5 ms·

Been a pro gamedev for 20+ years. You have a born game designer on your hands. It is important to not assume this means they are super interested in programmin

by bentt 2y ago

Been a pro gamedev for 20+ years. You have a born game designer on your hands. It is important to not assume this means they are super interested in programming. They may be, but game design is its own thing. HN will skew you towards programming first, naturally. Check these out: - Adventure Game Studio (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/ https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/) - Twine (https://twinery.org/ https://twinery.org/) And these have more visual ways of programming which could let them express their ideas with less friction - Dreams (Playstation) - Unity (with Playmaker or Bolt visual scripting) - Godot And the other suggestions of Scratch are good, but I find Scratch to feel like a way to learn programming more than expressing game design. Lastly, explore card and tabletop games with them. It’s a whole thing!

woodrowbarlow 2y ago
this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're proud of it, maybe they'll want to learn how to implement it in software, or maybe they'll want to make some sort of physical product (game book, card deck, miniatures, etc.), or maybe they'll want to move on and design a whole new game. tabletop simulator (on steam) is an easy platform for designing tabletop games. it has lots of built-in assets, you can import your assets, it has lots of built-in concepts that are common to games (zones/hands/inventories/meeples/etc). rules-enforcement is mostly done by the players (multiplayer is supported) just like when playing games in real life, so it's great for prototyping and playtesting without coding up formal logic.
- bentt 2y ago
  oh yeah, tabletop simulator is a great idea. You want to find ways to let them manipulate existing assets easily and that’s perfect.
clbrook 2y ago
Another option for tabletop games is printing with The Game Crafter: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/ https://www.thegamecrafter.com/
snarf21 2y ago
I agree with this other advice. Do "tabletop" first. It doesn't have to be fancy, even just notecards or paper. You can iterate very quickly on the core game loop and "finding the fun". If you do want something fancier than just paper and words, a great option is printing on full page sticker paper and then attach that to chipboard (you can get it cheap online) and then just cut it out. You have a game that feels a lot more real than just notecards. There are lots of online resources for fast prototyping of card and board games. There are lots of Discords around game design and a lot of game conventions have a "prototype" area where designers showcase their games to get feedback and improve them. There are podcasts like Ludology and Building the Game to help give more theory of game design dicussions. (If you are US based, look up Unpub, Protospiel, etc...) (I design card and board games as a hobby, the industry is very friendly and loves to mentor!)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- phatskat 2y ago
  I listened to the Slay the Spire episode of a game design podcast, and when he mentioned that they were testing things with pencil and paper to “play” the game I was like “wow that’s so simple and so smart”
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    That works for slay the spire, but what about action games?
    - snarf21 2y ago
      On paper, you can test out the balance and math of all the "action" more deliberately. So taking a "fast twitch" game and pretending it is turn based for testing. Of course, you can math out the win/lose percentages and hit rates and adjust your numbers. But one of the good adages in game design is to first make the math right, and then make it fun. Players will perceive different success rates than the math bears out. (See MtG and shuffling and land draws) You may have to adjust off the perfect math to create the experience you want your players to have. It doesn't matter if your game is "fair" if no players feel and believe that and stop playing as a consequence.
ido 2y ago
GameMaker is also a good option, it even has a scratch-like visual programming language (but also a more conventional text based language).
- Difwif 2y ago
  Game Maker is what started it all for me over 20 years ago. Once I picked up the scripting language Python and Lua quickly followed. I think I owe my entire career in software to this program.
Phiwise_ 2y ago
Plus, if you are looking to teach a child interested in programming specifically, you might consider Snap/Build Your Own Blocks [0], an extension of Scratch made partially by an instructor of SICP at Berkeley to support things like anonymous functions, prototypes, and metaprogramming. It seems robust enough a child given it now could get right up to undergraduate introductory CS as the genuine article! I would have been amazed if any of the systems to enable kids to make games of my childhood (which I did get a pretty unrepresentatively bad batch of besides) had that kind of potential to them. Imagine a high schooler today reading, say, a blog post about their favorite game's scripting system for its quest designers and implementing its high level beat for beat themselves. Sure it'll run disappointingly slow but the education potential is immense. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)
danielvaughn 2y ago
Seconding the Dreams recommendation. It's incredible.
- amjoshuamichael 2y ago
  I don't think Dreams gets enough credit because it came out at the end of the PlayStation 4's life and it didn't get a lot of marketing, but it absolutely is fantastic. I'd say it's the best implementation of visual scripting I've ever seen, and that's using a traditional game controller (or two PSMove controllers) instead of a mouse/keyboard. That's not even including the modeling tools or music tools. As someone who makes games, I often hear people ask me "how do I get started?" And my first answer is always "learn C." When they look at me funny, I say, "Try Dreams on Playstation."
  - danielvaughn 2y ago
    Apparently they were working on a PC port but it was abandoned after declining sales. I really really hope someone buys the IP and finishes the port, because it would be a massive success.
nailuj 2y ago
One more suggestion are games that have powerful editors or modding tools. Starcraft, Age of Empires, Skyrim, Minecraft
- bentt 2y ago
  Yes, modding is a great suggestion. So many talented working game developers started with mods.
ramses0 2y ago
Inkle as well, it's got an easy online editor and lets you do basically choose your own adventures, kindof like a linear zork/infocom story engine (stories can branch, but usually move forward). Old school was ZZT (https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-world/?sort=rating https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-world/?s...) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set ...ZZT especially is interestingly retro with the pixel-art style, and IIRC, quite a decent programming / dialogue capabilities.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
Toddlers make up fun games all the time. Isn't programming the point? Where's Roblox? Is there a single Twine game that an 11 year old has played?
- bentt 2y ago
  The tools in Roblox are not that simple and are pretty geared towards technical people. They're cool! But in this case I think there are better ways to start.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    Isn’t that the idea though? To do something technical? I don’t know, maybe thousands of gifted kids are thriving at making fun things in Roblox Studio. They get through the grind because it’s where the friends are. Whereas a kid getting excited about Twine? Seems really lame, which is guaranteed to make a gifted kid only performatively interested.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
Eh, I wish somebody noticed when I was a kid. Lucky I got heavy into programming, which scratched somewhat a similar itch (and it's well paid). What about rpgmaker? That's the one I found when I was 12

by bentt 2y ago

woodrowbarlow 2y ago

this is great advice. let them focus on designing gameplay right now. once they've designed a core game loop and they're proud of it, maybe they'll want to learn how to implement it in software, or maybe they'll want to make some sort of physical product (game book, card deck, miniatures, etc.), or maybe they'll want to move on and design a whole new game. tabletop simulator (on steam) is an easy platform for designing tabletop games. it has lots of built-in assets, you can import your assets, it has lots of built-in concepts that are common to games (zones/hands/inventories/meeples/etc). rules-enforcement is mostly done by the players (multiplayer is supported) just like when playing games in real life, so it's great for prototyping and playtesting without coding up formal logic.

bentt 2y ago
oh yeah, tabletop simulator is a great idea. You want to find ways to let them manipulate existing assets easily and that’s perfect.

clbrook 2y ago

Another option for tabletop games is printing with The Game Crafter: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/ https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

snarf21 2y ago

I agree with this other advice. Do "tabletop" first. It doesn't have to be fancy, even just notecards or paper. You can iterate very quickly on the core game loop and "finding the fun". If you do want something fancier than just paper and words, a great option is printing on full page sticker paper and then attach that to chipboard (you can get it cheap online) and then just cut it out. You have a game that feels a lot more real than just notecards. There are lots of online resources for fast prototyping of card and board games. There are lots of Discords around game design and a lot of game conventions have a "prototype" area where designers showcase their games to get feedback and improve them. There are podcasts like Ludology and Building the Game to help give more theory of game design dicussions. (If you are US based, look up Unpub, Protospiel, etc...) (I design card and board games as a hobby, the industry is very friendly and loves to mentor!)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
phatskat 2y ago
I listened to the Slay the Spire episode of a game design podcast, and when he mentioned that they were testing things with pencil and paper to “play” the game I was like “wow that’s so simple and so smart”
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  That works for slay the spire, but what about action games?
  - snarf21 2y ago
    On paper, you can test out the balance and math of all the "action" more deliberately. So taking a "fast twitch" game and pretending it is turn based for testing. Of course, you can math out the win/lose percentages and hit rates and adjust your numbers. But one of the good adages in game design is to first make the math right, and then make it fun. Players will perceive different success rates than the math bears out. (See MtG and shuffling and land draws) You may have to adjust off the perfect math to create the experience you want your players to have. It doesn't matter if your game is "fair" if no players feel and believe that and stop playing as a consequence.

ido 2y ago

GameMaker is also a good option, it even has a scratch-like visual programming language (but also a more conventional text based language).

Difwif 2y ago
Game Maker is what started it all for me over 20 years ago. Once I picked up the scripting language Python and Lua quickly followed. I think I owe my entire career in software to this program.

Phiwise_ 2y ago

Plus, if you are looking to teach a child interested in programming specifically, you might consider Snap/Build Your Own Blocks [0], an extension of Scratch made partially by an instructor of SICP at Berkeley to support things like anonymous functions, prototypes, and metaprogramming. It seems robust enough a child given it now could get right up to undergraduate introductory CS as the genuine article! I would have been amazed if any of the systems to enable kids to make games of my childhood (which I did get a pretty unrepresentatively bad batch of besides) had that kind of potential to them. Imagine a high schooler today reading, say, a blog post about their favorite game's scripting system for its quest designers and implementing its high level beat for beat themselves. Sure it'll run disappointingly slow but the education potential is immense. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap!_(programming_language)

danielvaughn 2y ago

Seconding the Dreams recommendation. It's incredible.

amjoshuamichael 2y ago
I don't think Dreams gets enough credit because it came out at the end of the PlayStation 4's life and it didn't get a lot of marketing, but it absolutely is fantastic. I'd say it's the best implementation of visual scripting I've ever seen, and that's using a traditional game controller (or two PSMove controllers) instead of a mouse/keyboard. That's not even including the modeling tools or music tools. As someone who makes games, I often hear people ask me "how do I get started?" And my first answer is always "learn C." When they look at me funny, I say, "Try Dreams on Playstation."
- danielvaughn 2y ago
  Apparently they were working on a PC port but it was abandoned after declining sales. I really really hope someone buys the IP and finishes the port, because it would be a massive success.

nailuj 2y ago

One more suggestion are games that have powerful editors or modding tools. Starcraft, Age of Empires, Skyrim, Minecraft

bentt 2y ago
Yes, modding is a great suggestion. So many talented working game developers started with mods.

ramses0 2y ago

Inkle as well, it's got an easy online editor and lets you do basically choose your own adventures, kindof like a linear zork/infocom story engine (stories can branch, but usually move forward). Old school was ZZT (https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-world/?sort=rating https://museumofzzt.com/file/browse/detail/featured-world/?s...) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Construction_Set ...ZZT especially is interestingly retro with the pixel-art style, and IIRC, quite a decent programming / dialogue capabilities.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

Toddlers make up fun games all the time. Isn't programming the point? Where's Roblox? Is there a single Twine game that an 11 year old has played?

bentt 2y ago
The tools in Roblox are not that simple and are pretty geared towards technical people. They're cool! But in this case I think there are better ways to start.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Isn’t that the idea though? To do something technical? I don’t know, maybe thousands of gifted kids are thriving at making fun things in Roblox Studio. They get through the grind because it’s where the friends are. Whereas a kid getting excited about Twine? Seems really lame, which is guaranteed to make a gifted kid only performatively interested.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

Eh, I wish somebody noticed when I was a kid. Lucky I got heavy into programming, which scratched somewhat a similar itch (and it's well paid). What about rpgmaker? That's the one I found when I was 12