My 9 year old programs first game! Not 7800.

[tep392]

I'm a proud Papa. My daughter took a game programming class last week and this is what she produced. The robots move back and forth and the MLP's at the bottom can be moved and shoot from their horns. There's not much too it but I'm impressed that she created her own graphics (except for robot) and knows terms like script and sprite. It's a great start.

 

[+Gemintronic]

Where be the download? Was this made in Scratch? Do tell!

 

UPDATE: I personally find this reassuring. Most kids that never grew up with BASIC can't even CONTEMPLATE the fact that you can make games yourself.

[tep392]

Yes, she used scratch. I had never heard of it before but it looks like a great way to teach game/programming concepts to children. She's a total techie and was very excited when she learned a game programming class was available at the park district. In art class this year they had an assignment to draw a picture of their future job. She drew a computer lab and she was a computer scientist wearing lab coat.

 

I don't have the game file with me at the moment. I'll post it later if you are interested.

[+Trebor]

Very cool...Congrats!

Thanks for sharing that with us Perry...

Looking forward to perhaps a full commercial retail release game, where a "Little Perry" had a hand in it, someday.

[MAC-42]

Perry, this is fantastic. I've been trying to interest my elder daughter in learning to program--she's almost 8. She's vaguely interested but doesn't ever really settle into it. Has the mind for it but not the focus. Maybe your daughter's accomplishment will kindle her interest. That and the ponies, eh? . Great stuff!

Edited July 9, 2014 by MAC-42

[tep392]

Here's the file for my daughters game. It doesn't do a lot but the class was only a few hours a day for four days. And here's the Scratch link to run it.

 

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tip_bar=getStarted

 

I'll have to sit down with her when I have some time and see it we can make it a little more complete.

 

M.L.P. endless game.zip

[Cybearg]

I wish I could have done that when I was 9...

 

Be sure to send it to Equestria Daily.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Cybearg

[tep392]

The tools we have today are pretty cool. When I was in high school, I was trying to create a Missile Command clone in BASIC on my 400. I had found a machine language routine in one of the magazines of the day that generate the explosion effect. It ran in the vertical blank and I would just make a single call with the x,y coordinates to initiate an explosion. I got pretty far along but never finished it. It would have been very cool to have something like Scratch to work in back then.

[BalloonFighter]

Congrats on your daughter's game! I remember when there was Scratch on almost all the middle school computers back when I was in 8th Grade. However, there was no class or elective that put the software to use and I never had the time to teach myself, so it was pretty much useless there. I've been interested in just throwing together a little game for fun, so maybe i should check Scratch out again, since I can barely write commands in BASIC (growing up on GUI's can do that to you.)

[simbalion]

Definitely a cool concept.

[+Cafeman]

Like Father, Like Daughter. But 9 years old, DANG! Can she help me with Adventure II XE ?