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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?

#51

Post by relaxing »

andai wrote: post #12

When I was that age I made a bouncing ball in Flash (ActionScript, similar to JS).[0] This is still my "hello world" when trying out a new game dev environment because it covers: - drawing - movement - input - acceleration - gravity - friction - collision And all of these in essentially the simplest possible way. Most of all, it's a lot of fun to have a bouncing ball, and even more fun if you can use the keyboard or…

For anyone wanting to do this in JS, check out Dan Shiffman’s Nature of Code https://natureofcode.com/

Uses p5js, so nicer than pure canvas.

Note there’s a big leap from making a simple physics toy to making a game.

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

#52

Post by grahamj »

hyperbolablabla wrote: post #40
yarone wrote: post #34

Roblox studio. My son is a sound designer for some of the top games there. He's also learning programming in Lua for Roblox platform. It is a small community of mostly kids aged 15-25 as far as I can tell. It doesn't seem like any professional adult game developers are part of the community (I got an inside view when I took my son to RDC this year). The top game developers are making millions of dollars per year (the…

Concur with other comments here when I say: do not throw your child into this incredibly exploitative community

I’ve read about these concerns but my kid is 11 and on there all the time, often with me over her shoulder, and I’ve never seen any sign of it.

It’s a huge platform for kids so I’m sure there are some creeps but there are plenty of controls in place to deal with that and even so, again, I’ve never seen it.

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

#53

Post by miningape »

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…

Cannot recommend this enough!

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

#54

Post by brudgers »

caseyy wrote: post #22
brudgers wrote: post #8

[random parental advice from the internet] Pick an adult solution and sit with them to provide adult guidance. You are at the stage where your relationship with your child becomes peer to peer. If game programming stays their jam, you will be learning game programming from them in the blink of an eye. It's joyous and wonderful and only gets better. Sure you will miss them being a small child, but you will know an ama…

I’d argue against this. If the tool is too difficult, kids often lose interest. So it can have an adverse effect. As much as I’d want to teach my 11 year old kid Unreal Engine, it’s not realistic. Pun not intended.

You would be teaching a soon-to-be-adult about the adult world. The game engine is entirely incidental to developing a peer to peer relationship.

Their interest in spending time with you will diminish. That reality is the one to optimize for. Recreational interests come and go and come back sometimes. But most don’t stick.

Learning Unreal Engine with your 11 year old is possible, but not for more than year.

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

#55

Post by ChristopherDrum »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #9

pico-8

+1 on this. Even as an adult I found other game authoring systems too complex to jump into and feel comfortable with (as a hobbyist). Pico-8 was the fastest, easiest "I'm thinking of something" to "I'm seeing something happen on screen" iterative development cycle and a joy to use. Plus, a great community of people willing to help on lexaloffle.com and especially Discord. Some great YouTube tutorials out there as well.

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

#56

Post by cweagans »

Humble Bundle has a Godot bundle is available for the next day or so. That might be a good one to look at if you're ok with leaning into code a bit (gdscript is very very similar to python). https://www.humblebundle.com/software/learn-godot-43-complet...

Also check out the RPG Maker bundle. That's pretty point-and-click. You can have something basic up and running in a couple minutes (literally just paint your tiles onto a map and click Go and you'll have a little jrpg). If you use the newest version, you can script it in Javascript. One major selling point here is that their "runtime package" (RTP) comes with a TON of game assets to use, so you don't have to track down/make art if you don't want to (you can, but I often get blocked on art when I'm playing with game dev). https://www.humblebundle.com/software/gotcha-gotcha-presents...

GBStudio is another good (free) one to look at. It's point and click for the most part and if you get a flash cart, you can play your game on a real Gameboy. Definitely not gonna be the most flashy, but it's a good exercise in making something fun with limited resources available. https://www.gbstudio.dev

GDevelop is another no-/low-code option: https://gdevelop.io

Defold is another scripting-heavy option (Lua): https://defold.com

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

#57

Post by Peacefulz »

nmrtn wrote: post #47

Have you tried iterating your code and gameplay with https:://cursor.com like in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5uvDZ8srHA ? Total blast.

This video blew me away. I take back all of my reservations involving pairing AI with learning and development. I hope that little girl sticks to creating stuff!

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

#58

Post by davidsojevic »

Modd.io [0] is a great platform that's relatively easy to get into and start making games. I suspect it would be a fairly good entry point for kids and it has the added benefit that your child can share the games they're making with their friends to play together live.

They have fairly good documentation [1] and if videos are more your child's thing, the founder/developer is incredibly active on YouTube and posts videos [2] and live streams fairly regularly.

They also have templates for a good number of different game types/modes that you can start off with, eg. platformer, tower defense, car racing, MMORPG, etc.

[0] https://www.modd.io/

[1] https://learn.modd.io/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@baldgamedev/videos

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