I’m pleased to announce a new release of Kojo. The following are the highlights (for Kojo and the activities around it) since the last announcement:
1. We now also have a web-based version of Kojo. iKojo (as this version is called) is hosted at Lund University, Sweden. Many thanks to Björn Regnell, Peter Möller, and the folks at the Vattenhallen Science Center at Lund University for facilitating this.
iKojo brings several benefits to the Kojo platform:
- It enables users to easily start experimenting with Kojo without having to download/install anything. When they want to dig deeper and do more serious programming, they can download/install desktop-Kojo.
- It enables users to easily share (via a web link) the games and simulations that they write in Kojo. The game or simulation can be developed in desktop-Kojo, and then shared via iKojo.
- It enables the exporting of web-apps from Kojo. These web-apps can run within any internet browser (on personal computers, tablets, and mobile phones).
Here is an example of a simple game (playable via keyboard and joystick) developed in desktop-Kojo (using Scala), tested on iKojo (via Scalajs), and then exported as a web-app. Click on the image below to play (note that full-screen mode does not work on Apple devices):
You can check out the source code for the game.
2. There’s a new Kojo Intro video out there that introduces the various features of Kojo:
3. There is a new Learning Material section on the docs website that provides a reasonably structured learning journey for children across various fun areas of programming.
4. And finally, a new version (2.9.07) of desktop-Kojo has been released, with the following enhancements since the last release announcement:
- A Turkish (level-3 with custom enhancements) translation contributed by Bulent Basaran. We are looking forward to seeing children in Turkey benefiting from this. Great job, Bulent!
- Sprite-sheets and mp3 files can now be loaded off the net.
- Support for
eval. - Support for screens.
- Web-app export feature.
- Scala has been bumped up to version 2.13.3
- The bundled Java has been bumped up to version 11.0.7
- There is now a virtual Joystick control for games (driven by iKojo on mobile).
- Some sample games have been synced with iKojo.
- Access to the code exchange is available via https.
- Support has been added for vertex shapes – for turtles, pictures, and canvas sketches. This includes support for polygons and curves using (r, theta) coordinates – which enables easy drawing of circular patterns like mandalas and yantras.
- Code completion improvements.
- New viewTranslate(x, y), viewRotate(a), and viewScale(f) commands.
That’s it for now.
As always, the new version of Kojo is available from the Kojo Download Page. If you run into any difficulties, let us know.
Enjoy!
The Kojo Learning Environment 