on a slightly different tack - games that are programming-like:
- Minecraft - Human Resource Machine - The Sequence (Android) - Any complex management game
Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
121–130 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#122When I was that age I made a bouncing ball in Flash (ActionScript, similar to JS).[0] This is still my "hello world" when trying out a new game dev environment because it covers: - drawing - movement - input - acceleration - gravity - friction - collision And all of these in essentially the simplest possible way. Most of all, it's a lot of fun to have a bouncing ball, and even more fun if you can use the keyboard or…
I still lament the loss of Flash. It’s ability to get in there and as a single user do everything from design to animation to code front end and back end was enormously flexible and easy for creatively engaging and creating. It fit the “bicycle of the mind” concept. As far as I know, no single tool has replicated that kind of freedom. For rapid prototypes that one could actually iteratively build on top of top make a…
When HTML5 was supposed to replace Flash, I just thought I didn't know enough about HTML5. Turns out that it was never an adequate replacement and it was just more Web 2.0 sterility.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#123I don't know how a modern kid would feel about the TUI, but I made a TON of games in QBasic as a kid. QB64 is a pretty good modern version thereof.
I wish I had had SDL2 as a kid.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#124Been a pro gamedev for 20+ years. You have a born game designer on your hands. It is important to not assume this means they are super interested in programming. They may be, but game design is its own thing. HN will skew you towards programming first, naturally. Check these out: - Adventure Game Studio ( https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/ ) - Twine ( https://twinery.org/ ) And these have more visual ways of prog…
this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're proud of it, maybe they'll want to learn how to implement it in software, or maybe they'll want to make some sort of physical product (game book, card deck, miniatures, etc.), or maybe they'll want to move on and design a whole new game.
tabletop simulator (on steam) is an easy platform for designing tabletop games. it has lots of built-in assets, you can import your assets, it has lots of built-in concepts that are common to games (zones/hands/inventories/meeples/etc). rules-enforcement is mostly done by the players (multiplayer is supported) just like when playing games in real life, so it's great for prototyping and playtesting without coding up formal logic.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#125When I was a kid, I loved RPG maker. I’m sure there are legacy versions out there.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#126Don't underestimate kids... just give them proper tools, and they will surprise you. JavaScript is a very forgiving language to learn: https://playground.babylonjs.com/ Game level designers are also a fun high-abstraction, and won't overwhelm the impatient. https://levelsharesquare.com/games/supermarioconstruct Have fun =3
JavaScript has me scratching my head when I can't see why something won't work and I don't get errors in the console.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#127Lots of good suggestions here, but I feel that on the rare occasions when you see 11-year olds actually making games, they are generally in Minecraft or Roblox.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Concur with other comments here when I say: do not throw your child into this incredibly exploitative community
I’ve read about these concerns but my kid is 11 and on there all the time, often with me over her shoulder, and I’ve never seen any sign of it. It’s a huge platform for kids so I’m sure there are some creeps but there are plenty of controls in place to deal with that and even so, again, I’ve never seen it.
I have similar experience to yours. I would prefer them not to be on it but it has network effect, as their friends are all on it too.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#129pico-8
+1 on this. Even as an adult I found other game authoring systems too complex to jump into and feel comfortable with (as a hobbyist). Pico-8 was the fastest, easiest "I'm thinking of something" to "I'm seeing something happen on screen" iterative development cycle and a joy to use. Plus, a great community of people willing to help on lexaloffle.com and especially Discord. Some great YouTube tutorials out there as wel…
I learned to code games in QuickBASIC, and pico 8 to me is the closest experience I ever had to that. The tools for putting something on the screen are immediately available with no infrastructure work required. You don't need to create a window, load files, choose a screen mode or anything. You just draw a sprite in the sprite editor and call `spr`
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#130Try TIC80 https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80 Very mice, multi programming language support
I bought an external keyboard for my phone so that when I'm outside somewhere and bored out of my mind I can code on something in TIC-80