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Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#51

Post by mikepurvis »

imperialWicket wrote: post #32

It falls short on your 3d request, but for someone new to things I'd go down the pico-8 rabbit hole. There are some really spectacular (given the limitations) 3d games, but they're the exception. However, the IDE is built-in, it's basically lua, and you can load/view/edit the source code for all the published games. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php Some newcomer-friendly tutorials: https://nerdyteachers.com/PICO…

My 9 and 12 year old have both played a fair bit with Pico-8, and while the music and sprite tools are neat, I think there's a lot that it leaves on the table. The Lua environment is a fun puzzle for seasoned developers to reason about how to make the most of it, but for a novice, stuff like physics, collision detection, and an entity system out of the box is more like the right starting point. You need a lot of boilerplate to get a sidescroller off the ground in Pico-8.

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#52

Post by cityzen »

phone8675309 wrote: post #30
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say this is beyond the vast majority of 9 year olds (and also adults lol)

Oh bollocks - looking at the Learn to Code From Zero link and it looks like just a modern version of those old "Learn to program a game in BASIC" books that were everywhere in the 80s when I was a kid.

There is a nice wrapper on top of Godot called RGP in a Box, I think it's around $30 but will kickstart any game dev on Godot with some nice features... out of the box!

https://godotengine.org/showcase/rpg-in-a-box/

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#53

Post by dukeofdoom »

This is probably the best channel to get started. https://www.youtube.com/@ClearCode/videos

Tutorial how to make a mario style game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWN8GcmJ-jA

Flopyy Bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUFvY349ess

Uses pygame and Tiled.

Step by step, a 9 year old could follow along

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#54

Post by signaru »

Back when I had zero experience coding games, I strongly considered Construct2 (https://www.construct.net/en , now Construct3) since it seemed particularly aimed at beginners, requiring no coding experience and using visual scripting.

Haven't used it though, since I already had programming experience and just ended up using SFML in C++ or Monogame in C#.

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#56

Post by chris-orgmenta »

You both might enjoy simondev on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPwR7h5SnOE&list=PLRL3Z3lpLm...

Three.js, so very accessible and you can have games load up within 2000ms. You can use the corresponding github codebases - I loaded up his minecraft demo successfully a while back.

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#57

Post by arcastroe »

fn-mote wrote: post #42

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…

When I was ten years old, I played a lot of web games built on Flash technology and asked my parents how I could build my own. My parents sat me down and taught me the very basics of how to code. I didn't learn very well from them, but they also bought me a textbook and I learned great from that. By age 12, I had recreated a lot of the games I was fond of, pacman, snake, space invaders, etc.

Maybe the bar was lower for my interests at the time (flash mini games vs AAA 3D games as described here), but just offering a different take: Maybe your son _would_ very much be interested in learning to code. Though starting with 2d retro games might be easier.

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#59

Post by ghufran_syed »

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 viable product" in this context (or rather, "minimum quantum of utility" to get away from preconceived ideas about what a "product" is..). Being able to get it to a point where people can first actually try to play it is really useful, and lets you get feedback early without all the overhead of the actual computer programming (if needed)

Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

#60

Post by tnecniv »

I advise doing what the others said. Encourage him and have fun and don’t worry about whether or not a game gets made. When he’s playing games, you might point out how you think the developer implemented things (even simple things).

I got into coding when I was 13. The only game I ever really made was a top down shooter with SML because I 1) learned that games are hard work 2) had no idea where to get assets besides ripping sprite sheets which I didn’t have the attention span for 3) I found more joy in the coding itself than making a game. I always had some dinky project going and it was almost never a game. Hell, I had more fun making a GameBoy emulator than making games!

These days, now that I know what I’m doing, I have an idea for a game I’d like to make. I wonder if I’ll ever get around to it? It’s ambitious, but I think doable solo (minus the art). It’d probably be a 5-10 year project. A big part of the reason I haven’t started it is I know how much not fun parts there are involved, like tuning algorithms.

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