Game Making Software

[Typhoon]

Hello,

I have a friend who loves games and he wants to try and learn to make one.

Anyone know any good free software that he could use.

[quaxo]

Well, making a game from scratch requires programming knowledge, and quite a bit of it at that. There are options out there that have editors to make games that run on certain engines. All that is required then is a little patience and some imagination. There are far too many to list, and it would all depend on what kind of games he was interested in creating. You could Google for something like "game creation software" or something similar. There are a ton of free options out there, all depending on what kind of game he'd like to make.

[Linux711]

all depending on what kind of game he'd like to make.

Here are some good options:

If he wants to make a 3D game:

1) Unity 3D (not free, but THE BEST)
2) Irrlicht Engine (free, need to program in c)
3) Sauerbraten (good for mapping, code can be modified to make own game)
4) DarkBasic (don't know much about this)

If he wants a 2D game:

1) Flash (not free, need to program)
2) Game Maker (trial, not free)
3) Allegro (free, need to program in c)
4) Multimedia Fusion (not free, for people who are too lazy to program)
5) QBasic (free, good for classic dos games, need to program in basic)
6) AGS (if he's familiar with the classic Sierra quest games)

[BC_Programmer]

Irrlicht Engine

I think there is a .NET port if this engine so it can be used from .NET. Not sure, though. I know that IRRKlang, the sound library by the same author, works in .NET, since I'm using it (although I've since "switched" to using BASS.NET by default).

For DarkBASIC, from what I've seen of it it looks a heck of a lot more like FORTRAN or COBOL then BASIC:

XRotate Object 1, 180
Scale Sprite 1, 100
Mirror Bitmap 1
Set Text Font "Arial"
Set Light To Object Position
If Joystick Fire A() Then GoSub PlayerShoot

Not that that is necessarily a bad thing but being familiar with BASIC won't really translate since it uses a more complicated and verbose lexicon. It is certainly powerful, and great for beginners that have never programmed anything before, mostly because of that grammar.

Also omitted from that list is SDL, which can be used from nearly any language (and works cross-platform).

QBASIC is all but useless. FreeBASIC is both easier to acquire, supports the same syntax, has more modern features (checks website)... Claims to have object orientation, so maybe he finally added support for classes to the language... either way, There is no reason to ever use QBASIC (or QuickBASIC, for that matter) ever again.

[chris1999]

Hello,

I have a friend who loves games and he wants to try and learn to make one.

Anyone know any good free software that he could use.

im pretty sure my mom used fortran or c++ to make a video game D:

[JoshM]

You can make levels for Valve games using Valve Hammer Editor. Its free and doesn't require any programming, but it takes time to get good with it.