You could go the Unreal route, will get you very far even wihtout code. Marketplace can be used to buy a lot of systems so you don't have to code them.
Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
251–260 of 391 posts
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#252Godot is really good. GDQuest does really nice tutorials for it: https://www.gdquest.com/tutorial/godot/learning-paths/godot-...
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#253Love2d is very approachable. Although not 3d, there is a version of it for developing 3D games. It uses lua, which a lot of his friends will be familiar with via Roblox.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#254I'd start with Scratch. Lots of well meaning advice here but Scratch is still the best for kids to build code and quickly see the product dance on the screen. Quick iteration time is the key to building a feelings of accomplishment.
We started with the book "Scratch Programming Playground" by Al Sweigart.
Now we are doing youtube tutorials by Griffpatch. One of the latest is a simple 3D raycast Wolfenstein clone, which might interest your son. However I recommend a simpler jumping on point, like his Geometry Dash series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy4zsTUHwGJJnoXPSYlKQ...
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#255OP, if you do want to go the route of actually helping him make something, I wonder if Dreams on Playstation would be a good fit.
Of all the accessible game creation tools I know of, this is the only one which:
- Is made for 3D by default.
- Is reasonably flexible in terms of the type of game you can create.
- Isn't Roblox (aka extremely exploitive).
The other tools suggested in this thread are great (I love Scratch, I use it extensively at my school), but they all fail the first requirement. And I suspect that is a requirement: if a kid is set on 3D, they usually really want that.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#256Understand 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…
> YOUR SON DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN TO CODE Maybe he does, but he doesn't know it yet. Do not force him, but you can show him. That's actually how I got into coding. Like every kid, I wanted to make a game, but progressively, I found that I had more fun coding than actually making the game. In the end, I went in so many tangents I didn't complete my game, but who cares? Everyone is different. Maybe he just wants to ima…
Interesting thoughts.
Makes me realize I never wanted to learn to code. I never set out for it. I want to learn to code things now, but back then? I wanted to make an executable that did something. Sometimes it was a game. Sometimes it was some weird graphical screen saver like thing. Coding was just to make it happen. That became something interesting too, eventually.
It is something we as programmers forget. Why we did it in the first place. It usually shows up when those analyst show up and want some program. Cant they see how amazing our code is? /s When what they want is a program that does something.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#257Maybe this will help: https://www.alice.org/
I wish this was higher up, this is similar to scratch with full 3D. I loved Alice around age 9 and made plenty of simple 3D games!
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#258During the holiday season in December, I got my 9yr old son into programming by making games with LLM. We made a few browser games, and by the end of it he could write the prompt himself, copy the code to the right places, understand what a function does and add objects to the game by modifying an array.
What I learned is llm gives you the activation energy, you just type a few sentences to get the momentum going. To get the reward feedback cycle going you’ll want to add graphics as early as possible.
The most difficult part is to be by his side and ready to jump in whenever a missing coma breaks the entire game. You’ll also need to keep scope under control, I’d alway steer him away from doing any complicated animation. There’re plenty of opportunity to teach but be realistic that it’s not real programming
Here’s an example that I put online so he can share with friends: https://mquan.github.io/k.ai/coin-collector/
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#259Start with Scratch. You can build full side-scrollers there. They bring in other kids. Your son will get people playing, testing, giving great feedback. He will build followers.
The goal should be to get him in the feedback look for quick wins, and repeat.
Scratch is built for 9 year olds. Games is where all kids tend to go. It has very good side scrollers.
Wait until he masters while loops, variables, state transitions and 2D graphics before going beyond Scratch. Scratch = open source, massive community, designed for kids. Includes flow diagram programming and source code. Progress for kids
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#260Roblox studio works pretty well. I’m sure there will be some AI code assisted game creator programs too.
It’s cognitively a lot to handle so