221–230 of 391 posts
I don’t think it is quite like a video game. It more allows you to make a scene. Perhaps this can help scratch the itch and can let your child be in the drivers seat
https://lookingglass.wustl.edu/
(I also I used to be an HCI research for the team when I was an undergrad)
Understand that you're not going to finish what you start. Do things that are fun. Keep a notebook of ideas. Talk about plans and what you want do. Spend time with him. Even if almost none if it ever makes it into code, the imagination part will be going wild. Look at what he's really doing. He doesn't want to CODE. He wants to make a game. Like every kid. Emphasize the creative part just like he wants. Do things on…
Possibly Minecraft too.
I've used many engines and shipped many games, including commercial titles (I don't derive a salary from the game industry, though). I think I'd recommend something like GameMaker. I've never used it myself, but it's a self contained IDE that has everything to make decent 2D games. I'd advise against the pitfall that 3D games lure you into. That includes engines that are 3D with a 2D "mode". There is so much leaky ab…
Strong +1 for PICO-8. My nine year old kid got right into it.
https://reticulated.net/dailyai/making-games-with-bing-chat-... https://reticulated.net/dailyai/daily-experiments-gpt4-bing-...
It can handle 3d too, but that can take a lot more work in my experience. Maybe being able to share screenshots now would improve it. Here's a made up music instrument simulator built on three.js https://pwillia7.github.io/echosculpt3/
Understand that you're not going to finish what you start. Do things that are fun. Keep a notebook of ideas. Talk about plans and what you want do. Spend time with him. Even if almost none if it ever makes it into code, the imagination part will be going wild. Look at what he's really doing. He doesn't want to CODE. He wants to make a game. Like every kid. Emphasize the creative part just like he wants. Do things on…
Pretty much nethack, but using his dungeon designs which he spent hours designing with graph paper.
I did it this way because that's how I designed my first game, on a C64, in 1986, at age 10.
He gets to design monsters, treasure, items, dungeons, etc.
Tabletop implementation is the fastest way to actually play it.
Besides the many useful suggestions below about which software to use for this assuming he wants to make a COMPUTER game , I would also explore what is his idea? Could you just "build" it with cardboard, a board drawn on a computer and printed out and various physical pieces? Or at least, do that for a prototype of the core part of the game and gameplay? I think it would be useful to learn the concept of a "minimum v…