Hello friends.

My 12 y.o. son is very interested in computers and games like most boys in his age. But his interest is deeper than just gaming and he has asked if I can teach him programming.

So I was wondering if anyone knows a good development framework or simple game engine suitable for kids. I've been considering Flash and Unity but I'm thinking it would be easier for him to start with a 4GL language like Python. Can anybody recomend any frameworks to create simple games and programs with Python ,Ruby or similar?

What about something like http://www.appgamekit.com? You can code in c++ or basic, I think basic would be suitable.

 

The only thing is, you may have to learn the software and concepts beforehand.

Thanks Jack, it looks like a good option

A lot of schools in the UK Teach scratch as an entry level programming language, it's more of a graphical programming language but I think it helps understand how variables, loops functions etc work.

 

https://scratch.mit.edu/

 

I also think the raspberry pi comes with it pre loaded.

A lot of schools in the UK Teach scratch as an entry level programming language, it's more of a graphical programming language but I think it helps understand how variables, loops functions etc work.

 

https://scratch.mit.edu/

 

I also think the raspberry pi comes with it pre loaded.

Thanks Richard. That is a nice project but I think he is ready to start learning a real scripting/programming language. He is allready used to write commandlines in a CLI from Minecraft servers etc. But as you say Scratch could maybe be a good introduction to the concepts of programming.

Hello friends.

My 12 y.o. son is very interested in computers and games like most boys in his age. But his interest is deeper than just gaming and he has asked if I can teach him programming.

So I was wondering if anyone knows a good development framework or simple game engine suitable for kids. I've been considering Flash and Unity but I'm thinking it would be easier for him to start with a 4GL language like Python. Can anybody recomend any frameworks to create simple games and programs with Python ,Ruby or similar?

 

I would try Java it opens a good path to android game development. To build say a simple text based game is fairly simple in Java or even a console text based game in C++ would be simple enough for him to grasp. That's where I started a few years a go to get into game development. C++ also has a game development library called Allegro and java has a game dev library called libgdx. But before he even considers games he really should learn the core concepts of programming in his lang of choice. Varibales,loops,functions , basic OOP concepts etc..

Edited September 16, 201511 yr by webdesigner93

 

I would try Java it opens a good path to android game development. To build say a simple text based game is fairly simple in Java or even a console text based game in C++ would be simple enough for him to grasp. That's where I started a few years a go to get into game development. C++ also has a game development library called Allegro and java has a game dev library called libgdx. But before he even considers games he really should learn the core concepts of programming in his lang of choice. Varibales,loops,functions , basic OOP concepts etc..

Thanks for your suggestions I'm very determined that it should be a enjoyable experience for him so even though it might be most educational to learn the theory first I'm thinking of a more visual and playfull approach, at least to start with. Here in DK the government has just reformed the school system so the kids are in school 7 hours every day so he has enough theory and learning to do as it is. I really think he needs a to be able to create some visual results without to much theory.

After researching the options I think we will try to give http://www.monkey-x.com/ a go.

Edited September 17, 201511 yr by Nillervision

school 7 hours every day

 

Please tell me that doesn't include the weekend....!

 

Please tell me that doesn't include the weekend....!

Fortunately not the weekends

I'm biased towatds JavaScript, but it's very beginner friendly as in you don't need to install and IDE or software to execute it, he can take away what he's learnt and try it out on any machine with a browser.

 

I think it's also pretty forgiving to errors, which for professionals causes some issues, but I beleive it does help beginners to build rudimentartry stuff.

 

 

Of course there's the benefit when we does want to learn programming in more depth the language allows for functional programming which is becoming an increasingly important thing to learn in software development.

 

As for making it fun.. codeschool's classes are quite fun and playful.

 

You also know the language so he can come to you for help.

Edited September 17, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

Hmm i'm not to sure but Python is the start of GCSE 'Computing' in secondary schools in the UK. My son is 14 and has just started but he has been playing with IDLE for a few months before hand, wouldn't hurt to check which languages are common at GCSE level as if your son chooses this paths then he'll breeze it with an A+

Syntax wise, I think Ruby is pretty hard to beat for getting younger people into programming, there's a lot of syntactic sugar, and very few errors in the language.

def yourFunctionName()
end

(1..10).each do |i|
    print i
end

arrayName.each do |i|
    print i
end

Python's syntax is very similar. I remember having a Twitter convo with someone who teaches programming, and they said they opted for Python because you HAVE to indent your code properly for it to work. A lot of the kids were chucking JS and Ruby on a single line.

 

 

^Agree with Jack and BrowseBugs. Thats why I was looking for a Python game engine. And I did find a something called pygame. But unlike Monkey X the documentation looks very confusing.

The syntax in Monkey X is very intuitive just like Python/Ruby and the documentation is very clear and well presented.

My biggest concern is that I have no experience with the language myself. Apparently it is a object-oriented dialect of BASIC specially designed for game development.

 

EDIT:

BTW the world of game engines is a jungle there are so many options. I found this overview to be very helpfull so it thought I would post it here.

http://www.slant.co/topics/341/~what-are-the-best-2d-game-engines

Edited September 17, 201511 yr by Nillervision

Thanks for your suggestions I'm very determined that it should be a enjoyable experience for him so even though it might be most educational to learn the theory first I'm thinking of a more visual and playfull approach, at least to start with. Here in DK the government has just reformed the school system so the kids are in school 7 hours every day so he has enough theory and learning to do as it is. I really think he needs a to be able to create some visual results without to much theory.

After researching the options I think we will try to give http://www.monkey-x.com/ a go.

May consider this then https://www.yoyogames.com/studio gamemaker has a drag and drop approach to creating games but if you do wanna do actual coding also it has its own built in programming language called GML. and documentation to go a long with it. Also has a free version for you to test it before buying the full professional version is $149 i believe and the master collection version is 799 which comes with a lot of gaming art and assets i think. Oh the 799 version also comes with Modules for developing for android and also for developing for ps4 etc.. Btw when I meant theory I mean he has to understand the basics of coding no one can just jump in. You gotta know what variables are, what types of data they can contain etc..Same with functions and so on you just have to know this stuff in any programming language

Edited September 17, 201511 yr by webdesigner93

May consider this then https://www.yoyogames.com/studio gamemaker has a drag and drop approach to creating games but if you do wanna do actual coding also it has its own built in programming language called GML. and documentation to go a long with it. Also has a free version for you to test it before buying the full professional version is $149 i believe and the master collection version is 799 which comes with a lot of gaming art and assets i think. Oh the 799 version also comes with Modules for developing for android and also for developing for ps4 etc.. Btw when I meant theory I mean he has to understand the basics of coding no one can just jump in. You gotta know what variables are, what types of data they can contain etc..Same with functions and so on you just have to know this stuff in any programming language

Thanks I consider giving the free version a try. I agree that you cannot start to code without learning the basics but the good thing about the game frameworks is that they have build in classes and methods for physics, gravity, particle systems and all the other good stuff. That means that even as a beginner you can get some creative results just by creating some instances and tweak the properties. The important thing is to encourage his curiosity. If he is curious enough then the desire to learn to create his own functions will come by itself

Thanks I consider giving the free version a try. I agree that you cannot start to code without learning the basics but the good thing about the game frameworks is that they have build in classes and methods for physics, gravity, particle systems and all the other good stuff. That means that even as a beginner you can get some creative results just by creating some instances and tweak the properties. The important thing is to encourage his curiosity. If he is curious enough then the desire to learn to create his own functions will come by itself

I agree I use to use gamemaker when it was cheap the entire studio is fairly new stuff. I assume they are trying to follow the same path as Android Studio by google.