What scares you from learning computer programming

I know your question is aimed at non-programmers BUT :)

Programming is NOT complex or a fine art. Programming doesn't take genius level intelligence or a vast knowledge of mathematics. Its a landscape for problem solving. Any game designer is ALREADY a good (or even GREAT!) programmer they just haven't had the chance to apply themselves. (Its true!)

Programming is just like game design, it takes time to really build up your skill-set but to know the basics and find your way around a basic program (HELLO WORLD!) takes about 5-10 minutes in ANY language.

I cant convince anyone that something they think is boring isn't. I would like to point out, however, that if you can't code, you don't actually know if its boring or not :)

If your a game designer, you have both a logical and at least reasonably mathematical mind. Most programming involves some addition, some subtraction and MAYBE some multiplication or division....maybe.

You can code in Pascal on a Texas instruments calculator, your potato of a computer is just fine as long as the keyboard works.

“Im allergic to computers” lol...like actually :)

I can direct you to LOADS of material that is targeted at EVERYONE for learning programming! From basics to the most complicated thing you can imagine, someone wrote an easily digestible and reasonably succinct book about it.

I happen to love Java, if you have any questions I would be more than happy to get you moving in the right direction :)

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The engine interface should be designed for non-programmers.

Otherwise you have at best the equivalent of my old left click for origin then right click for destination to set vector (auto adjust to 6 allowed directions) vs select a directional arrow for a direction.

If you are building the engine, you get to build the interface.

I think you are missing a perspective. It's all isomorphic. Scratch is not a game engine, it is a visual representaion of a full language; it is code. It insulates users from syntax and the type of troubleshooting that has people give up when a missing semi-colon reports a non-sensical error twelve lines from the error. Look up Scratch at the MIT site, try it out.

If you want to build a good tool that gets traction and attracts people typically drawn to the lighter graphical game builders, don't just wrap a language and worry about teaching people Java. The challenging code for ai, pathing, etc. is the value you'd bring to the table by encapsulating it and exposing only the fiddly bits through a streamlined language interface.

You may also find projects similar to yours using Lua or such if you research the tools used inhouse at large development companies. It's a problem solved because level developers and designers need to spend their time focused on gameplay rather than debugging. But a similar toool for public consumption, seems like a good idea.

p.s. I suppose you know of Gamasutra?

http://www.castles-of-britain.com/mmfexamples-g.htm

Nivram's site has been instrumental in showing me how to do complex or arcane things in the games I've made. All the examples on his site can be downloaded and opened in the Clickteam Fusion SDK (System Development Kit) for use and learning.

Problem with visual programming is that as soon as you go beyond simple toys it becomes extremely painful and slow compared to typing in code as text. The screenshot above illustrates it quite well. Just consider that every little box there has to be dragged-and-dropped, so instead of just typing "if" (two keys) you need to find and drag the if-box to where it should be. Even using a very bad text editor is a faster way to work.

That said I have spent some hours playing with Scratch with my kids and they loved it for that time, but they quickly lost interest because of how fiddly it becomes when you want to do something more advanced and have to drag around dozens of boxes.

Luckily there are some compromises between drag-and-drop and something heavy like Java. Python is a very popular introductory language these days for instance, and for good reason. For games you can have a look at the scripting-language built into the free game engine Godot (that I have written about here before I think?). Godot is also gaining a new visual editor that looks a lot like Scratch in the next version for anyone that is really into that, so a turn-based-game-engine built in Godot could allow new programmers to start with dragging around boxes if they want to, and then move on to using the text-based scripts. I think some other game engines also offer both possibilities.

Or you could just start from something that already exists and does almost everything you want to. VASSAL for instance is open source, written in Java, and already has what is required to make turn-based games to be played online or solitaire. It lacks AI-code but already has the framework for making game-specific custom Java-classes, so you could make AI in VASSAL if you really wanted to. If you start from scratch, especially if not using a game engine, it will take many man-years to approach the stuff that VASSAL already has. But the problem would be that game-developers would still have to use Java unless you also embed some interpreter for a lighter language into VASSAL.

That's because you've never seen FLOW code. As an Integration Specialist, I've worked for over 15 years with a graphic language called FLOW. It's used on a server which hosts "webservices". There are two (2) types of services you can "code": FLOW or JAVA.

Needless to say, FLOW is used by an Integration Platform which costs in the Millions of dollars to run and operate. But large Fortune 1,000 companies use this platform to tie together transactions for various pieces of software they use to operate their business.

FLOW is graphical. Here take a look:

It uses the concept of a PIPELINE where all data is stored and accumulated. You can transform data, call other services, do complex mappings, even call other systems like a database or even SAP.

What you see in this sample is SQL Result records are being looped over to do some transformational mapping. In this case it is take a date and formatting in to some specific format and then re-mapping the result back into the SQL Result record.

Note: It can do much more with other systems also. But this is a case-by-case basis since "Adapters" are available for a whole gamut of sub-systems to call and interact with.

Note #2: FLOW code is extremely powerful and rather simple to use once you become familiar with it. It also ties-in with Business Processes which are Graphical Representation of transactions that span multiple systems which call either FLOW or JAVA services "behind-the-scenes"...

Yea, my former Fortune 500 employer uses Flow, very good at what it does. Lead times for UI changes forced us away from webMethods for UI.

The question here is what subservient language could Larienna use to attract (or not scare away) users to the proposed tool. Whatever it is, something has to interpret it. I largely worry that designers would avoid a system wth Java baked in and that getting it running would be surprisngly more effort expensive than pre-coded logic blocks or a textual interaction more like Nandeck.

Unity 3D/2D. You have to learn C# but it's similar to Java and C++ (so they say...) And then you can code you classes and objects right into the engine. I am just guessing at how the "engine" works. Never used it...

But the "engine" is supposed to be VERY powerful too.

GUIs are always the freaken problem. But Unity seems to have taken care of that aspect... Not sure how - because they say you can "code" everything within the "framework/engine".

There are monetary restrictions - I don't like those. Like In-App purchases, you need a "solution" or Ad monetization is another "solution"...

So I'm thinking not everything comes with the "basic Unity engine" and tools...

Would need someone with more of a Game Developer background. I gave up game programming way back in early 2000 after the Dot-Com bubble burst...

Note: Plus only allows 50 users at a time. And Pro only allows 200 users at a time. What if you need support for 1,000 concurrent gamers??? Probably some secret contract negotiation... 200 hardly qualifies for worldly gaming platform.

The idea was that you could DECLARE a "struct" with all of the "dynamic" data that could be used by the "engine" which would translate the "dynamic" data into a runnable application.

Sort of a way to pre-declare objects that the Main function would then be use to "RUN" the application.

I get this is what @Larienna is trying to design/build.

And you could hard-code a variable name like "game_data" and the C "Header" (.h) would declare the file and then the compiler would just MERGE the two (source and headers) and produce an executable file.

My guess you would want something like that... right?!

Programming a GUI in java couldn't be easier. In fact, if you go check out JavaFx you'll see that a complete GUI could be completed in literally minutes with extensible code auto-magically generated for everything you place using the GUI construction tools.

But for real though, its point and click :)

The problem with a database is many people will not know how to support it on a device like a cellular. A serialized file, that something easy to know both the complete size and only one file. So I think this part of the design is flawed. Do you actually want people to install MySQL on their cellular phones and manage a database? Not a good idea... IMHO.

Listing an interpreter that allows you to perform certain operations is one thing... But how does it know how to INTERACT with objects in your game's "universe"??? You need to pre-design artifacts that will serve as stubs with logic that can be injected.

If you Command = Move Fleet, your "Fleet" object is going to require a linked list of commands that can be performed (like "Move Fleet").

But then you have another problem... What IS "Move Fleet"??? What actions does it do -- how does it interact with the rest of the scene?

The rest of the assets is not easy either. You have to link image files, all kinds of things like image masks for GIFs or JPGs... Mess with all the transparency... And then you need a way to inject "behaviors".

What I mean by this is "If you click on < Button1 >, < Screen1 > should appear at position (100, 100);" All of that is going to take a TREMENDOUS amount of effort in designing.

I know you are thinking "small victories" ... but this is a HUGE undertaking. Why do you think that Unity exists??? Because it's supposed to have tools that allow you to develop your game.

I personally can't picture a SIMPLE engine that does all of this. I can picture your compromise of a "sample" which does hardly anything qualifying ... But to actually design the tools that create all the objects and the corresponding actions, etc. Will be a real hard project.

At least that's what I think... IMHO.

Best of luck(?!) with this endeavor.

This reminds me that at some point in time, I wanted to design a Nintendo DS game (mobile console). Now while we have touch screen on cellulars - before only the Nintendo DS had a tactile screen.

And so I found DS Game Maker (not Game Maker - which is a PC based game development system)...

ASIDE: If you look into "Game Maker" it is designed for 2D games or games with sprites like in all those "Secret of Mana" RPG-genre games.

Back to where I was... So this 15 year old developed a game making "studio" which allowed game designers to work on rooms and create DS Games. Which is freaken awesome - in its own right.

I still own my DS - even if they are not making games for it... I still kinda like the small two-screen mobile unit. I wish that at some point with some homebrew technology I could create my own Nintendo DS Game.

Just something I'd like to do (if its even possible now...)

Cheers.