What is Kodu?
Kodu Game Lab is for building games! Kodu is a programming environment designed by Microsoft for Windows and the Xbox 360. Kodu enables you to build games using a series of visual elements in a rich 3D environment, without having to learn a single line of code.
What isn’t it?
While what you can build with Kodu is significant, there are limits to what you can achieve. Building games of expansive size with countless characters will tax the Kodu Game Engine. Luckily, Kodu has a built in indicator to let you know when you’re stretching the game engine beyond it’s capacity. A thermometer to the right of the screen indicates clearly whether your game is becoming too big to manage. If it is, it’s a simple matter of reducing the size of the game space, or removing peripheral characters from the game. That’s not to say that Kodu can’t be used for building games of surprising complexity! What you can achieve with Kodu can be surprising.
Where can I download Kodu?
It is available for free at http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects/kodu. The download link is on the upper right side.
Depending on your system, you may also need DirectX 9, Microsoft .Net Framework v3, and the Microsoft Game Studio XNA Framework. The Kodu installer will tell you if you need one of these additional downloads.
Our Class Assignments
Kodu Student Packet - The exercises that we go through in class
Kodu Final Project and Game Design Document - Both are due at the end of the unit
Code Examples, Demos, and Resources
Kodu Code Examples and Demos - Lots of basic examples and our in-class demos. You can also download the Kodu Cheat Sheet.
Planet Kodu Code Questions Forum - Great place to look for ideas on how to solve code common problems - countdown timers, etc
Links and Other Resources
Planet Kodu - Great resource for example games, programming challenges, and much more
Primary Kodu page at Microsoft Research
Kodu blog at Microsoft Research
Online Kodu Game Creation course (very in depth - a great place to learn more about not only Kodu, but good game design in general)
Kodu tutorials and help
Want to know more?
There are lots of other tutorials available on the Internet including:
Full Game Video Tutorial with Narration! – Generic Wars
Several Kodu video tutorials
There are also many, many video tutorials available on YouTube. Several are shown below (but there are lots of others).
To view a tutorial, select one from the list and press Play (or simply click the video). To view the tutorials full screen, click the full screen 
button at the buttom of the video.
Kodu provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games. The core of the Kodu project is the programming user interface. The language is simple and entirely icon-based. Programs are composed of pages, which are broken down into rules, which are further divided into conditions and actions. Conditions are evaluated simultaneously.
The Kodu language is designed specifically for game development and provides specialized primitives derived from gaming scenarios. Programs are expressed in physical terms, using concepts like vision, hearing, and time to control character behavior. While not as general-purpose as classical programming languages, Kodu can express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct, and intuitive manner.
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