This looks pretty interesting. My friends and I are working on a game in a similar vein to this one (teaching programming through gameplay) however it is a 2D platform game. If you like this sort of stuff check the project I'm working on at www.betathegame.com .
We have done workshops with kids and have footage although we aren't releasing playable demo's just yet. We are closing in on completion. No need for donations but if you like what we're doing please share!
Yep. although my son isn't really into coding, PICO-8 was the only thing we tried where we actually made a mostly functional platform game.
He got really into defining the sprites, levels and sounds, and that took him into coding movement and enemies and different bullets for the character.
What would that position be? You realize that this is about copying the mechanics of an existing game, right?
You could maybe adapt it to learn from hand-animated examples, which would certainly make some games easier to create. But I doubt that the effort required to specify all interactions in a 3D game by hand would be much less than just coding them.
You should try doing a game jam (or, multiple!) You have an extremely short time frame, and each time you start from scratch so you learn what systems work and what doesn't in a practical way that doesn't allow for perfectionism.
I've probably implemented platformers physics about 15 times now, and have a pretty good idea of how I personally like structuring game code.
Good point, thanks. I could conjure up a few interesting stories. Also some useful hands-on (cross platform) game programming tutorials. "Learn Game Programming the Hard Way."
Games like this are the best way to teach programming. I first started by programming Counter Strike Source mods using EventScripts that let you write mods in Python. That changed my life.
Small 2D games are cool to look at and kind of fun, but nothing is better than taking a game you already love and scripting it. Far better than making a tortoise walk across the screen, it's more engrossing and rewarding and it becomes sort of a game in itself. You want to make your UZI shoot bananas? Figure out what that weird error is and you can.
That's awesome! Not sure I've ever seen such a compelling demo that started from nothing.
In general I think starting from nothing is the original sin of programming pedagogy. I think it's easier to learn by example, imitation, and extension and then learn the deeper principles once you need them.
My wish is a game that would be compelling enough to get a few app store downloads but allows for live editing of the source. Say a soccer game where you can start by changing configuration options like the ball color, then maybe you can find where goals are added in and make yours count for more, eventually basic physics like changing acceleration.
Probably not for 6 year olds, but even at the college level I'm not sure about having students start by staring at an empty editor window.
I personally like to make small video games, and I use the game as an excuse to learn some other technology by incorporating it. I've been doing this to learn Rust [0].
If you want to do something similar, I have a huge list of video game ideas you can pull from [1].
This looks great and I'll probably buy it. Well done!
I've dabbled with games in the past. I'd be interested in a course about how you structured your code, got assets created, lessons you learnt, etc.
While I could write a game I don't have time to learn how to write a game (i.e. I don't want to spend 6 years learning the lessons you learnt along the way).
And not as some clunky add-on to the side of a game...
...but like, reasonably a part of the game.
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