Another one to try is GameSalad. It’s paid but has a forum, knowledge base, support, and generally aims at the younger developers with visual coding.
Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
161–170 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#162Game maker studio might fit the bill: https://gamemaker.io/en
This is what I used when I was 11. Been 15 years since I last used it, so no idea how much it's changed. The thing that was nice about Game Maker for young me, was that it had a drag and drop and programming language interface and you could switch between the two pretty seamlessly. This really helped me learn how to code early on.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#163I suggest Unreal Engine, 11 years is old enough to follow tutorials on YouTube. I think I was at around this age when I played with Game Maker on Commodore 64. There's not much coding required in UE, but there's some learning curve that's for sure. Having an instant feedback however is really good for learning. I would also suggest https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/ which is a good for 2D RPG games, there are quite a few v…
There is something really powerful about using the same tools professional developers are using, as an 11 year old.
FWIW, I started modding UE1 games at about 12. Starting from something was nice, but it was otherwise accessible enough. And BP just makes it more so.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still lament the loss of Flash. It’s ability to get in there and as a single user do everything from design to animation to code front end and back end was enormously flexible and easy for creatively engaging and creating. It fit the “bicycle of the mind” concept. As far as I know, no single tool has replicated that kind of freedom. For rapid prototypes that one could actually iteratively build on top of top make a…
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.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#165Been 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…
Plus, if you are looking to teach a child interested in programming specifically, you might consider Snap/Build Your Own Blocks [0], an extension of Scratch made partially by an instructor of SICP at Berkeley to support things like anonymous functions, prototypes, and metaprogramming. It seems robust enough a child given it now could get right up to undergraduate introductory CS as the genuine article! I would have been amazed if any of the systems to enable kids to make games of my childhood (which I did get a pretty unrepresentatively bad batch of besides) had that kind of potential to them. Imagine a high schooler today reading, say, a blog post about their favorite game's scripting system for its quest designers and implementing its high level beat for beat themselves. Sure it'll run disappointingly slow but the education potential is immense.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#166Roblox and Fortnite UEFN are both platforms that have a lot of batteries included, and nice around building. Roblox is longer invested, but Fortnite has much better constructed financial incentives. But they are both code platforms, luau for Roblox and verse for Fortnite (maybe it has BP support)
UE is good, has BP, and it’s nice to be using pro tools from an empowerment perspective. I’d maybe pick a starter game to start from rather then from scratch…
Also, about Lua, It’s not so far off from JavaScript (pre classes) just tables instead of objects, and you have to construct prototypal inheritance from more low-level metatable methods. But after you get past the higher level quirks/syntax you should feel right at home.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#167Decker is fairly "powerpoint-like" in the sense that it's organized around a set of "cards" that can be drawn on. It's designed to allow users to create simple interactive projects without any programming, but there's also a powerful scripting language available for more sophisticated projects.
Some examples of how people are using Decker:
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#168Been 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…
GameMaker is also a good option, it even has a scratch-like visual programming language (but also a more conventional text based language).
Game Maker is what started it all for me over 20 years ago. Once I picked up the scripting language Python and Lua quickly followed. I think I owe my entire career in software to this program.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#169My kids love making their own board games. There are simple kits from amazon with blank boards, cards, dice etc - great for creativity.
Re: Ask HN: Platform for 11 year old to create video games?
#170> They are a very creative kid currently experimenting with using Power Point/Google Presentations to create a crafting and turn based combat style game but is running into the obvious limitations of this setup.
What limitations exactly? These will guide recommendations.