It seems we are still having odd behavior where the backend servers of Microsoft Makecode are partially blocked… as in an entire student game loads, but then the player sprite refuses to behave like a player class object ( an object treated like a variable with a number of attributes… attributes that are maintained and served by the backend services at Microsoft)
Is this a blockage problem on our filters, or some larger internet outage/traffic balancing problem on Microsoft’s end?
Had three students at 11am Mountain Time, with serverside/backend engine issues.
mysprite would not be destroyed or overlap detect tiles
… but creating a mysprite2 with the same default built-in sprite worked.
Thinking the original mysprite had an issue we trim/traced all the way back to basic onstart when mysprite was created… with NOTHING else in the game… all blocks remove… and simply creating mysprite was the ERROR… not some code or block that came later … the creation of the sprite… probably one of the very first blocks snapped in … was just an angry red and riddled with exclamation marks saying mysprite was not a number.
… why would multiple student machines have errors like this, why would a new mysprite2 solve the issue just by existing
… why would this also happen to 16x16 tilemaps not loading or not load the attributes of a tile map like wall designations etc…
… we are chasing connection logs and we do use clever, but haven’t had these issues ever before recently … so what has changed?.. what is different than even two months ago?
We are checking our filters, but then why would the game load and work when new replacement elements were created locally ( in local memory)… we still don’t know if the “fixes” synced to MS servers from the local working-copy on each student machine… I won’t know until tomorrow
Did Makecode servers undergo a drastic change recently?.. are maps loaded from another location/server? Is the backend struggling to talk to browsers and sync basic engine functions like player sprites are variable objects that can be destroyed or can trigger game-over when they die?
Once the share page loads up, nothing else is getting loaded / contacting server for the game to play – sprites are all client side / not related to server. Compilation / running of game all happens in the browser itself (with the very rare off chance that you use a unique combination of extensions and are specifically downloading to hardware).
If you can create a share link for the game we can probably figure it out though!
1 Like
Found the culprit, kids are going to chat GPT and Claude on VPNs that bypass school security, the code they get back is a mix of coded together in-class blocks converted to python or JS, modded by AI and them converted back into blocks. “Correct” blocks… but wrong order, wrong parameter arguments.
Thankfully it was eventually sorted out (today…by hand… by me) but I thought Microsoft had our backs and Makcode was purposefully kept OUT of ChatGPT???
Perhaps posting it in Github for self hosting, while handy, has given Claude et al… more chances to create code that previously was impossible to convert back to blocks … which is the ONLY way I accept work… as a preventative measure, for this exact premise/possibility/eventuality.
AI is getting better at interpreting screenshots and literal posted source code into reverse engineered JS and python chunks… compatible enough to cross back over into blocks without being irreversibly stuck in JS or Python. Coupled with the fact that the kids know to re-prompt for refinements now instead of taking the first thing they get blindly as a copy-paste solution (* well SOME put forth that little bit of extra “effort”) and then some of them modify accordingly (changing generic variable names ) because python and JS are documented well enough. It’s a shame because all of the cleverness in society is going into being bigger sluggards instead of going into helping humanity. More time and effort is going into bypassing the rules and safeguards and guidelines and get away with something anything everything… than to just grok basic logic structure in a few snap together blocks.
It’s a generation who are too lazy to even microwave a TV dinner but will spend hours trying to trick the microwave into believing an inedible rock is food because some fool put a smart AI food detection camera inside and an unsecured usb port on the back. When photocopiers require the internet and OAuth to make a photocopy… we might as well start putting ignition keys on hammers to be allowed to use them.
I think I’ll be putting in for a lab of 20x disconnected,offline, terminals with UEFI disabled USB ports
Makecode may only be allowed to continue as an offline tool, if we are going to use it at all in the future, or it needs to become a progressive web app for locked down Chromebooks.
sigh
1 Like