Uppdaterad: 2005-09-18
Top-50 lista i kategorin "editor-construction-set" på mobygames:
Även i spel som Sims och SimCity som är en slags bygglådor är byggelementen och deras beteenden fördefinierade.
Ett problem är att det är svårt att programmera. Det finns många program för att skapa bilder och ljud, men att skapa beteenden kräver någon form av programmering.
Men programmering är svårt att lära sig...
Visuell programmering med bilder är ett sätt att göra programmering enklare.
Generella bygglådor:
Artiklar om spel för skapande och lärande:
Pinball Construction Set:
Utdrag ur intervju på: www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/BUDGE.HTM
What inspired you to write a pinball simulation?
I was working at Apple in 1981, and there was a pinball craze going on among the engineers there. Everyone was interested in playing pinball. So I decided to do a pinball game in hi-res. I saw an opportunity to do a game that hadn't been done and at the same time would be interesting to program, since there were graphics and physics problems that would have to be solved.
What was the trickiest part of writing "Raster Blaster"?
The collision detection was kind of a nightmare, because no matter what I tried the ball would sometimes stick to a wall and freeze or slide right through. I made a scan-line table; for each scan line on the screen I entered a list of wall locations, together with the slope of the wall at that point. To collision detect the ball with the game board, I used the ball y-coordinate to index into the table and the x-coordinate to check against all the walls at that y. It's a bit more complicated than this, because the ball can rest against a wall as it rolls--for a nearly horizontal wall--and because there are some physics that need to be modeled--the ball slides and spins, which causes it to hug curved walls.
What led you from "Raster Blaster" to "Pinball Construction Set"?
I was exposed to GUI's at Apple, and I had the pinball simulation from "Raster Blaster." I saw that it would be a small step to do a construction set. This was the kind of program I liked, since there was no game to write. But it was a lot of work, since I had to implement file saving, a mini sound editor and a mini paint program.
How well did "Pinball Construction Set" do commercially?
I think that over all formats it eventually sold over 300,000 copies.
Back in the mid-eighties, you were talking about a "Construction Set Construction Set." Where did that line of thinking lead?
I tried to design such a program in the years after "Pinball Construction Set." I discovered that it's tremendously difficult to design something that has the power of a programming language and the approachability and ease of use of a "Pinball Construction Set" or "SimCity." I think the construction set construction set is kind of a doomed concept. Construction sets are an exciting category, and I wish there were more of them. It's not easy to design them.
Have you used "Pinball Construction Set" recently? What do you think of it now?
No, I haven't used it in years. I guess I've had enough of pinball. I'm a terrible pinball player, by the way. I'm proud of "Pinball Construction Set," since it contains a lot of really good programming. It would still be a challenge to program something like it on a modern platform.
"Adventure Construction Set (ACS) is a program used to construct Ultima-type games, written by graphic adventure game pioneer Stuart Smith and published in 1985 by Electronic Arts."
"The program concept was inspired by the groundbreaking Pinball Construction Set (PCS) that had come out in 1983. It provided a graphical editor for the construction of maps, placement of creatures, etc, then let the designer use those to create a standalone game that can be shared with friends. The resulting game was a top-down view similar to Ultima-type games. The ACS came with a complete predesigned game (comparable to other games then on the market), Rivers of Light, and a compendium of sample adventures to show off the design program's capability."
"The vision was to build a game where the user-created content was just as important as the content provided by the game creators. Somehow we needed to get a significant percentage of our users creating custom content."
"Neverwinter Nights certainly wasn't the first game to try this. Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set released by Electronic Arts in 1987 was the first commercial attempt at this. This was a complete RPG construction set. You had the ability to edit maps, created custom graphics, edit creatures and items and it even came with a pre-made mini adventure. The biggest problem with this product was that once you built an adventure you only had your limited circle of friends to share with. If you were lucky, you had a modem and had access to a bulletin board system where you could download a handful of files."
"We knew that almost the entire user-created content for other games was created by a fraction of a percent of the user base. This presented a real problem. What we really wanted was a role-playing game creation toolset that 'even your grandma could use.'"
"Since creation of 3D artwork would be beyond the skills of practically the entire user base, Neverwinter Nights needed to include an art set that was as complete as possible."
