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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?"
I looked at the mentioned AGS project, and it seemed very cool.
Unfortunetly the guy who wrote it seems to have been burned before, and won't open source it - for those to whom such things matter (like me - I'm anal about such things unfortuntely).
From his FAQ:
Q. Then can I have the source code, to port it myself?
A. Sorry, AGS is not open-source. There are many reasons for this which I will not go into here. The main two are:
(1) I made another application open-source in the past, and someone took it, changed the copyright and tried to release it as their own
(2) The AGS file formats are proprietary to make it harder for people to "hack" other people's games. If the source code was available, it would be easy for someone to write some sort of de-compiler for use with other peoples games.
I'm sure I remember there being opensource engines for such games - anyone know gui's for them?
But I'd recommend having a look at the livewires material. They teach writing a few simple games in Python in a short time.
As for taking it home, Greg McMillan's great Python Installer can make that happen.
And it's all open source and works on Unix/Linux as well.
Have a look at Squeak.
It's a Smalltalk virtual machine with easily programmable 2D and 3D graphics, audio support, runs on just about anything.
Squeak
Squeakland
Now wash your hands.
Not really programming, though there is some proprietary scripting involved.
Unfortunately, I can't remember the official URL, so you'd have to search on Google.
I agree with AnglerG, Allegro is a very friendly library, easily understood by children.
Another thought. Emulate a C64 and run Game Maker etc...
I wish you were MY teacher in school!
Although a little bit old, you can have a look at: http://www.div-arena.com/
obviously this isn't practical for all languages and programs these days. But it doesnt mean it has to be abandoned completely. I'm just saying that given the choice between something that requires them to type some code, and something that just requires dragging and dropping and bumping up widget coutners in a dialog box, I'll take the former any day.
Memory Lane: "More BASIC Computer Games" by David Ahl. Wonderful stuff. Eliza, Wumpus, all the classics.
Also, consider one of the multitude of "program this tank in language X" games out there. I learned C via C-Robots (Tom Poindexter). Great stuff, and the same principle applies -- you're given the scope with which to look at problem solving, rather than just syntax. Of course, that's only fun for multiplayer so maybe that's not what you want.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
It has its own scripting language (so you can teach them simple programming), also allows you to make your own tilesets etc... very good! If I wasn't lazy and the net saturated with good RPGs, I'd use it myself!. cgi?foru m=990
It can be reeeealy simpe or very complex! Not just a level editor, not a DOS screen of DJGPP.
http://www.rpgtoolkit.com/cgi-bin/acforum
go!