The Art of Coding

Elyssa Lee • January 15, 2025

Though games are simply a form of entertainment to some, for senior Eric Lu, games are the product of a coded language that only a few can comprehend. By dedicating his time and effort, Lu was able to create a Roblox game, ‘The Art of War,’ using the skills he has developed since a young age. This game challenges players to assemble their own armies and strategize to defeat their opponents in competitive battles. Lu’s passion for computer technology was introduced by his mother in fourth grade. With his excitement for this newfound hobby, he would devote three hours every day after school to work on his code. He taught himself the basics of coding and began experimenting with platformers at different speeds, which allowed him to become comfortable with programming character movement and other components needed for game development. As Lu’s passion for coding grew, he decided to dive deeper into the hobby and participate in computer programming competitions. He studied code for a year and took classes to further refine his self-taught skills and prepare himself for the USA Computing Olympiad. Lu reached the silver level at this intense and prestigious coding competition, which helped him gain the skills needed to create his Roblox game. Having recognized Lu’s potential from a young age, his mom, Ning Li, shares an explanation as to why she introduced this hobby to him.

“Starting in elementary school, I would assign Eric extra math homework every day,” Li said. “I noticed that he had good logical thinking skills, so I thought that he might enjoy programming and encouraged him to learn it. Since he liked playing video games, I encouraged him to start by creating small games on Scratch, gradually introducing him to the concepts of programming.”

Lu’s motivation to create his game came from his desire to see more complexity in Roblox, a popular online gaming platform that allows users to create and play games. Inspired by the well-designed StarCraft, a famous Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game, where players must manage resources, build units, and engage in combat, Lu drew from its mechanics to develop his own game design. He started by creating a prototype using his own algorithms and then implemented advanced ones he found online, such as Pathfinding and Flow Fields, which help characters or objects in a game move efficiently toward a destination. Lu solved technical issues by applying his own networking system, such as when he overcame Roblox’s simple Pathfinding limitations by developing a more intricate one. However, balancing school along with this project proved difficult for Lu, especially since the game took a year to complete. Nevertheless, his motivation to create an improved RTS game pushed him to develop different strategies that engaged players and allowed them to have greater freedom.

“There are RTS games on Roblox, but they’re poorly optimized because they use the default engine,” Lu said. “It’s just really suffocating to be limited to [only] ten soldiers per round. I wanted to optimize that. Every moment of free time I had, I would just think, how could I make this more efficient and intriguing? This [project] consumed me.”

The formation of an online community allowed Lu to receive support and feedback from players. A Discord server was linked under the game, which allowed players to comment on the game and make suggestions for Lu’s improvement. He brought together a community of like-minded individuals from across the globe, providing him with a variety of new perspectives. His game reached a peak number of 100 players per day with 20,000 active monthly players. Additionally, the game amassed 476.2k visits on Roblox and has become a favorite to 4238 people. Although his game gained popularity, Lu never prioritized the numbers; instead, he focused on the actual programming and the enjoyment he found in the process. Many of the people who played Lu’s game reached out to him to compliment his impressive designs and code. His friends also displayed support throughout his game-making process, one of whom was senior Max Zhao, who helped design parts of the game and was the first to participate in Lu’s trial runs.

“We spent hours fine-tuning the gameplay, brainstorming new features and pitching ideas to each other,” Zhao said. “I helped Eric because it was enjoyable to do, and after people started playing it and giving their own takes on the game, it gave me a great sense of pride. Working with him [helped us become better friends], because we would joke while testing the game or while we played against each other and [frequently discussed] the game at school.”

With Lu’s long standing passion for programming, coding will likely be in his future. The creation of this game reinforced his passion and sparked his interest in quantitative analysis, predictions for the stock market and its trends. Although Lu has always been adept at math and physics, this project served as good practice for his problem-solving skills in these subjects.

“The satisfaction and triumph [that comes from] designing a digital machine and painstakingly debugging it until it works with perfection is what I live for,” Lu said. “I look forward to continuing computer science, delving deeper into humanity’s endless wealth of creativity so that I may better exercise my own. Developing ‘The Art of War’ taught me how passion and perseverance can bring ambitious dreams to reality, and I will approach future projects with this lesson in mind.”