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Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

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Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#71
post #43

This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a frie…

Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Speaking as a game developer, this is remarkably bad advice for a young gamedev to follow. It doesn't matter whether or not they're "his". It matters that he continues creating. That's the most…

Surely it matters for legal reasons? I thought that was what the parent was implying; he could get his games pulled for copyright infringement.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#72
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. There is quite a difference between not using third-party tools/libraries, and (arguably) not programming at all . I mean, the tool's tagline is "Create Games. Effortlessly." This isn't an attempt to put the OP down, but let's keep things in perspective.

I disagree. It is an attempt to put the OP down. The tool may not have people writing code, but they are programming. They have define algorithms through the use of data types, loops, conditionals, etc. What the OP did is noteworthy because he/she was able to create cool games with the limitations of the tools (and went as far as adding his own JS). No software these days is run or built without the help of others. W…

You can disagree all that you like. What you cannot do is ascribe intention to my posts.

At any rate, I think that you're so focused on the specific case of the OP that you've missed the point of my post. That's fine. I expected contention over my use of the word "programming", and apparently I should have been more pedantic.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#73
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Speaking as a game developer, this is remarkably bad advice for a young gamedev to follow. It doesn't matter whether or not they're "his". It matters that he continues creating. That's the most…

Surely it matters for legal reasons? I thought that was what the parent was implying; he could get his games pulled for copyright infringement.

Note for readers: I edited my original comment just before Blahah's reply was written, and my edit makes it seem like they didn't read my comment. But in fact they had read an earlier version of it. So I figure I should mention that to avoid confusion...

Anyway, it doesn't matter if his apps are taken down, because growing his skillset is the most important thing, not the apps themselves. No one will fine him or take him to jail, so as long as he's aware that maybe the app might get pulled, then using other people's characters is the best possible thing a young gamedev can do. And plus there's a good chance no one will care.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#74
post #50

EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what…

> I haven't developed any games I have created a RSA secure chatting social network website and app for it too which could communicate between each other using websockets and a node.JS server I would avoid talking like this. To me it sounds like you only vaguely know what you're talking about. To non-techies you sound like you're trying too hard. As someone who started freelancing as a sophomore in highschool I hope…

Okay that was over descriptive. I basically created a chatting platform that used Websockets (so it worked on the web instead of application only) and would send data from a PHP frontend to a node.JS backend (hosted in AWS) via SSL and RSA encryption (I used cryptico.JS to encrypt and decrypt). The node.JS server was running engine.io (base for socket.io).

Also i'm sorry if it came off like I have a big ego!

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#75
post #50

EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what…

inteligence != smartness Some people are smart but not inteligent. And some are inteligent and not smart. Someone might go great lengths of inteligence to create something utterly complex. While others might go the smart path and create something else. Both creations can become successful or unsuccessful. If one is complex and the other is simple doesnt mean one is better then the other.

I wasn't trying to put down his intelligence or smartness. Point is, the apps aren't overly impressive in my opinion and as I said quantity != quality.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#76
post #70
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree completely. I'm over twice your age and started programming when I was 12. My birthday present for my 14th birthday was a $99 retail copy of Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0. Back then I wrote a notepad clone, cab archiver (zip was a fad, really!), and various other utilities. I remember thinking how cool it was when I was 14 to have over 50,000 downloads. I've been a professional programmer (big corp, consulting,…

I'm definitely glad to see another 15 year old taking a interest in computing but I guess the reason i'm not overly impressed is that for me- and I don't mean to sound arrogant,- this would be an extremely easy task and the reason I'm not doing something like is because I prefer Software Programming more than Gaming and I hate Windows (I'm on Ubuntu).

For most 15 year olds it would not be an extremely easy task. What's impressive is that someone has gone down such a specialised skill-development route by that age. So both the OP, and you, are impressive.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#78
post #43

This doesn't detract what the fact that you had the initiative and drive to complete 30 different games. But if I can offer some advice now, rather than when something real happens: Create your own characters rather than borrowing someone else's creations and building them into your games. Pac-Man, Mario, Minecraft, My Little Pony are all great characters, just unfortunately not yours to make a game with. Find a frie…

Or use something like http://opengameart.org/

Also: http://www.glitchthegame.com/public-domain-game-art/

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#79
This is encouraging and I think it's great that you are interacting with the community and getting feedback on your work at an early stage. This will help you grow. I guess you've posted this for constructive criticism. You should look at challenging yourself further by finding a problem area that you are passionate about and digging deep into the data structures and the algorithms. Consider when I was 15. I was fascinated with computer graphics and games and wrote a raytracer in C, wrote a doom-like game-engine in pascal. Writing the game logic was always the easy part, dealing with limited memory and optimising for hardware were always a problem. My mates were all building their own graphics engines, dabbling with operating systems development and one kid was playing around with Classes and tree like data structures. We looked at him like he was a god. This isn't a put down but a push. You can do so much more kid and you have a good headstart but try something harder. Post your work here and most will be glad to give a helping hand. Ironically the most talented of us ended up being a musician when he left for University.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#80
Nice work getting things done!

I see your Minecraft and Mario games are "unavailable". I'm sure you'll keep creating your own IP in the future, like you did with the other 22 games instead of dealing with copyright and trademark infringement. Especially if you want to generate some revenue.

I am not a lawyer. But it will be much better for you to keep doing your own thing (like you did with most of your games), than to be taken down by lawyers working for people who's characters, names, or art you "re-purposed".

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