Hey #gamedev people:
My youngest (11) wants to develop games. He hasn’t had experience with this yet but he has played around a little with Scratch and Python and he has his own Ubuntu machine.
Does anyone have any recommendations for something he could get into?
@zigg I think a fun engine anyone at any skill level can approach is GameMaker studios. Though if you want something a bit more meaty but also more suited towards a python-like code education, I suggest Godot. Godotscript is very Python like, and its visual scripting is a lot like the building block coding system of game maker, so its a bit in the middle between hard coding python or something essentially codeless like gamemaker
@mirzaba Thank you! I’ll definitely check out GameMaker when I get a chance!
@zigg youcanmakevideogames.com is a good jumping point for research.
There's a spectrum from very code-first (Love2D, XNA, pyGame) to very assets-first (Unity, Game Maker, Construct, Stencyl) engines, but the latter group would probably be more approachable for an 11-year-old as far as putting things onscreen quickly goes.
@zigg Pico-8, GMS, Stencil... Maybe not Unity yet, but the limitations of Pico-8 has its uses (and there's a very good zine on making things in Pico-8 here: https://mboffin.itch.io/gamedev-with-pico-8-issue1
@zigg I think Klik and Play is the still the best intro. Lots of fun graphics and sounds included, a very visual way of 'programming'. Very immediate and easy to play with. There's a free version called knpforschools. I run it in a VM though, though I'm pretty sure you can run Win3.x stuff in Wine.
@zigg
For python there exists pygame. Not really sure if it's suitable for a beginner but your can look into it.
@zigg steer him away from computers altogether, encourage him to design something using paper
https://godotengine.org/
https://godot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/getting_started/step_by_step/index.html
https://godot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/getting_started/step_by_step/your_first_game.html
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS9MbmO_ssyDk79j9ewONxV88fD5e_o5d
https://www.blender.org/
@zigg Godot has a very nice GUI and a simple scripting engine to go with it, you can even do visual programming - http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/getting_started/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_basics.html#doc-gdscript is very python like and http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/getting_started/scripting/visual_script/what_is_visual_scripting.html#doc-what-is-visual-script is super easy to get started with.
Al Sweigart's book is #OER (cc-by-nc-sa)
https://inventwithpython.com/inventwithpython_3rd.pdf
4th ed is free-of-charge to read online but I have yet to find a license for it.
@zigg I just started my nephew off with tic-80 and pico-8. If he’s comfortable with 2d games, with a retro vibe, those might be good.
The neat thing about those platforms is that there are plenty of existing games who’s source code is available for you to tweak. All games written in (a subset of) lua.
Alternately, I’ve read a lot of good things about building games in roblox. It’s got a lua based dev environment that looks to be pretty easy to pick up.
@ajroach42 @zigg pico-8/tic-80 are great ideas for teaching kids! Lua is awesome, and helping kids get acquainted with a command line-like interface at an early age has always seemed like a cool idea.
@Alamantus @zigg @ajroach42 I second TIC-80; wonderful project with a very friendly dev. I was just doing Game of Life on TIC-80 with my smols this morning and having a blast.
@ajroach42 @zigg I haven't found a way to run Roblox on Xubuntu, and I'd rather avoid Wine. I'm open to a VM running any Linux or BSD, if anyone knows Roblox-for-nix tricks!
@ajroach42 @zigg I read this http://roblox.wikia.com/wiki/ROBLOX_on_Linux as "has not worked on Linux since 2015, and then only in Wine." So, unlikely. I was hopeful, though! Not all tricks are documented!
@zigg Might also check out the Pygame library for Python, or look into Minecraft modding.
@zigg Java coding an Android app ist not that difficult at all
@zigg I'd like to +1 GameMaker and Godot, depending on the skill level (I know nothing about young folk, so you might just want to throw this whole toot away.)
@zigg
My oldest (12) loves to create games in Scratch! He still clings to Scratch (and has his own Ubuntu too), but I want him to look at:
* S2js http://www.s2js.com/
* Snap http://byob.berkeley.edu/
* https://www.scriptacademy.net/ (also js)
* https://love2d.org/ 2D, Lua
* maybe https://www.renpy.org/
Leveraging his love of Minecraft:
* https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft got some interest
* https://code.org/minecraft
* http://edublocks.org/ he didn't like the Pi slowness compared to his desktop
I started learning stuff from this site. It's a handy resource.
@zigg you could try wine-ing Unity. It packages for Linux but unfortunately the editor is not made compatible with linux without using Wine or similar.
Not that I am like a big authority on game creation (I have some experience) and stuff, but I don't think back-end programming is a good place to start.
@zigg since I'm coming from the music world where private instruction is a popular option, my first thought is to consider hiring someone, maybe a guru or college student who enjoys working with children, to spend 45 min- 1 hour with him every other week or so to help him accomplish his goals.
@zigg umm if he knows python stick to that. I had my kid try kturtle to start learning about programming. Lots of books for python and kids
@zigg I think pico-8 is cool