CODE4FUN teachers for their support and knowledge they have given me over the years.

If you want to check out my game, search “Slidez” in the Apple App Store or just click this link:

https://apps.apple.com/au/app/slidez/id1542413218#?platform=iphone

I hope you will enjoy playing it as much as I have enjoyed developing it.

Such an amazing achievement by two CODE4FUN students Zoe and Andrei and their team from Balmain Public School in winning STEM Video Game Challenge 2019! They competed among others from all around Australia in Y5 – Y8 “Playable Game in Scratch” category.

We all are super proud of them and cannot help but share their success with all CODE4FUN community. Well done to Zoe, Andrei and the whole team! Your passion and commitment to coding and your achievement, is very inspirational.

Both Zoe and Andrei have been studying with CODE4FUN for over two years, starting from block-based Scratch all the way to Pro Level, learning text-based industry standard Java language now.

Here is the game, enjoy:

Pease click here to play: play the game

Once again, well done to Zoe, Andrei and the whole team!

Huge congratulations to Daniel Welsh, CODE4FUN lead coding teacher, for winning the first place at Viva League Global Game Jam Sydney 2019, the professional game development competition.

The Sydney Game Jam was packed into an intense 30 hours where participants, who are generally made up of programmers, game designers, and artists, competed solo and in teams to create computer games within the time limit, and based on a chosen theme.

There were over 60 participants, who were eager to create and show their games to the Game Jam jury.

Daniel Welsh and his colleague Naomi Justin created a Wild West Cartoon game called “Billy The Kid” where the user plays for a goat character who is on a mission to investigate ‘goat milk affair’.

You can play this game via this link:

Pease click here to play: play the game

Well done Daniel and good luck in January with the International Game Jam, where thousands of game developers from all over the world will compete for the top prize.

Last week, the top 20 CODE4FUN robotics students went on a special tour to the Magic Lab at University of Technology Sydney.

The Magic Lab is a pioneer and a leader conducting transdisciplinary research into strategic and disruptive innovations that will transform society in the coming decade. The Lab is home to the only PR2 robot in Australia and programs for Pepper, Nao, and Aibo as well as custom-built robots.

This excursion was organised precisely for those CODE4FUN students, who has shown their huge interest in robotics and artificial intelligence. All the students were given the opportunity to learn from UTS Human-Robot Interaction researchers about the latest innovations in robotics technology. The students also participated in robotics workshops and got hands-on experience designing a social behaviour for the Pepper robot, the world’s first social humanoid robot able to recognise faces and basic human emotions.

CODE4FUN Head of Teaching Jesse Clark, who is also UTS Robotics researcher and a core member of the UTS Centre for Artificial Intelligence, guided the students through all the aspects of programming Pepper to help them understand how robot’s mind works. It was absolutely amazing to see how each student in his or her personal manner interacted with the Pepper robots and learn from them as well.

Thank you very much the Magic Lab team for having us and for giving our students such a valuable knowledge and experience in the world of the future and robots.

Check out some of the photos from the day below: