Hi,<p>We’re confined and my 8yo girl has started designing a video game on paper, centered around horses and riders.<p>She's asking me if we could actually program that and have a real thing to show.<p>Since we’re stuck for the moment, i’d like to give it a shot.<p>Do you guys know if there is software out there that has a basic structure in which we could start coding? Something woth a bit of asset mgmt, siund and so on..?<p>Ideally open source but I can spare a few bucks
Have a look at love2d[0] - (or Löve, as they prefer it to be called)
It's a lua-scriptable game framework, where you can at least see results fairly quickly. All you need is a text editor and the lua executable.
It's only thought for 2d games, but it's got an integrated physics engine (Box2d) and a bunch of libraries to help with all kinds of things that might come up.<p>And the community was absolutely lovely last time I checked :)<p>[0]love2d.org/
Not exactly what you are looking for but I have heard good things about Dreams on PS4 (<a href="https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dreams-ps4/" rel="nofollow">https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dreams-ps4/</a>). I have bought it but haven't really had a chance to try it yet.<p>It may not teach programming but might be good enough to learn about basics of logic, design, assets management, music, sound, etc.
GameMaker Studio might be worth a look. It's $39, but there's a 30-day trial as well. From what I can tell, it's a simpler, more user-friendly alternative to the likes of Unity. Also, it's from the creator of Lemmings (although he's since moved on).<p><a href="https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker" rel="nofollow">https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker</a>
I made a game for Android. Unfortunately the tooling needed is too hard to explain. But it might help pass the time.<p><a href="http://daly.axiom-developer.org/apps/MahLetters-release.apk" rel="nofollow">http://daly.axiom-developer.org/apps/MahLetters-release.apk</a>
Construct is a little outdated but still good. Using events instead of code. It took half an hour to make a little race car game with my 5 year old, and she started tweaking things like designing the cars and how the race behaves. There's collision detection, etc, built in.
<a href="https://godotengine.org/" rel="nofollow">https://godotengine.org/</a><p>I've heard good things about it, but never used it. When I get around to the project that needs it, I plan to.