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Where are the 'Construction Set' Games?
"I know that most PC games today have editors where a player can create their own levels and share them but users still need the original software. Even worse, consoles, which have the larger market, don't have enough storage (except maybe for the XBox) and aren't open enough to encourage players to create their own games and share them."
C :I think I see mbishop's point. Legos are still alive and well, but I don't see as much evidence on these types of toys in today's TV commercials. It seems those commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap instead of pushing toys designed to stimulate your child's own imagination. Of course, a simple Google search may yield a result or two, but that still doesn't answer the real question. Computer-based sets, would be a nice alternative, but nothing beats the real thing where children can use their own hands to create something they can show their paernts. Where have all of the Heathkit's, the chemical experiment toys and the other types of "builder" sets gone, and are they due for a revival, soon?
In many ways, I think that the mod community is a more grown-up version of kids using these types of games to build their own creations.
The kids still have 'em. They just call 'em meth labs nowadays.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
http://leocad.org/
It was a real joy to see I could build with all the lego pieces my mother always threw away when I was a child because they weren't recognizable as legos.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
http://www.stagecast.com/
Contains an 3-D RPG Engine with toolset to create your own campaigns. Supports it's own C/C++ like scripting language, and includes a good integrated environment for developing maps, Non-Player Characters, and source code changed.
So go get creative...
Yes, this article is without merit. There are plenty of construction sets, they exist within games. Neverwinter Nights and Morrowinds are AWESOME in their capabilities to make adventures. Quake III also comes to mind-- yes, modmaking requires programming, but map making doesn't.
The reason they don't make any "stand alone construction sets" anymore? Well, for one, the name "___ Construction Set" just isn't cool enough for mainstream consumer. But the biggest reason is money. If you can make a standalone NWN game, the people you distribute it to don't have to buy the original game. Game companies don't want that. They're in business to make money.
I think the "Construction Set" aspect still exists in many games, but it's taken new form. With the rise of First Person shooters and RTS as the more popular forms of entertainment, I think that sort of thing has moved into customizing the game. It takes quite a bit of talent to build really good levels, or brand new campaigns, and also quite a bit of devotion.
I see your problem though. Those sorts of activities are very much confined to the geek. Level design and game mods take quite a bit of computer expertise, and I get the feeling you were thinking along different lines. Games like The Incredible Machine come to mind. I'd be hard pressed to give you references, but one "Construction Set" games comes to mind. If you're interested in the game of pinball, I recommend Visual Pinball. It's a complete pinball game construction program, and it works beautifully. Much to the dismay of most of the Slashdot crowd, though, it's main drive is VBScript. Very fun and easy to use, however. The programming is basic enough that I think a beginner could learn to use it very easily.
Other than that, there's lots of software out there for music creation and whatnot. It may not be presented in game form, but if you have an itch to do it, I'm sure those would serve just as well!
> ... commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap ...
.. high replay value, no need to go back to the store for a few years?
.. now he talks more!)
Which one is more profitable?
A license agnostic computer game where the value is in the interactivity
Or the uber-franchisable, horizontal-marketing-up-the-ying-yang licensed toy that does so little, you're practically forced into buying the next toy, which does a tiny bit more (now you can move his head! now you can move his foot! now he talks! buy this
This is so obvious, its probably taught verbatim in business or marketing schools.
"Old man yells at systemd"
ROBO CODE
You can learn java, and you can beat the crap out of some IBM engineer at the same time! What more do you need?!
The best thing I could think of was Hypercard for the Macintosh, it allowed games like The Manhole to be created with very little programming. Sure, it needed a significant amount of computer knowledge to create something enteretaining, but it was nothing like programming a game like Quake III in C.
My all-time favorite game construction kit was the Pinball Construction Kit. It came out in 1985, and it allowed for the creation of personalized pinball tables inside the game. The only problem is that the game required to play any pinball table you design.
Try searching google for game creation kit. It came up with a ton of results, and this one looks promising.
The future isn't what it used to be.
I am happy to say that my little sister is four and she plays with legos. She is mostly into building cars so they roll the fastest across the floor in my dad's kitchen, but like I said, she's four. I think that proof that this has stimulated her creatively because the other day she was telling me that she had designed and then her mom had helped her cut out all of these pieces to put together to make a 3D basket. It's just a basket, I know. But it seemed amazing to me that a kid so young was designing things in 2D to be put together in 3D.
I can only hope that there are still toys like that available when I have my own kids. I don't have my legos anymore (my mom sold them when I was away for a summer), but maybe I can convince her to keep hers so that the next generation has all of those neat little pieces that always seem so scarce when you really need them... like the ones that transfer the block stack from up/down to right/left. And the pulleys. Must have pulleys.
Liora
You could wire flippers, bumpers, everything with your own point system. PBCS would also let you 'paint' your selected parts any of 5± colors including 'erasing' the part. Using 'invisible' bumpers was quite entertaining.
It was also possible to adjust gravity, bounce, and friction of the ball, IIRC.
The coolest feature of all is that you could take your finished game and 'compile' it to run stand-alone! Trading pinball games was great...ah, Apple 2 memories....I also had a program for the Apple 2 called Gamemaker. It let you create simple games like 2600 Pitfall clones and the like. Never got the hang of it....
The best 'Constructon Set' in recent memory was the level editor in Crack Dot Com's sidescroller, 'Abuse'. It used a lisp driven engine to allow you to make levels easier than anything I recall at the time. Just like wiring a simple circuit. (Much like PBCS!)
What's Bill Budge doing these days?
Another thing that has been lost is that computers no longer boot into BASIC...ok, stop laughing, I'm a little bit serious here. Home computers booting into BASIC, plus hobbyist magazines (some oriented at kids) I think were a great boon to budding programmers/designers in the early 1980s. While the Web has a huge host of new opportunites, it doesn't provide the ramp up the learning curve that BASIC did...it's relatively tough to make a decent graphical game with javascript/DHTML, and other languages are even more obscure for the total newbie.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Then there's Sid Meyer's SimGolf. You can build a (non-mini) golf course, and watch the Sims play on it, but you can also play the course with your in-game avatar golf-pro. Others can save their courses and there's a big course repository including real world courses at the official site, much less other non-official ones. The golf game is not like links, but it can be somewhat challenging and makes this an interesting mix of sim and sport.
Of course, prior to SimGolf there was the Sims. Build a family and a home, and then play with them. While currently you can't easily transfer families to other people, the online version due out soon is expected to be a huge seller, allowing people to pit their constructed families against others.
Another example, outside of PC gaming, is the PS2 game Frequency. It's similar in nature to DDR, save that you only use the shoulder or right pad buttons to hit notes as they pass, but one of the features is a remix mode, where you can take any of the ingame tech/industrial/electronica songs and play around with their arrangements to some extent. Once you've created a new remix, you can save it, and by swapping cards, allow another player to attempt your new track. The same can be said for many of the eXtreme sports games (THPS3, etc) that allow you to create a skate-type park that you can save and let others play on.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Of course, I maintain that given time... really cool stuff will start to surface. If the EULA hasn't stifled people's creativity and willingness to develop in that environment.
For the builders at heart, check out MindRover by CogniToy. Given a set of parts, you build a little robotic vehicle to compete in various sporting and dueling activities. At the core of the game is modern AI and robotics theory, layered with some idealized virtual hardware to smooth over the "unfun" aspects of building a real robot. It's tons of fun to have competitions with your friends' robots!
> What ever happened to natural selection? You know, the kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own?
It's still in full effect. For instance, with an attitude like that (with the condition that you make it public to your partner or partner-to-be), you'll probably find it hard to find a decent compassionate female to procreate with. (Although not impossible, so a reply of "I do have a woman" will be met with indifference.)
Do you actually have any concept of how many more kids would die if swallowing a marble was a surefire death sentence? You probably have a close friend or two who ingested something at an early age that *could* have killed them at some point. (Would you be up to the task of finishing them off yourself, seeing as they clearly are not deserving of their lives?)
Fortunately, there's probably alot more natural selection in the sense that guys who publicly think like you do dont often find themselves heading up a family than kids dying off and thus 'cleansing' (your word, I'm sure) the gene pool.
Icidentally, if your frist sentence had even a shred of truth to it (not that products havnt been taken off the market, but any toy store still sells easy-to-swallow-tough-to-breathe toys), Lego would have been off the market long ago. Ironically, the true folks that supplied or made available these small bitty pieces to little kids, ie, the parents, usually get to try again with the gene-grafting fun of parenthood if they so choose.
As a parting shot, if you do have a kid, try and come up with a more life affirming lullabye for him/her than "Caveat Emptor" or "Dont be a stupid kid while I'm not tending over you", please? Or would (are) your kids be so smart as to never do anything that endangers themselves?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Back in the golden age of Construction set games - the 80s (I remember fondly The Quill, The Graphic Adventure Creator, HURG and The Shoot-em-up Construction Set) computer users were a different breed. Most people who bought computers first started doing funny things like "Learning BASIC" and programming the computer. That's how computers worked - and why you bought them, they were a hobbyist activity. So it's not surprising that the sort of computer owner who dabbles in BASIC (but is not a hardcore programmer) would like these sorts of creative games.
These days computers are pretty much an appliance like a fridge or TV to most people. Email arrives, they look at porn by clicking an icon, they accept whatever Mr Gates feeds them. It's not surprising that the creative aspect of gaming has all but been lost.
Recent exceptions to this rule I can remember is "RPG Maker" for the Playstation - and I think there's a sequel coming for the PS2. Neverwinter Nights also has a nice campaign builder utility.
This is the goddamn stupidest thing I have heard in weeks.
The first machines I used in school were Commodores and all of the software was set up to boot from floppy. There was a "command line," but we only used three of those commands:
LOAD *,8,1
LIST
RUN SUMMERGAMES
I have a more detailed OS experience at a cash machine.
My house had macintoshes since I was very young. I learned how to program using Pascal to program "Core Wars" bots on my Classic SE. I used to write reports in AppleWorks and my earliest online experience was a graphical CompuServe.
I didn't learn DOS until midway through high school...and didn't learn un*x until college. For years, the only commands i knew, the only commands I needed, were cd, ls, cat, pico, man and pine. Did I learn how to actually think, with all these GUIs doing shit for me and such a limited shell vocabulary? Well, I've an MA in Rhetorical Theory and a BS in Software Engineering, and they certainly didn't come in a bag of Doritos.
Any idiot can be taught to bang away commands at a shell, same as any idiot can be taught to click away at a screen. Intelligence comes from the ability to combine your banging or clicking into a useful string of actions that produces results. A shell command line may feel more elite and productive because it doesn't have any pretty picutres, but it's certainly not proof of intellect...CAD programs have been using GUIs forever and nobody claims that architects can't think.
However, to look at some of the perl code I've seen, I would make that assertation of certain sysadmins. One line simplicity, indeed. Until you try and debug it!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I found Robocode to be pretty boring, actually..
A more interesting game, IMHO was SSI's Omega.. you build the tanks in addition to simply programming them; (so there are trade-offs, where different weapons fire at different speeds, and do different damages.)
There's also much more depth, because the tanks have to find each other, instead of being placed in a simple 'arena'..
DarkBasic is a programming language and dev environment that lets users with little or no programming experience create 3D games.
The great thing about DarkBasic is that it acts as a very good introduction to both programming and 3D programming (which can be a nightmare if starting with something like DirectX).
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
The perfect fix for the PCS blues is to download Visual Pinball. I've personally used this with fantastic results and there are many incredible games available, all created by users. It's currently freeware (that self-disables with a hidden expiration date), but I expect it to jump into shareware or retail someday.
The main difference is you have to learn some basic Visual Basic Scripting.
The game let's you build not only personal levels for yourself and to share with friends, but also allows you to post your favorite personal levels into a TQ Universe where other members can play your games as well.
Additionally, TQworld has begun to open up the internal language (the forum on the TQworld site has this information beginning to appear). Since the games are stored on your hard drive in clear-text format, you can tweak them (or completely rewrite/design new ones) in your favorite editor.
Here's a bunch of recalled toys
Some of the cool ones I saw before I got bored:
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