Teaching Kids to Make Games?

FreakerSFX asks: "My son has shown an avid interest in video games like most kids his age. What's different now is that he insists that he wants to learn how to build his own game. He's 9 and fairly gifted from a mathematics and computer standpoint and certainly capable of learning basic programming. What tools/books are recommended for a neophyte computer game programmer?" I remember one of my first exposures to computer languages was Logo, which was a language that seems perfectly suited to young children. There is a Windows version available here that seems like it would be perfect for the development of simple games, especially for youngsters. What languages, and language resources, are you aware of that might be suitable for youngsters with an interest in creating games, and learning programming?

Comments

BYOND

[Van Halen]

Disclaimer: I'm partial because I'm involved in this project. Take that for what it's worth, but I really do believe in it.

You might take a look at BYOND (Build Your Own Net Dream). It has a simple tile-based graphics engine, an object oriented language that is easy to learn, and automatic networking so you don't have to do any extra work to get multiplayer games. And it's completely free to download and use.

We've had a number of kids around the junior high age get involved and create their own games using BYOND. For most of them, it's their first introduction to real programming, and serves as a great springboard for getting into more advanced languages like C++ and Java. In fact, the success in that age group has almost become a problem -- the community is swarming with young adolescents and we adults feel like a minority there sometimes. We're even thinking of pushing it as an educational tool somewhere down the line...

Browse around at some of the games listed on the games site to get an idea of the system's capabilities. You won't be making first person shooters, but it could be just right for someone your son's age. Puzzle games and RPG/adventure style games do particularly well in BYOND. Once you've downloaded the client (Downloads link, obviously), you can even connect to any games that are currently online. Just beware the ones in the Unpublished section - they may or may not be up to snuff, and may be hosted by immature 13 year olds looking to be rude.

Then take a look at the programming guide and jump in to see if it will work for you. I'm not sure if 9 years old is too young for this, but your son sounds very smart, so he may pick it up just fine. Good luck!

Flash or game level editors.

[larry bagina]

Pick up starcraft or NWN or some other game that allows you to build your own levels. They usually have event triggers and a mini scripting language, so you can focus on how that logic works and not have to deal with artwork and music.

You could also take a look at Macromedia Flash. They have a usable scripting language and you can draw or import graphics and sounds from elsewhere.

Squeak, squeak!

[MountainLogic]

Consider the Squeak environment. It's an open, highly-portable Smalltalk-80 implementation. It is really friendly place for kids to get started and smalltalk is a good language for kids to start with.

Re:basic computer programming

[monopole]

I too learned a great deal of programming from "100 BASIC Computer Games", and it took many years to unlearn the bad practices. While the code was facinating 20 years ago, at that point BASIC was a viable language and we worked with 1 MHz 16KB machines. Frankly, the majority of the games were hideous even back then. When he sees the structure and gets the logical flow of that completely unstructured spagetti code he will renounce programming for life!
I strongly belive that teaching children BASIC as a first language should be classified as "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", please use a modern language such as python or java

Learn Java or buy a C=64

[John Harrison]

I taught myself to program the Commodore 64 when I was 8 using the manual that came with it. My younger brother and I would spend hours making games and little demos in Basic. I didn't know at the time what a demo was though.

A few years later my dad got us a copy of Kids and the C=64 but the games in that didn't seem as fun as the ones we were making, which were more graphical.

Learning by making games is the way to go. Kids can learn some algebra concepts by learning the simple graphics libraries and learning to do simple animations.

A few years ago a 12 year old sent me an email and asked if I would help him make a video game. He had seen one of my others games on the web and wanted to learn. I thought it was cool that he dared to ask, so I took him up on it. We decided to code in Java since it is freely available and you can put your work up on a website for others to see. The result is at http://www.angelfire.com/games4/anirak/. I did most of the programming and he did the design of the game and the graphics. We went over the code using instant messenger he understood it and would modify it to try out different things. It was a lot of fun for him.

After that I started writing a pacman type tutorial on the same site, but only recently have I made any progress on it. Unfortunately the stuff I have done recently is pretty complex. It is probably easier to stick to shot-em-ups that don't involve complex boards or AI when using the game as a learning tool for children.

If you want to use any of the code on those sites for educational purposes feel free to do so.

Re:Assembly.

[laird]

I used to teach kids programming (at the Computer Ed summer camps in Boston) and I had kids programming in all sorts of crazy languages. I think that it's wonderful what kids can achieve when they're excited about learning.

A few random pleasant memories:
- I was teaching a little girl to program in C. She was pretty good, given that we were using pretty primal tools (I think it was Turbo C on my Osborne Executive). The best part was that she was so tiny that she had to reach _way_ up to hold my hand when we crossed the street that ran through the camp. That just blew my mind -- one minute this brilliant kid was coding a sort routine in C, and the next she was a timid little girl holding my hand crossing the street.
- I had a whole gang of kids using the Lisp built into the BBC Micro (Acorn?). We had great fun writing an adventure game with a simple parser, so that kids could move around a simple network of rooms, pick stuff up and move it around and drop it. Some of the older kids implemented locking and unlocking doors. Pretty good for a two week, one hour a day course.
- A bunch of the older kids learned 6502 assembler on the Apple ][, using a simple assembler and the ROM debugger. Unlike the x86's, the 6502 is so simple to program (very clean design) that by the end of the class some of the kids were reading the binary straight rather than disassembling it. We wrote killer video games -- they had snakes running around the screen, gobbling "apples" and growing longer, until you hit a wall and the game ended. That was two weeks at 2 hours a day, so it was only for the most dedicated little geeks.
- Programming Robot Wars -- that was a very simple assembly language that controlled simulated robots. They loved coding their robots and seeing whose robot won. The modern robot simulators are superior in every way (e.g. alphaworks' Robocode, but Robot Wars was nice and simple and fun.
- Logo, of course. It's an amazing language. People usually think of it as a simple language for teaching, and it's great for that, but it's actually nearly identical to Lisp, so you can do all of the cool recursion, etc., in Logo. The usual stages of the day were Logo for little kids, then BASIC, then Pascal for the advanced students. I found that kids that went straight from Logo to Pascal did 100% better than the kids who were taught BASIC -- the BASIC kids had so many stupid ideals drilled into them that they were almost incapable of programming. But straight from Logo to Pascal was easy -- though the kids did complain about having to wait for things to compile. :-)
- Logo turtles -- the ones that were little robots that ran around on the floor, with a pen and an optical sensor. Those were fun...

Man, that was fun. I've got to get back into teaching.

Re:LogoMotion and CodeRally

[mark99]

Err, that would be LogoMation

http://www.magicsquare.com/LM2/

and CodeRally is at:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/coderally

BTW, he mastered LogoMation quickly and loved the colored patterns he could product.

All these nerds want the kid to end up like us?

[Glonoinha]

Lets see here - he is already gifted in math and computers, just like most of us (are / were at that age). Lets assume the kid has just a touch of autism (which is good for computer guys) and already knows his way around a keyboard and a development environment.

Programming isn't about syntax, and it isn't about variable scope or recursion or data structures or loops or any of that crap - it is about expressing, simulating, or recreating real world ideas in a digital format. The biggest problem most programs have isn't that the programmer didn't use the correct syntax of some computer language - it is that he didn't understand the business problems or real world ideas that he was attempting to address digitally in the first place, or he wasn't able to bridge the gap between the real world and the digital recreation of those ideas.

He wants to program computer games, teach him project lifecycle development :
1. Imagine
2. Define
3. Architect
4. Develop
5. Deliver

The imagine phase doesn't happen on a computer, it happens in your brain. Add a box of crayons and some paper, have him sketch out a storyboard to help him envision the flow of the game. The difference between good usable software and crap that nobody likes happens right here.

The define phase doesn't happen in a programming language, it happens in English in Word or OO - or possibly even verbally, have him define it to you so you can help him shape it. Define all the different parts of the program, what all he is going to do. The difference between bloatware and good focused software happens right here.

Architect phase happens with Legos or Crayons - or a whiteboard with colored (easy erase) markers. Could be simple, but doesn't have to be. The difference between web sites that can / cannot handle a slashdotting happens here.

Develop - now he starts coding. Look at what he has designed, how he architected and THEN pick a platform, language. If he wants to code a stock market game then Logo isn't your language. If he wants to make a first person shooter then GW-Basic isn't going to cut it, and ANSI C probably isn't either. Tip here : pick a language that you know so when he needs help you can help him. If he got the first three right, this one pretty much has to succeed.

Deliver - could be deploying it to your ISP if it is a web based game, could be burning it to a CD if it isn't.

Software development doesn't start with 'what language do I want to use?' It starts with 'what EXACTLY do I want to accomplish?' If you fire up VB.NET in an IDE and plunk him down at the keyboard while his goal is still a simple 'make a game' then the poor kid is fuxored. That works if all you want to do is teach him syntax and bad programming habits. If you want him to be good - then show him how the development process starts not with his hands on a keyboard, but with a box of crayons or a whiteboard.