In case you want to just motivate the teens by having game done in trivial time and work, you may waste their time with game maker.
If education is the goal, than pick open source engine with active comunity, what would be the Ogre , if Irrlicht is active, consider it too.
They may get hooked very much after first tool or modified demo still.
In case you want to just motivate the teens by having game done in trivial time and work, you may waste their time with game maker.
If education is the goal, than pick open source engine with active comunity, what would be the Ogre , if Irrlicht is active, consider it too.
They may get hooked very much after first tool or modified demo still.
Game Maker isn't 3D though. Well it can play 3D games, but it wouldn't be that great. Irrlicht looks nice, I'll check it out. But for now, PlayCanvas looks like the most promising thing.
Thank you to everybody who answered.
Whatever you choose, like Unreal or Unity, given that they are so young I would create a base project than will form the foundation for them to add their models and other content. For the more adventurous/skilled participants you can encourage them to enhance features of the base that you have prepared to make the overall game feel more like their own.
You certainly do not want them to start from a blank sheet - I'm guessing you want it to be a fun challenge.
I think the general argument in favour of UE4 Is pretty well founded. It's a good engine, and the Blueprints system seems to be meshing well with non-programmers.
I would encourage investing some initial time in familiarising the participants with the fundamentals of programming (in this case, visual programming) in order to enabe them to embrace the mindset that is required to problem-solve with programming tools.
In the interests of being open, there is also the Blender Game Engine. It has a some-what restrictive visual programming tool called "Logic Bricks". It has a quasi-nodal interface, with the restriction that there are three columns for sensors, controllers and actuators, and each may only trigger left to right. Essentially it's a source - evaluation - action system.
It is possible to run Python as a controller if more advanced evaluation is required (or use an Expression controller which allows basic boolean operators and property (attribute) comparisons).
The biggest benefit of the engine is that it is embedded inside of Blender, a 3D modelling, animation, rendering, simulation, compositing ... program, which means it is very quick to import models, textures and other materials into the game, and no code nor export pipeline is required.
I think the general argument in favour of UE4 Is pretty well founded. It's a good engine, and the Blueprints system seems to be meshing well with non-programmers.
I would encourage investing some initial time in familiarising the participants with the fundamentals of programming (in this case, visual programming) in order to enabe them to embrace the mindset that is required to problem-solve with programming tools.
In the interests of being open, there is also the Blender Game Engine. It has a some-what restrictive visual programming tool called "Logic Bricks". It has a quasi-nodal interface, with the restriction that there are three columns for sensors, controllers and actuators, and each may only trigger left to right. Essentially it's a source - evaluation - action system.
It is possible to run Python as a controller if more advanced evaluation is required (or use an Expression controller which allows basic boolean operators and property (attribute) comparisons).
The biggest benefit of the engine is that it is embedded inside of Blender, a 3D modelling, animation, rendering, simulation, compositing ... program, which means it is very quick to import models, textures and other materials into the game, and no code nor export pipeline is required.
Thank you for your answer, but UE4 is too big to fit on the school computers. I would agree that it would be a good engine otherwise.
This project was done with Blender, but the interface is not that great, so that's why I wanted an alternative. Everything can be done in th engine, but there are so many buttons and options that it is harder for someone to jump straight in.
