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Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

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Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#91

Post by cr0sh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #50
soup10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dunno i think the survival/mining/crafting aspect of minecraft is a big part of what makes it popular. also i think the "card programming model" and every variation of that sort of thing is such a bad idea. either support real programming or don't, don't make users deal with some junky programming emulation system

> either support real programming This prominently advertises live (type it in and its an active part of the game with no build/reload/whatever step) JavaScript coding, so it supports real coding. > don't make users deal with some junky programming emulation system Excel supports real programming, but people get a lot done it relying mainly on its wide variety of "junky programming emulation" features. People who don…

> accessible tools that don't have...the psychological/emotional barriers actual coding has for lots of people

I don't think I've ever seen this expressed before; that is, people (in general) having "psychological/emotional barriers" to "actual coding"?

Do you have any links or other references to this; studies, documents, heck - even a general audience article? It would all be interesting to read about. I've seen people struggle with learning (and often giving up) "coding" and "software development", and I am interested in what these barriers may be, etc - and what ways around them, or lessening them, there are.

I've run into this topic tangentially when it comes to children's education (particularly Papert's Mindstorms seems to touch on the issue), but it would be interesting to understand it more when it comes to older individuals.

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#92

Post by reacweb »

pauletienney wrote: post #55

Seems nice. Anyone has an opinion on why Google built this? Do you think it is related to Stadia? Or just a company hobby turning well?

Google is always focused on AI. I am pretty sure there will be AI among the players who will behave like humans. Maybe your best friend in game will be an AI.

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#93

Post by vectorEQ »

vyrotek wrote: post #22

Just wish it had gamepad support!

that should be fairly trivial to implement if they are indeed using unity. i agree it would be cool to have, additionally it would allow for local multiplayer which is always still the best way to enjoy these things imho =]

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#94

Post by krapp »

elil17 wrote: post #2

It’s a shame that making simple games doesn’t require coding like it used to. For myself, and a lot of others I’m sure, games were a huge motivator to teach myself programming. Now kids won’t be as motivated to do that

But more kids are writing more code now than ever before, there are books on it and classes on it and video series and coding literacy is actually a cultural movement (maybe driven by a need to depress wages by oversaturating the market,) multiple game creation frameworks and the modding scene which is huge. Motivation is clearly not a problem.

And the sort of simple games that don't require coding in these frameworks are the sort of simple games that no one wants to make and no one wants to play anymore. Sure, you can make breakout or pong or a really, really terrible shooter[0] with just the GUI, but kids who want to "make games" don't want those, they want to make the next Minecraft or Fortnite or MOBA or whatever, which means they're going to have to learn to code eventually.

Not everyone has to start with helloworld.c and learning how to write their own renderer from scratch nowadays. But if and when they do want to learn to write code, then they have far more and better options available than previous generations, from asset packs and templates to Handmade Hero and everything in between.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZqGTzuVGjA

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#95

Post by 0xfeba »

munchbunny wrote: post #12
elil17 wrote: post #2

It’s a shame that making simple games doesn’t require coding like it used to. For myself, and a lot of others I’m sure, games were a huge motivator to teach myself programming. Now kids won’t be as motivated to do that

I would have killed to have tools like Unity when I got into game programming. All of my hobby time was eaten up trying to wrangle OpenGL and C++ and crappy open source engines, and cobbling together a shitty physics engine, so I never got around to the actual game part. When I went back years later to prototype ideas in Unity, it was a breath of fresh air. However, in my struggles to get off the ground, I did learn…

> I would have killed to have tools like Unity when I got into game programming. All of my hobby time was eaten up trying to wrangle OpenGL and C++ and crappy open source engines, and cobbling together a shitty physics engine, so I never got around to the actual game part.

I'm still in that boat, and I am an 8 YoE "Software Engineer". I recently got into boardgame.io library (also made by a Googler, coincidentally) and it is a fantastic library.

I've attempted to make min-max CLI board game simulations before but failed. Also tried (still somewhat active) to make a 2D artillery game and got close, but just kept getting bogged down in framework (actually migrating from framework to framework) and other chores. Currently it uses LibGDX.

With this boardgame lib I just wrote game logic. It was fun, for a change! Plus it has multiplayer and integrates with React really well for a UI so it's actually useful.

I just wanted the CLI boardgame sims to find the best moves/races in games I play IRL. With this I can actually have other people play and maybe show it off at some point.

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#96

Post by pizzabearman »

kh_hk wrote: post #80
deanclatworthy wrote: post #41

Does anyone else remember an old "game" for making games? It would have been late 90s when I played it, and I remember we bought it on a CD. You could build little top down games in it, I think the example was a football game.

DIV games studio?

DIV game studio was really cool. Especially the online community forum where you could share your creations. I still remember that clay animation game. It looked so impressive

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#97

Post by organsnyder »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #41

Does anyone else remember an old "game" for making games? It would have been late 90s when I played it, and I remember we bought it on a CD. You could build little top down games in it, I think the example was a football game.

My family's software company published a product called "Game Builder" in the early-mid 90s that could be used to create adventure games. Here's a listing of it from 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/19990224063815/http://www.mvpsof...

Ha: "In our testing, children as young as eight years old could easily write games with Game Builder Lite..." I'm guessing that would have been me in 1992.

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#98

Post by teddyh »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #41

Does anyone else remember an old "game" for making games? It would have been late 90s when I played it, and I remember we bought it on a CD. You could build little top down games in it, I think the example was a football game.

These are too early to be the one you’re looking for, but there have been a number of these, including these two I had myself back in the day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kitchen%27s_GameMaker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-%27Em-Up_Construction_Ki...

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#99

Post by Wowfunhappy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
elil17 wrote: post #2

It’s a shame that making simple games doesn’t require coding like it used to. For myself, and a lot of others I’m sure, games were a huge motivator to teach myself programming. Now kids won’t be as motivated to do that

Yeah, I repeated that as a mantra when I was first learning to program and trying to make games. We all did , it was a common meme of our local game development scene. And it's utter and complete nonsense. If what you want is to make a game , then these tools aren't half as bad, and at the level of simple games, unless you have some really novel mechanic, you're quite literally wasting time and effort coding it inste…

Also, a lot of professional game developers seem to have gotten started with Game Maker as children. One example that comes to mind is Matt Thorsen, creator of Celeste.

Re: Game Builder: Create 3D games with friends, no experience required

#100

Post by TuringTest »

cr0sh wrote: post #91
dragonwriter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> either support real programming This prominently advertises live (type it in and its an active part of the game with no build/reload/whatever step) JavaScript coding, so it supports real coding. > don't make users deal with some junky programming emulation system Excel supports real programming, but people get a lot done it relying mainly on its wide variety of "junky programming emulation" features. People who don…

> accessible tools that don't have...the psychological/emotional barriers actual coding has for lots of people I don't think I've ever seen this expressed before; that is, people (in general) having "psychological/emotional barriers" to "actual coding"? Do you have any links or other references to this; studies, documents, heck - even a general audience article? It would all be interesting to read about. I've seen pe…

> I don't think I've ever seen this expressed before; that is, people (in general) having "psychological/emotional barriers" to "actual coding"?

Are you a developer, by any chance? There's a whole academic field of study[1] dedicated to overcome the barriers faced by people trying to develop software artifacts without the need of being trained in a formal system.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_development [2] http://acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html#Introduction

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