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Scratch is "games for kids." They are very prescriptive and have guides - you know, lesson plans - for everything they can teach. Either it supports Steam Deck
by doctorpangloss 3y ago
Scratch is "games for kids." They are very prescriptive and have guides - you know, lesson plans - for everything they can teach. Either it supports Steam Deck or it doesn't.
If they're 14+ Unity is realistic and is the same thing the pros use.
I haven't tried Unreal Engine for Fortnite but if they play it, it is probably the best option.
Minecraft, Bloons and Terraria modding is also pretty good.
You can give them a GPT4 sub and it seems to do a good job answering basic computing questions if this is going to be their first time e.g. installing a professional tool.
- taeric 3y agoAgain, I know a lot of these tools. And I'm willing to get my kid a unity account. I'm not seeing a solid guide for them, at the moment. Which is a little surprising, as I do agree all of the parts are there. They are already making scratch games. Would be amazingly fun for them to run a game on the deck just like any other game. Not in a browser, which is how most of those games are executed.
- capableweb 3y agoI'm not sure what the guide would really be about? Take Unity, export as a Linux standalone game, transfer to the Steam Deck and run it, literally double-click on the executable and it'll run just like on a Linux computer. I'm guessing the lack of guides for this specific thing is because it's trivial to do.
- taeric 3y agoThe guide would be a very prescriptive path to give kids. I could also dream of a path to live coding on the deck. Would be great to have a debugger hooked up for developers.
- freeone3000 3y agoDock the deck and hook up a USB mouse and keyboard. It’ll run Unity dev studio on the deck.
- taeric 3y agoAny risks with letting the kids install these directly on the Deck? My preference would be to only let them load the games there, but it is a very soft preference.
- freeone3000 3y agoNo more than on any other computer? It’s a computer. Treat it like one.
- taeric 3y agoThat... doesn't give me too much confidence, then. I have a habit of wiping my computers and rebuilding from scratch every year or so. I don't want that habit with the deck. :(
- freeone3000 3y agoshrug your games are on the cloud, your saves are on the cloud even. If you keep good backups of your non-Steam stuff, all you lose is an afternoon with a flash drive and the SteamOS ISO.
- rawbot 3y agoUnity for 14+ kids is not realistic. GameMaker Studio would be a simpler alternative.