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Wikipedia says 2006, the same year that Garry's Mod was released, another "video game that lets you make video games". There are plenty of other examples too.

Wikipedia says 2006, the same year that Garry's Mod was released, another "video game that lets you make video games". There are plenty of other examples too. I'm not sure why this author treats it like a new, revolutionary concept. The problem with these games is they just end up being a weird middle ground between development tools and games. The "gameplay" is driven purely by the player's creative drive, which results in a somewhat niche audience. The toolset also usually ends up being more accessable than normal development tools, but also much more limiting. The article doesn't make it clear what is actually special about this game. It just reads like a fluff piece.

city41 7y ago
The limited nature can also make them appealing. A lot of the charm in Mario Maker 2 is the clever things people come up with within the restrictions. The really enthusiastic creators _really_ learn how the editor and game engine works, for example this document goes into detail about how to take advantage of a quirk of the engine to pull off elaborate constructs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlBSyS8WcW4S9NIHG0lGjWkNnISDtfeFhQRSCjnUplA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlBSyS8WcW4S9NIHG0lGjWkN...
- a_t48 7y ago
  Was wondering if this was going to be SALTI. We must hang out in the same discord. ;)
wlesieutre 7y ago
StarCraft's map editor was another big one in the late 90's
- glouwbug 7y ago
  Don't forget WarCraft 3. It spawned Tower Defense and DOTA
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    StarCraft 1 had Tower Defense maps as well. Much more cobbled together than what you could do in WC3, but impressive given the limitations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuNWZXN6RI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuNWZXN6RI
bigtunacan 7y ago
Roblox was pretty interesting in that it has this built in game editor that is very accessible, but is also highly extensible through Lua so the players/builders can ramp up their skills over time. Add to that it's marketplace. Many users will never using the building tools and just play games made by other players. Not entirely unique, I was doing Unreal mods decades ago, but the way it is all presented and the varying levels of accessibility are still compelling.
paavohtl 7y ago
Garry's Mod (as a game development "platform") essentially boils down to a Lua interpreter bolted to the Source Engine, with access to assets from Valve's games. If you want to make a new game(mode) in Garry's Mod, you still have to write code, design levels and possibly create models, textures and sounds in separate somewhat hard to use programs. That's very different from Dreams, where you can create everything within the same program with a unified set of pretty accessible tools and a very fast iteration cycle.
simion314 7y ago
so this game contains an impressive audio/music tools , nice sculpting tools, logic widgets. like I helped my 13 years old son rotate an object in space by connecting some velocity vectors, sin wave widgets (there is no way to input polynomials or trigonometric functions that we found, so you have a sign wave and you change it's shape to look like what you need ). widgets to record data(aka variables) event like things. Then it has sharing. My son played the other games from this team Little Big Planet, he is not into programming (I tried to teach him basic stuff but code syntax is too abstract and error prone) where this kind of games encourage experimenting ... it is not something for developers to create games so is not a Unity/Unreal competitor
- ngcc_hk 7y ago
  Wonder whether microbit with weatherbit may help. It is quite interesting to have done physical (even if just barometer but better with the weather station part) to see how things interact. I found the block language and (non mit phone) part interesting as well. Not expensive give a try.

city41 7y ago

The limited nature can also make them appealing. A lot of the charm in Mario Maker 2 is the clever things people come up with within the restrictions. The really enthusiastic creators _really_ learn how the editor and game engine works, for example this document goes into detail about how to take advantage of a quirk of the engine to pull off elaborate constructs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlBSyS8WcW4S9NIHG0lGjWkNnISDtfeFhQRSCjnUplA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlBSyS8WcW4S9NIHG0lGjWkN...

a_t48 7y ago
Was wondering if this was going to be SALTI. We must hang out in the same discord. ;)

wlesieutre 7y ago

StarCraft's map editor was another big one in the late 90's

glouwbug 7y ago
Don't forget WarCraft 3. It spawned Tower Defense and DOTA
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  StarCraft 1 had Tower Defense maps as well. Much more cobbled together than what you could do in WC3, but impressive given the limitations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuNWZXN6RI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuNWZXN6RI

bigtunacan 7y ago

Roblox was pretty interesting in that it has this built in game editor that is very accessible, but is also highly extensible through Lua so the players/builders can ramp up their skills over time. Add to that it's marketplace. Many users will never using the building tools and just play games made by other players. Not entirely unique, I was doing Unreal mods decades ago, but the way it is all presented and the varying levels of accessibility are still compelling.

paavohtl 7y ago

Garry's Mod (as a game development "platform") essentially boils down to a Lua interpreter bolted to the Source Engine, with access to assets from Valve's games. If you want to make a new game(mode) in Garry's Mod, you still have to write code, design levels and possibly create models, textures and sounds in separate somewhat hard to use programs. That's very different from Dreams, where you can create everything within the same program with a unified set of pretty accessible tools and a very fast iteration cycle.

simion314 7y ago

so this game contains an impressive audio/music tools , nice sculpting tools, logic widgets. like I helped my 13 years old son rotate an object in space by connecting some velocity vectors, sin wave widgets (there is no way to input polynomials or trigonometric functions that we found, so you have a sign wave and you change it's shape to look like what you need ). widgets to record data(aka variables) event like things. Then it has sharing. My son played the other games from this team Little Big Planet, he is not into programming (I tried to teach him basic stuff but code syntax is too abstract and error prone) where this kind of games encourage experimenting ... it is not something for developers to create games so is not a Unity/Unreal competitor

ngcc_hk 7y ago
Wonder whether microbit with weatherbit may help. It is quite interesting to have done physical (even if just barometer but better with the weather station part) to see how things interact. I found the block language and (non mit phone) part interesting as well. Not expensive give a try.