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Game Creation Software for Kids?
-Surak- asks: "I have been asked to teach a week-long class on Computer Game Design for a small group of computer literate kids, around 9-13 years old. My plan is to have them create a simple game, while exposing them to aspects of story design, artwork, animation, and simple programming. To this end, I'm looking for a 'game construction kit' that is simple enough that they can have a working game by the end of the week with some guidance. Anyone remember the 'Arcade Game Construction Kit' on the Commodore 64? Adventure Game Studio looks good, but it may be too complex. The genre is flexible, but it does need to generate a distributable Win32 binary that they can take home. Are there any Windows packages, public domain or otherwise, that can do this, especially any designed for kids?"
You should try Klik n' Play. My friend used it to make some intresting games when he was younger. And it looks like they have a version for schools that's free to use too.
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You might want to look at The Games Factory. If that doesn't suit you, check out this site which has various abandonware games for free download, including the Pinball Construction set.
You can direct them to Allegro (http://www.allegro.cc), or even pygame (http://pygame.seul.org) if they show an interest past your class. Both of these packages can be set up in Win32 (with some work), and are a great start in C/C++ and Python development. They're free, use free compilers, don't require too many additional libraries/includes, and they have excellent example programs the kids can play with/learn from. They also have support forums geared to beginners, and have very friendly followings willing to help newcomers.
SDL (http://www.libsdl.org) and Java (http://java.sun.com) are less optimal choices. SDL requires a ton of includes, and someetimes has a tricky compiler setup. Java doesn't have terribly much support for game programming, and doesn;t have a great game-support community.
Granted, they're not Klik and Play type programs, but it's useful to know about these things in case a student wants to continue their learning on their own.
Check out BlitzPlus/Blitz 3D here...
Yeah, it's a very cool program, if you want to force them all to make RPGs. I don't think the official page is maintained anymore. If anyone wants to get in contact with me, I can provide plenty of the publicly available files if you can't find them elsewhere.
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Since they're young, probably one of the BEST ways you can get them really enjoying what they're doing with you is to make sure they have lots of popular media they can stick into the games they're building. Get ahold of lots of those midis of pop songs, or create some skins for pop icons or celebrities or their favourite action heros or whatever before hand. That way, it'll be nice and interactive, and probably also give them some base to work with. That is, maybe if they're working with preexisting characters, they'll be able to write a game along preexisting plotlines and not have to worry about creating their own (since you've got limited time).
Read jack phelps dot net
Google Directory of Games Development Software is a good start. Don't miss the Parent Directory of Game Design. I've personally tried two free ones: Game Maker and Build Your Own Net Dream.
Game Maker is similar to Klik 'n' Play. It's free and you don't have to program at all. You do have to firmly grasp object oriented conditional behavior. You can also add complicated code if you get deeply into the game.
If you want to introduce game design, history is an excellent teacher. Space War, Pong, and Breakout are excellent games to mimic as teaching devices, then move on to Space Invaders (which is really just Pong Strikes Back!), Head-On (early version of Pac Man), and Asteroids.
Far and away the best software like this that I've come across (and put all my energy into over the last few weeks) is a little shareware package called Game Maker 5.
It is professional, flexible, stable, and all around a total surprise.
You can use it on a basically unlimited basis as shareware, or register it for $15 to support the project.
The link is: http://www.gamemaker.nl/
Truly I can't believe that this isn't on store shelves (probably limited marketing appeal)
I have 3...
m l
The first is Robocode which teaches programming concepts through a simple tank game. It also allows for some competition in an arena. For the amount of time you have, this would be great!
http://robocode.alphaworks.ibm.com/home/home.ht
Next is The Scrolling Game development kit.
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/
Finally, I'd look at the level construction software for Neverwinter Nights. This is a great set of tools. My kids taught themselves to use it and have made huge levels. You can go as far as you want with scripting, etc.
grimzap
grimzap
The environment provides a map editor, code editor, and single stepping debugger. You can use MS paintbrush to create new backgrounds and sprites. My goal was an environment where students could write classic arcade games in about 100 lines of code-- space invaders is provided as an example.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/morgan/gamekit/i
I wouldn't consider the project feature complete. It is written in Visual Basic and anyone seriously interested is welcome to the source.
-m
Stagecast Creator was originally Cocoa by Apple (no, not Cocoa, Cocoa), a programming tool for kids. They learned by writing games. Stagecast ported it to Java. Anyway, some friends have had their kids learn programming with Cocoa, and it seems to have been very easy for them.
Ah, here's a better explanation (thanks, Google), with a focus on game writing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)