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Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

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Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#191

Post by danielvaughn »

amjoshuamichael wrote: post #180
danielvaughn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding the Dreams recommendation. It's incredible .

I don't think Dreams gets enough credit because it came out at the end of the PlayStation 4's life and it didn't get a lot of marketing, but it absolutely is fantastic. I'd say it's the best implementation of visual scripting I've ever seen, and that's using a traditional game controller (or two PSMove controllers) instead of a mouse/keyboard. That's not even including the modeling tools or music tools. As someone wh…

Apparently they were working on a PC port but it was abandoned after declining sales. I really really hope someone buys the IP and finishes the port, because it would be a massive success.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#192

Post by HKH2 »

bee_rider wrote: post #164
HKH2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I miss silly flash games and 0 other applications of flash. I can see why people miss it from a creator point of view, but it was extremely annoying in general.

It was great for animation with interactions. Also, flash files could easily be saved and shared offline.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#193

Post by wadadadad »

jhbadger wrote: post #177
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #95

This is a surprisingly crowded space. Aside from the big names like Scratch, Blockly, Roblox and (to an extent) Minecraft Education. There are heaps of projects out there created by educators who wanted to improve their own course. One particular example I was quite impressed with was Blockly -> Unity: https://app.code-it-studio.de/course/step/4/44 I've worked in this space a lot: professional game development, led E…

>Look at all the games that flop on Steam each year. These are made by professionals. It's disheartening for kids when the thing they've worked hard on simply isn't fun — particularly when they share it with friends and are met with, at best, a shrug. Why should this be a concern? Should people not paint for fun if their pictures aren't museum-worthy? Should they not play basketball just because they aren't NBA mater…

If the child is creating games because the act of creating games is fun, it's fine- great even! Same thing for painting, or playing basketball, etc.

The point I think GP was trying to make is, if the child is creating games because they want to share the games and they think other people will enjoy the games they created- that's where the problem is. GP is saying that kids can get disheartened because their expectation was others will enjoy their game, when potentially (very likely), others won't enjoy their game, because game design is hard. Adults may be more able to handle this emotionally and 'push through it', but children could potentially take this poorly and not want to continue game development because of the negative reactions of others.

We should absolutely continue to encourage game design (or really anything a child is interested in); I would say generally we should be aware of this potential concern for anyone developing games.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#194

Post by NortySpock »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #135
NortySpock wrote: post #28

It's not a drag and drop environment, but it is JavaScript: https://p5js.org/ Basic 60 frames a second canvas and the rest is JavaScript. Pair that with the excellent Coding Train series https://youtube.com/@thecodingtrain To get around the "serve a webpage locally" problem, you could either have Python or Node serve a webpage, or I once rigged up a samba share and a small web server on a home server and turned a kid…

P5 is definitely what I'd recommend to a lot of people for actually starting to learn to code although I think in coding a game it might fall down the second you want to do collisions as you're going to have to roll all that yourself from scratch. In 2024 I'd be tempted to say if you want to make games it might even be better to just get started with Unity, Unreal or Godot and YouTube tutorials + AI help might be eno…

For collisions I can say p5.play has been an excellent plugin for p5 to handle inertial physics and collisions.

I would suggest that the novice game developer might enjoy rolling their own basic collision detection ( object overlay, mouse-over, inertia-ignoring collision resolution, etc), but obviously that is not fun or convenient for everyone.

https://p5play.org/learn/ (AGPL licensed with commercial exceptions available these days, it seems)

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#195

Post by mplewis »

navane wrote: post #98
RIMR wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Required reading before throwing your child into the machine that is Roblox: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/09/the-trouble-wi...

tldr; teenagers on the internet. Nothing here described at Roblox doesn't happen to teenagers on the internet as a whole; Discord, IM. At least the people learned a valuable skill in Roblox.

When I was on AIM, I was never pressured into joining an asset sweatshop by older kids online. Stay far away from Roblox.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#196

Post by teucris »

Multiple people have suggested modding games. This is what led me to computer engineering as a career- specifically Quake III mods. Having games that are easily extended and hacked makes for an incredible exploratory environment, especially if it’s a game that the child loves.

What’s out there?

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#197

Post by teamonkey »

tiborsaas wrote: post #119

I suggest Unreal Engine, 11 years is old enough to follow tutorials on YouTube. I think I was at around this age when I played with Game Maker on Commodore 64. There's not much coding required in UE, but there's some learning curve that's for sure. Having an instant feedback however is really good for learning. I would also suggest https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/ which is a good for 2D RPG games, there are quite a few v…

I’ve used Unreal Engine professionally for about 7 years and I would NOT recommend it to an 11-year-old, for much the same reason you don’t first teach people to fly in an Airbus A380.

I WOULD, however, recommend Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN), which is stripped down and focused while still being powerful.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#198

Post by ramses0 »

bentt wrote: post #116

Been 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…

Inkle as well, it's got an easy online editor and lets you do basically choose your own adventures, kindof like a linear zork/infocom story engine (stories can branch, but usually move forward).

Old school was ZZT (https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-world/?s...) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set

...ZZT especially is interestingly retro with the pixel-art style, and IIRC, quite a decent programming / dialogue capabilities.

Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?

#200

Post by tomxor »

Plain HTML and JS, aka a web browser.

I know it's every programmers favourite past time to hate on the web platform, but BASIC had a similar hate, yet it kind of was a well placed language for beginners.

The web browser is the closest modern equivalent of booting into a basic prompt on $YOUR_FAVOURITE_80s_PC, without being as arcane or limited. You can hit f12 and start poking around immediately, on any modern computer... You don't have to install compilers, libraries or complex dev tooling, just write a single plain text file and you have access to a pixel buffer (canvas) in the most documented and optimised scripting language in the world.

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