Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time to teach him nextjs and get him deploying to vercel!! (Or at least set up a template for him!) Also, out of curiosity, have you been teaching him JS or TS? I feel like it is a sin to not use TS these days, but not sure if it makes it easier or harder for a new young programmer to learn.
val.town or something similar may be an option?
Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
251–260 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#252Igor, This is a subject area that seems like it would be a good starter learning project and doable but really its not. There are many problems that just are not suited to a young person at that age level of comprehension. Gaming graphics for example often requires understanding quaternion math, computer science, and hardware at a very low level (realtime processing where ms framerate processing counts). Game design…
I suspect the voting is more based on the fact that you're essentially saying "your child should give up, this field is bad and there are no good spaces for kids" when that's both terrible advice and not at all true. Yes, there are exploitative spaces, but there are in fact good spaces too. And your whole thing about how "making games is less fun than playing them and playing them is actually a dark pattern that is e…
You try to be clever twisting what was actually written, but in the end this new version is something you've written. It is what you say, not what I said. While the words are similar, they have been subtly altered to change the meanings, making them your words, not mine, and most importantly these words you've written are false.
You've twisted the words just enough so any reader skimming lightly might be confused, and misled into a consistency trap of agreement. Very subtle and skilled which only increases the loss of credibility when it is found out.
Your motivation for this begs an important question about your character, and credibility as a whole is lost.
Good people don't do this, and there can be no mistake as to whether this was intentional given the level of attention and effort you invested coupled with the clear skill that can only come from practice.
Thank you. You thoroughly make my point about how no online places being safe, as this type of subtle deceptions and behavior is what children will have to interact with and they are at a stage of development that is inherently vulnerability lacking the tools to communicate or identify the faults.
People would only call what I've written cynical, in contexts of opinion when I was talking about opinion, but I used facts and references (not the same meaning), providing rational methods of support. You would imply this is an unbacked opinion as a nullification attempt, but this doesn't work on the rational, and rationality is one of the few things that separate humanity from the animal kingdom.
You should know that these tactics and techniques you use would at one point have gotten the outcome you desired, and it may fool some of the more gullible masses for now, but that number is shrinking. The knowledge is becoming common knowledge, and when it does people like you will have nothing left.
As with all deceptions, it lacks a core consistent truth, which can't fool people all the time. The more examples you provide, the more widespread knowledge of it spreads. What you hope to keep under wraps, will eventually be known by all and then you'll be left with nothing.
Based on your objective actions, I must conclude you are a malevolent blind person desperately lost and seeking to bring destruction in its various forms to those around you for some as of yet unknown motivation towards some selfish benefit .
There is only one cure for the malady you have, and eventually someone will give you that cure since you can no longer help yourself. All I can do is pray for a swift recovery.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
of course it's a concern because kids don't know that there's going to be a big gap between what they create and what they envision so it's disheartening for them
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#254Earlier 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.
From the stand point of freedom for the individual to create in their own way digitally it is unmatched. People can learn UI and UX but it’s really hard, nearly impossible to create a vast ecosystem and the the community that flash once was.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#255There's also a neat voxel-based RPG engine called RPG in a Box (https://rpginabox.com/).
For Python, there's pygame, which requires a lot more code, but let's you make sprite-based games in a "real" programming language, if that's more your speed. Python also has classic turtle graphics, but that doesn't usually get you very far for making games.
Finally: I've used all of these (and other) tools with kids in that age group, as a mentor at events like Hack The Future (https://hackthefuture.org/) and Hour of Code (https://hourofcode.com/). Look for an event like this in your area, they are really fun to attend!
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#256Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#257I remember a few post of games made by children in Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ For example: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23892698 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26050913 (My daughter tried to use Scratch, but it's too difficult to cut&paste and move blocks of code, she preferred a text based programming language, so YMMV.)
I'm not a huge fan of scratch (for obvious reasons I'm not the target audience!), but my 10 year old can't get enough of it. Recently we started digging into some of the more "advanced" concepts (basically arrays and functions) and I was surprised how far you could actually get with the system. I'm trying to move him off scratch on to something text based, but imo for a kid it's hard to go wrong starting with Scratch…
A pragmatic pedagogical thing I love with Snap! is the ease of creating custom blocks, including macros / custom "C-shaped" control structures. If you have some time, this allows you to "scaffold" helpers that will allow him to create interesting stuff while focusing on things you want him to learn and hiding issues you don't.
* Example: I wanted to teach rendering a custom costume with e.g. health bar or text label. My son is already familiar with Snap!'s turtle-drawing primitives that can render lines & text but there was an impedance mismatch — you draw on the screen, and it does support snapshotting all current drawings to create a costume, but using that involves some careful save-and-restore of much global state (e.g. pen color). I built him a "draw costume" block that takes a body of turtle-drawing commands and affects only current character's costume. If you ask me, Snap! should have had similar API built-in; but what's more important it was easy for me to add one that looks and feels as-if it was builtin. This way I can decide what I want to teach ("you can compute how you appear") and what is incidental complexity.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#258Been 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…
I agree with this other advice. Do "tabletop" first. It doesn't have to be fancy, even just notecards or paper. You can iterate very quickly on the core game loop and "finding the fun". If you do want something fancier than just paper and words, a great option is printing on full page sticker paper and then attach that to chipboard (you can get it cheap online) and then just cut it out. You have a game that feels a l…
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Roblox can be bad in a "badly moderated online space" and "potentially abusive monetization/exploitative sharing structure" - the game itself feels good?
this. the tradeoff is with something like godot you only have examples/tutorials and hardly ever something "finished" or "very fun" or "thing people are playing". something like roblox or another modding-focused game allows you to see what other people did as inspiration or to show what other people are actually interested in, as opposed to just making things for yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#260Been 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…
Lucky I got heavy into programming, which scratched somewhat a similar itch (and it's well paid).
What about rpgmaker? That's the one I found when I was 12