As much as I hate to say it, Roblox Studio is the way, especially seeing it has to be 3D. It's pretty low barrier to entry thing
Yeah, a mod for Roblox, Garry's Mod, or Minecraft is the safest bet. Maybe there's another game I forgot
Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
71–80 of 391 posts
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#72I don't know how helpful this is, but you might like to work through these kid focused projects with him, so at least he has some idea about game development.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#73You are a lucky parent.
I would start with Scratch and then move to a Basic with 2D drawing capabilities and then to Blitz3D which is a Basic with a 3D engine. Have a look at all the positive reviews.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#74As much as I hate to say it, Roblox Studio is the way, especially seeing it has to be 3D. It's pretty low barrier to entry thing
The YouTube channel "People Make Games" has a couple of reports that I'd suggest parents consider watching first before going down that road:
* "Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ
* "Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#75Back when my kids were 9 we made a simple math game called PopMath in html and it was using a basic animation loop to move bubbles around the screen. I then converted it into native ObjectiveC for the iPhone and it was a hit with them!
Nothing fancy: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/popmath-lite/id303258911
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#76Geometry Dash! Its level editor is actually a full-blown game engine now.
Though my child built several games in Scratch around this age.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#77Pico-8
At first he might just browse and play existing games, then modify their sprites and tiles, then start digging into the code. It’s magic.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#78I would say Garry's Mod + Lua Scripting / WireMod
Easy to get into since its rather old at this point and its easy to get bootstrapped with simple logic in WireMod, Its how I learned programming, has multiplayer and really supports messing around.
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#79As much as I hate to say it, Roblox Studio is the way, especially seeing it has to be 3D. It's pretty low barrier to entry thing
Yeah, a mod for Roblox, Garry's Mod, or Minecraft is the safest bet. Maybe there's another game I forgot
Garry's Mod + Wiremod is really easy to get into if you use Basic Gates or even Expressions, Its how I learned to program when I was 12 (back in Gmod 9)
Re: Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
#80We made an Android game whack a mole. I prepared it so far that she only had to make drawing routines and click handling. I always stopped the session soon, as it requires lot of capasity from the Child and is tiring.