[casual_games] games that teach programming

[Jeff Murray]

Hi Dean (nice to see you online again - haven't seen you around much since the Director days!),

I am teaching my son (9 yr old) how to make games with Stencyl http://www.stencyl.com/. It's free, it makes great Flash-based games and it's a 'non-programming' game engine.. of course, the principles of game logic are there which means you get a gentle introduction to variables and conditions etc. whilst seeing results quickly on the screen and without the mess of needing to know how to code. I'm hoping that once he groks the basics of what variables, conditions and game logic are, we can eventually graduate to real coding. So far he's doing great and he's slowly bringing his crazy ideas to life through it!

If you're looking for actual programming, For simplicity, you could go for something like Blitz Basic or Dark Basic. Basic is always a great place to start and you can get results pretty quickly with those two engines. The downside is that unless your guys are going to stick to a Basic-based engine, they kind of lack much in the way of relevance when it comes to more 'modern' programming - outside of logic problem solving, of course.

If you want to get a little more advanced, download Unity3d free, grab one of the tutorials from their websites and get one of their tutorials going - the 3d platform game tutorial is a good place to start and it's REALLY rewarding when you see a 3d platform game come to life at the end of it :)

Cheers!
Jeff.




On 2011-08-05, at 10:59 AM, Dean Utian wrote:


> Hi all,

> 

> I generally stay in the background, reading interesting topics but remain in the shadows.

>  

> I'm teaching a games course and am looking for some online games that teach programming oor at least illustrate some of the basics of programming/scripting. Anyone know of some good ones? I used a ball game to introduce the topic this week. Next week, want the students to explore the subject deepre. they are still very much beginners.

>  

> Thanks.

>  

> Dean

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Jeff Murray
Founder, PsychicParrot Games

twitter @psychicparrot







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