

Craftstud.io - A Game to Make Games (now in beta) - elisee
http://craftstud.io/?hnbeta

======
elisee
CraftStudio is my real-time multiplayer "game to make games". I built it out
of my own frustration with existing game-making tools and a desire to let
everyone (gamers, most importantly) make their own games. Minecraft was an
obvious inspiration to its blocky, pixelarty nature.

Here's the full announcement for the Beta with an overview of the changes:
[http://sparklinlabs.com/2013/04/craftstudio-beta-is-
released...](http://sparklinlabs.com/2013/04/craftstudio-beta-is-released/)

Among other things, I redesigned the whole interface, added a physics engine
(BulletXNA) and build a Web player (using Three.js and Lua.js) to allow
playing CraftStudio games right in in the browser:
<http://store.craftstud.io/games>

If you have any questions, technical or otherwise, I'll gladly answer them.

~~~
jvrossb
Very (pleasantly) surprised to see a full French localization. Would love to
hear whether it was worth it, wondering if I should translate my startup
materials. Anyhow, félicitations!

~~~
tripzilch
> Very (pleasantly) surprised to see a full French localization.

I looked around for translations, and couldn't find anything. What other
languages are available?

Great to hear the author built this with translation/localization in mind!
It's simply not optional if kids are in the target audience. Fortunately it
also means that imperfect or incomplete translations are better than none!
children don't mind the occasional spelling or style error.

Barrier to _exploration_ is what it's all about. It's scary exploring a new
user interface in a language you don't understand (great example is the
stereotypical "japanese hi-tech toilet" scene in a sitcom). Even a few not-
quite-right word-for-word translations builds confidence as to what a button
or command _probably_ does, and also what it most probably will _not_ do (say,
exit without saving :P).

~~~
elisee
CraftStudio itself has well-maintained French, German and English
translations. There are stubs or partial translations for Spanish, Polish,
Portugese, Russian and Dutch.

If anyone feels like helping out, you can fork the translation repository at
<http://bitbucket.org/sparklinlabs/craftstudio-i18n> (and
<http://bitbucket.org/sparklinlabs/craftstud.io-i18n> for the website).

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kgogolek
That's an awesome idea. I remember how Klik & Play
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klik>) pushed me towards software development,
when I was a kid. Projects like this really stimulate the imagination and have
a power to inspire children to get into IT. Big kudos :)

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davidwparker
Very cool!

Ludum Dare starts tonight (<http://ludumdare.com>). You may want to throw a
note their direction and you may get some interested users.

~~~
elisee
Thanks for the pointer, CraftStudio is already in the Ludum Deals page
actually! [http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/24/ludum-deals-for-
ld...](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/24/ludum-deals-for-ld26/)

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WA
I think I've read about it here on HN months ago. The current version looks
very decent from the video. I'll surely will check it out. You've my full
respect for pulling this off.

One question though: Why does it use an installer on OSX that requires me to
enter my admin password?

~~~
elisee
Thanks :). I had to build an installer to check that you have Mono installed
by running a "which mono" command and displays an error/info message
otherwise. I could provide a separate download that doesn't but it's more work
and my hands are already more than full so for now, I'm afraid that'll have to
do :)

~~~
WA
Thanks for the quick reply. It's fine, I just wondered, since most "games"
don't ask for these permissions, only annoying things like Adobe Flash wants
it ;)

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IEatShortPeople
Are you guys interested in teaching kids how to code/make games? Your visual
method for scripting looks very similar to scratch
(<http://scratch.mit.edu/>). Although I haven't used your program, it seems
like it would make a natural stepping stone once kids have done everything
they can in scratch.

<CSB> I taught an extracurricular class on game making in scratch to
elementary school kids for four years. Every year, there were one or two kids
that seemed to have mastered scratch and were being held back by the program's
limitations. I wish I had had your program so that I could have given them
something more challenging.</CSB>

~~~
elisee
Yup, teaching kids (and adults alike :)) is one of my motivation for
CraftStudio. Scratch was a great advance back in the day (and their visual
scripting system was definitely an inspiration for CraftStudio's own) but the
Scratch platform is severly limited and I definitely believe CraftStudio would
be a good upgrade for a lot of children (as an upgrade path from Minecraft
too, since it shares some similarities). I know kids aged 10 to 15 are
building actual little games with CraftStudio, so I'm definitely hoping to see
that aspect of it grow more :)

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Scaevolus
This is very impressive!

Letting people mix a newbie-friendly visual programming language and Lua is a
great idea.

You should consider enabling mipmapping -- it would make distant objects stop
flickering as much, and usually improves performance as well.

~~~
elisee
Thank! Mipmapping's been on my mind for a while, haven't gotten around to it
because XNA doesn't easily support generating mipmaps at runtime (most games
would do it in the XNA content pipeline preprocessor but CraftStudio textures
can be edited while they're displayed) so I'd have to find a lib or build
something myself. Definitely will get to it at some point though :)

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asselinpaul
<http://www.polycode.org/> also uses Lua and is Open Source.

Different options but I think I'll be a really good platform (binaries are due
to release really soon, you can build the code today though)

~~~
ddorian43
or you can find builds in the forums from users

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ParadisoShlee
I was one of the backers and it's a real joy to see the project grow strength
to strength.

~~~
elisee
Thanks for your support back then! (<http://indiegogo.com/CraftStudio> for
anyone who might want to see the old crowfunding page from last year.)

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jere
Is there a name for the 3D art style shown in the screens? It seems just like
pixel art with small palettes applied to low polygon models. But I really like
it!

~~~
elisee
Some call it boxy, others call it low-poly or "Minecraft-like". No generic
name that I know of.

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elktea
I just started using NuclearWinter for my own game, thank you for that by the
way!

~~~
elisee
My pleasure, glad to hear that. Send a screenshot my way at @elisee sometimes?
:)

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felipebueno
This is looks awesome. Already downloaded the program and forked the
repository on Bitbucket to help translating it to brasilian portuguese (pt-
BR). Congrats and keep up the great work! =)

~~~
elisee
Thank you so much! :)

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qwertyboy
Looks very cool, but seems to require both wine AND mono :(

~~~
elisee
Nope, no Wine dependency, just Mono. The Linux package is very young so it has
some bugs still, I'm still figuring it out.

EDIT: Missing (unlisted in the .deb metadata for now) dependencies include: \-
libmono-system-windows-forms4.0-cil \- libmono-system-core4.0-cil \- libSDL-
mixer1.2debian

I'll update the package ASAP.

~~~
rufugee
Is there somewhere you'd like us to report Linux issues? As it stands, the
model creation is unusable, because when clicking the center mouse button, it
spins very rapidly. The alternative (alt+left click) is the "grab window"
shortcut in X, so that won't work either.

~~~
elisee
Yup, I'll fix this one ASAP. You can report other bugs at
<http://bitbucket.org/sparklinlabs/craftstudio> \- thanks a lot!

~~~
rufugee
Awesome...thanks. Went ahead and bought a copy in anticipation of the fix ;-)

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nollidge
This has me nostalgic for Klik and Play, though, even factoring in
advancements in graphics, this looks to be a lot more powerful.

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NicoJuicy
Looked at it, amazing.

Great job, perhaps you're project will get me into game-creation ;-)

Good luck anyhow!

~~~
elisee
Thanks, glad you like it :)

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senthilnayagam
looks amazing, this can inspire kids to make and play games and the side
effect they learn programming

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n9com
Very cool - this will get a lot of kids (and adults) into creating great
little games! Kudos.

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ivanca
This is one of those few times when the word "awesome" doesn't do justice, I
just bought the "extra love" licence for €100... you deserve that and much
more.

~~~
elisee
Wow, thank you big time, much appreciated! :)

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Skoofoo
This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

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ms123
Congratulation, it looks really awesome.

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camus
looks great !

