recommend me some coding software

[robjduk]

Morning all,

I have a computing teacher who wants to teach game coding. He wanted to use godot however there was a problem with permissions and could never get the thing to run correctly so we wondered if anyone could recommend something. In a perfect world he wants to use something Python based.

Additionally I would really like something lazy to deploy. Something which comes in MSI or at least has command line install parameters. Its not beyond me to install harder packages but I'm getting near 40 and find it a chore.

 

Free is best but paid solutions are not out the question (even pricey ones)

 

Thanks all

[ShellfishClive]

Are you wanting something with a UI? Scratch and GameMaker Studio can do this for you.

 

There is also https://www.tynker.com/ however I have never used that myself but that is both Python and Javascript based.

[derf]

Why not HTML5 with Canvas?

No installs needed except for a text editor and an open standard to boot!

Depends on the age group and if they have any previous teachings.

[Arthur]

Phaser (for 2D games) or PlayCanvas (for 3D games)?

 

Phaser is a fun, free and fast 2D game framework for making HTML5 games for desktop and mobile web browsers, supporting Canvas and WebGL rendering.

 

PlayCanvas is used by studios large and small to make lightweight messenger games, online multiplayer games, extraordinary product configurators, architectural visualizations and more.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Arthur

[Ditto]

Not sure on the gaming side of things, but for Python we found https://trinket.io/ good to get things started.

[Meldrew]

PythonAnywhere?

[AlanD]

You can write games in any coding language....

And doing so can be good motivation....(possibly less so for Girls...)

Block programming, like scratch, for example teaches basic structures, variables, etc and its relatively trivial to put together a tennis game or racing car track....

And I tend to like stuff that is already in every PC (usually anyhow) like pressing ALT-F11 in any Microsoft Office program brings up the VBA programing stuff....which allows you to do stuff with office - that office hasn't provided you a button to do...or for that matter make it insert a userform and write a complete application.

And yes JavaScript is really good these days - even to do graphical stuff with canvas. And writing stuff with google apps can be interesting and rewarding too.

I often think it seems completely unnecessary to look for some abstract additional environment - when you probably have what is required on your computer all the time.

 

The problem - if its a problem - is that most trying to teach this stuff only have the most basic ideas of how to program - and often not even that. So its often a case of the blind leading the blind in many schools. Even graduates of that survive a 3 year computer science course are surprisingly and alarmingly weak at putting together any kind of useful code without careful supervision and guidance.

[Steve21]

If you're going the Python route then Pygame is a good option, just a normal module for Python that has a lot of prebuilt "gamey" stuff https://www.pygame.org lots of 2D based arcade/shooter styles etc demos on the site too - https://www.pygame.org/tags/all

 

Steve

[Norphy]

Visual Studio Code? Free from MS and supports a lot of languages.

[ass17]

Not python but Microsoft Kodu is really fun :-)

[Arthur]

In a perfect world he wants to use something Python based.

Cocos2d (Python fork)?