Ask HN: Looking for a software to code a game with my 8yo kid

5 points by xgbi 6y ago ↗ HN

Hi,

We’re confined and my 8yo girl has started designing a video game on paper, centered around horses and riders.

She's asking me if we could actually program that and have a real thing to show.

Since we’re stuck for the moment, i’d like to give it a shot.

Do you guys know if there is software out there that has a basic structure in which we could start coding? Something woth a bit of asset mgmt, siund and so on..?

Ideally open source but I can spare a few bucks

8 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 32.9 ms ] thread

h2odragon 6y ago ↗

https://godotengine.org/

I've heard good things about it, but never used it. When I get around to the project that needs it, I plan to.

tkdc926 6y ago ↗

https://scratch.mit.edu/

muzani 6y ago ↗

Construct is a little outdated but still good. Using events instead of code. It took half an hour to make a little race car game with my 5 year old, and she started tweaking things like designing the cars and how the race behaves. There's collision detection, etc, built in.

textread 6y ago ↗

PICO8 might suit your needs if it is a simple game where the focus is on teaching.

daly 6y ago ↗

I made a game for Android. Unfortunately the tooling needed is too hard to explain. But it might help pass the time.

http://daly.axiom-developer.org/apps/MahLetters-release.apk

amerkhalid 6y ago ↗

Not exactly what you are looking for but I have heard good things about Dreams on PS4 (https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dreams-ps4/). I have bought it but haven't really had a chance to try it yet.

It may not teach programming but might be good enough to learn about basics of logic, design, assets management, music, sound, etc.

trilinearnz 6y ago ↗

GameMaker Studio might be worth a look. It's $39, but there's a 30-day trial as well. From what I can tell, it's a simpler, more user-friendly alternative to the likes of Unity. Also, it's from the creator of Lemmings (although he's since moved on).

https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

bananicorn 6y ago ↗

Have a look at love2d[0] - (or Löve, as they prefer it to be called) It's a lua-scriptable game framework, where you can at least see results fairly quickly. All you need is a text editor and the lua executable. It's only thought for 2d games, but it's got an integrated physics engine (Box2d) and a bunch of libraries to help with all kinds of things that might come up.

And the community was absolutely lovely last time I checked :)

[0]love2d.org/