
Ask HN: 10 year old girl with creative stop motion art wants to program a game - julianpye
At my son&#x27;s birthday party today, a friend&#x27;s daughter said to me &#x27;you know how to program games and apps. I have some ideas and I want to program a game&#x27;. She showed me some really wicked stop-motion video she created with hand-drawn graphics (sharks hunting sharks underwater). I asked about her primary goal - it is mobile phones (1), tablets (2), PC(3), not consoles. Her dad would set up a Linux PC for her, though she can use her mom&#x27;s Windows PC, too.<p>Any people with experience here - what would be the easiest way for her to start?
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dragonbonheur
Commercial with free versions: Game maker, Multimedia Fusion, Adventure Maker,
Engine001.

Free: Tululoo Game maker (outputs to HTML5), Game Editor, Wintermute engine,
Adventure Game Studio.

Programming languages: Browser Basic (Outputs to Html5), MonkeyX (desktop and
HTML5, paid for other platform targets), BlitzBasic, BlitzMax, FreeBasic,
QB64, Gideros mobile.

[http://www.tululoo.com](http://www.tululoo.com)

[http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/](http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/)

[http://fbide.freebasic.net/download](http://fbide.freebasic.net/download)

[http://www.qb64.net](http://www.qb64.net)

[http://www.blitzbasic.com](http://www.blitzbasic.com)

[http://www.monkey-x.com](http://www.monkey-x.com)

[http://giderosmobile.com](http://giderosmobile.com)

Other game creation resources:

[http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html](http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html)

[http://freegameslist.weebly.com/game-creation-
tools.html](http://freegameslist.weebly.com/game-creation-tools.html)

A really good sprite editor:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixelaria/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixelaria/)

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charlieegan3
Perhaps something web based like this?
[https://ceilfire.com/editor](https://ceilfire.com/editor)

At the end of the day she's going to need to learn some basic programming,
Scratch is the default recommendation but I like to recommend Ruby Warrior:
[https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior#/](https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior#/) I
think a 10 year old would get that.

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detaro
Maybe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_\(programming_language\)),
although I'm not sure if there is a phone/tablet version?

~~~
julianpye
I think she is into the output. 15 years ago I would have said Macromedia
Director. I don't know what the equivalent would be nowadays.

~~~
charlieegan3
If she does have access to a tablet
[http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/](http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/) is worth
checking out too. (though `distribution' isn't a thing)

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megacity
Something like rpgmaker maybe?:
[https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/](https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/)

