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[alexandertnt]

Oh Scratch, how could I forget! I remember using that back in High School, that brings back some memories...

Hmmm, when I last used it it was a standalone program, now it runs in the browser. Which is great for deploying the program (in the sense that no deployment has to happen, you just go to the website), but creating accounts *might* be an issue.

Will give it a go for now though, thanks!

[Arx]

There is a standalone version somewhere. I know, because I was using it last year. They might have deleted it, I suppose, but I really doubt they'd do something stupid like that.

[hops]

There's also Stencyl, which kind of market itself as Scratch on steroids, but from what I've seen so far it's mostly used to make platformer.

[EnigmaticHat]

If you have access to certain universities' computers you could use Flash MX, that's how I learned when I was a kid.

Probably not a good idea in general though...  Also it isn't summer so you probably aren't doing it at a college.

[Telgin]

Flash is actually one of the first things I used to teach myself how to program games, though I don't know if I'd recommend it unless it was to a group who already knew how to program otherwise.  The way Flash's scripting works is kind of clunky and at least used to be pretty tough to debug.  From what I understand it's changed a ton since MX 2004, so maybe it's not so bad now.

[Sergius]

You'd be better off using something like Unity, even the license is quite good unless you pull off over $100k sales in a single year, anything less than that and it's free.

I have no idea how good it is to program, never used it myself, but something like 80% of current indie games are made using it.

[Telgin]

I've never used it either, but I believe I read that it's programmed with Mono, which is an implementation of C#.  There are definitely worse things to introduce someone to programming with, but especially for kids it might be a bit overwhelming.  For a university class it would probably be about right.

Does Microsoft still support and develop XNA?  I know when we had a game design class at my university they advocated but didn't require its use.  I coded a simple 2D rail shooter with it in pretty short order.  No idea how its complexity compares to Unity.

[EnigmaticHat]

From what little I've seen of unity you're going to already want to know a programming language before you try to use it.

[Squeegy]

The short of it is that you should just learn how to program instead of using "game making" software.

[Sergius]

I've never used it either, but I believe I read that it's programmed with Mono, which is an implementation of C#.  There are definitely worse things to introduce someone to programming with, but especially for kids it might be a bit overwhelming.  For a university class it would probably be about right.

Does Microsoft still support and develop XNA?  I know when we had a game design class at my university they advocated but didn't require its use.  I coded a simple 2D rail shooter with it in pretty short order.  No idea how its complexity compares to Unity.

What I've seen is that you "build" your game using the application itself, drag and drop and all that "game making" junk, levels, sprites, I dunno, and you script on top of that with your events or whatever. And Mono isn't a language, it's a compiling engine/virtual machine, it's not C#, you can use C#, UnityScript (a kind of javascript) or Boo, which is sorta like Python I guess.

[alexandertnt]

Keep in mind that in reality only a fraction of the time it takes to develop a game is spent programming, along with designing, art etc. Because of that I am trying to avoid turning this thing into a "Learn to program by making games" thing and instead make it a "Learn various aspects of game development".

That's why I like the visual programming stuff, you can visually see what you have access to (RTFM-ing is not really feasible in the ammount of time I have) and it's much more clear what is going on for those with no programming experience. It's also much more interesting than staring at a pile of text.

Flash, XNA, and Unity are probably too code heavy (especially XNA).


Out of curiosity, do we have some sort of "general game development thread" thread? One that is more focused on things like level design, gameplay mechanics, art etc over specifically programming?

[Squeegy]

Flash is actually not very code-heavy at all. I've never used it, but I know people who make Flash animations and Flash games, and they say that setting up visual interfaces is very easy and that simple games require very little code.

[miauw62]

The short of it is that you should just learn how to program instead of using "game making" software.

Unity is pretty neat though. Certainly not your run-of-the-mill "game making" software.

As for game development threads, there's a somewhat comatose RL development megathread, plenty of threads for individual games in Creative Projects, but that's pretty much it. (Now and then a game design thread pops up in OG). No real dedicated game development thread, though.

[LoSboccacc]

yeah one thing I hate is that most of the time is spent in UI development and there is no good+free solution for making good UX quickly

I mean, it is always frames and buttons, layouts and fonts, how come there is not a standard way to give a structure which you can skin afterward?

placing widget, listeners and attaching scripts is soooo annoying. XCode value binding is wonderful compared to any game oriented framework/tool

[Sergius]

Some examples of games done in Unity:

-Unturned (indie zombie killing game with blocky graphics made by one teenager)
-Shadowrun Returns (2d/3d hybrid turn based tactical RPG... ugh so many buzzwords)
-Wasteland 2 (wasteland 2)
-Tons of 2D jumper games for mobile phones

Those just from the top of my head that I thought would ring a bell around here. I'm going to give it a try, maybe it's not too bad.