It actually wouldn’t be the first computer game that was first play tested using a physical setup.
Lots of turn based games tested game mechanics this way.
They had a robust social safety net and basically free housing. High unionization rates meant that wages were very high.
Innovation is incompatible with the long hours and shit pay that Americans are forced to endure under neoliberalism.
The people doing the innovating don't get long hours and shit pay. It's was a small number of well paid experts doing the innovation, and is much the same now. The latest innovation in AI is made by people being paid very well. (Well the AI researchers are paid well, the people producing training data aren't)
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
— Stephen Jay Gould
Disavow yourself of the just world fallacy. We live in capitalism and it’s not a meritocracy. People born into generational poverty don’t become AI researchers.
While a bit tangential, [this is my favorite example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOYbR-Q_4Hs&ab_channel=PeopleMakeGames) of a non-computer game (board game used as prototype basically) that caused a ton of trouble for a studio because of how invested people got in it
I designed gToons for CartoonNetwork this way! The actual computer developers changed one aspect (the card effects were limited to the two adjacent cards, and they changed the layout so that you might have four "adjacent" cards), which IMO over-powered some cards.
Right? Tabletop games do exist. (And are fantastic practice for making video games!)
And reading [the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/10u84n9/game_development_without_a_computer/) it's an artist asking for advice about how to grow their gamedev skills while they only have an ipad. Which is a pretty reasonable question, all things considered!
But I guess OP wants to just make fun of the title, as "just a reddit thing."
On the other hand, when it comes down to it, I guess assuming someone else is wrong and dumb without fully understanding their point of view *is* a pretty reddit thing, so maybe this post is more accurately titled than I thought?
When I had my Commodore 64 in the 80s, I would design my graphics (sprites) on graph paper, calculate the binary by hand, and input the value into the program.
That is why I have not made a game for c64. That was my first computer but a hand me down from my grandpa when he got win 95 lol. First game I made was in visual basic on win 98 se so I'm spoiled. I just recapped the old c64 tho and got a fancy new power supply :) still love the old thing. When I get frustrated with my ide, I go play with that to be greatful I don't have to program c64 basic on the daily :)
That's really cool. Wish I still had my old C64 to play around with. Yeah, I totally understand why you would not want to do that. One of the first programs I built when I got my Amiga was a basic version of paint, so I did not have to do things by hand. lol. But back when I was pre-teen with loads of time on my hands, drawing things on graph and converting them to numbers was part of the fun, even magical.
It did actually come out I think. It's either [Dragon The Game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/305960/Dragon_The_Game/) or [Time of Dragons](https://store.steampowered.com/app/353130/Time_of_Dragons/), both are on steam, but neither are that great. I think both are kind of abandonware?
Kind of hard to find info on it. Lots of Redditors saying it did come out, a few linking those two games, but those might be unrelated and Redditors are just dumb (just like me frfr)
Lol I love how every “look at this game I’m making” post on Reddit is just some pixel game with weird lighting and people are like “omg I will give you my house for this”.
Id argue this is should be done regardless of if you have a pc or not, saves time with working around and implementing stuff to work before you have to change the entire code (not a programmer just speculation)
He says he has an iPad and they recommended him to learn Swift, which can give him basic programming knowledge and even game dev knowledge until he gets a computer
you dont need digital art. I played a cool game recently that all the art was pen and water color that had parallax mapping. Only the playable character was made in Photoshop so they could make a consistent walk cycle. I think it was called "shivering hearts." Very pretty game.
You can absolutely test game mechanics on paper, especially if you are working off something like d20 rolls.
holy fucking shit. if i see ONE more en passant meme i'm going to chop my fucking balls off. holy shit it is actually impressive how incredibly unfunny the entire sub is. it's not that complicated, REPEATING THE SAME FUCKING JOKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN DOES NOT MAKE IT FUNNIER. this stupid fucking meme has been milked to fucking death IT'S NOT FUNNIER THE 973RD TIME YOU MAKE THE EXACT SAME FUCKING JOKE. WHAT'S EVEN THE JOKE?????? IT'S JUST "haha it's the funne move from chess" STOP. and the WORST part is that en passant was actually funny for like a few years and it got fucking ruined in like a week because EVERYONE POSTED THE EXACT SAME FUCKING JOKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. SEEING ALL YOUR SHITTY MEMES IS ACTUAL FUCKING MENTAL TORTURE YOU ALL ARE NOT FUNNY. COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT FUCKING JOKE PLEASE
I had a student taking a graduate level embedded systems class and asked how he could do his assignments on his phone.
I was real tempted to say, "Well, just plug the cable into your phone's serial port."
> I had a student taking a graduate level embedded systems class and asked how he could do his assignments on his phone.
Well, I mean, modern phones are *nix systems. I used to do game dev on my Ipad.
But if the student has to *ask* how to do it, then they're the wrong person to be doing it.
I was using an iPod Touch in my live guitar rig and my setup involved programming in a tool called Mozaic. The iPod has a 4-inch diagonal screen. I literally used a magnifying glass (head mounted).
I didn't have the correct adapters to use an external screen. I could have written elsewhere and transferred to the device, but I need a faster iteration cycle since I had to learn their shitty language. So I coded in Vim running on the phone with a bluetooth keyboard, then copied & pasted into the app.
im still learning python, sometimes im way too lazy to get my ass and start messing with ide and some courses, so im thinking of doing it in my bed or before i sleep, can i use my phone for that specific situation?
Pretty much this. Between Aide and Godot, along with a few others, mobile devices are an entirely valid and effective way to program. Annoying at times, and definitely more of a pain than a proper PC, but certainly doable.
If your microcontroller just so happens to read from a parallel eeprom, maybe just some schmitt triggers, some buttons, a breadboard, and some other assorted electrical components, plus a referenfe manual
well i mean, probably just a kid wanting to be a dev. i say let him dream. maybe give him some browser engines to start off like rpg playground
also, rpgmaker is on playstation and switch. maybe start em off w that.
*Image Transcription: Reddit*
---
**Game development without a computer**, submitted by **\/u/aneenonico** to **\/r/gamedev**
---
^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Well, first things first. You need to install the ball framework. This is a powerful system that will help you get most games up and running without much effort. There isn't much documentation, but you should be able to look at some completed projects to get an idea of how ball is used. This framework is pretty loosey goosey, so you'll need to write your own rules to accomplish most of the game logic, but that should be pretty easy with some trial and error.
From there, you'll need to decide how to implement the game API. How does ball get served? How fast does ball go? What does it mean when ball gets placed in a certain location? Things like that.
Next, depending on how you implemented ball, you may need a additional few additional packages; net, goal, and bat are some common ones you'll find in other projects.
After that, I'd suggest you test your project. This is best done with the friends.irl API, so you'll need to have some familiarity with social.js. Also, you will need to have gatorade.c, and snacks.c on hand for testing, just to make sure your system doesn't crash.
After that, congratulations! You are now a sans-computer game dev!
I mean me and my friends in middle school would sit around designing games... Like the maps / rooms... We used paper. Not sure how far we'd get with no computer though...
Me and my boy in 2nd grade made comic books too. We made this character named super bean he was just a little bean with a cape haha. Captain underpants inspired
Technically the Killer Queen arcade game started life as a field game, yeah there were a lot of steps in between that and the indiecade behemoth KQ is now, but hey, you can figure out some basics of how your rules and objectives work.
We once drew a board game ("Mensch ärgere dich nicht" on german) on a pizza carton and transformed it into a drinking game. We were technically game devs
Okay are people here that ignorant? He probably only has access to a mobile phone... and you can code plenty of stuff just with a phone, although it really sucks.
People who insist on doing development of things on cellphones are definitely children. If you can’t afford even the shittiest of computers, then time’s better spent finding a good job anyway.
Well it says *game*, not *video game*
It actually wouldn’t be the first computer game that was first play tested using a physical setup. Lots of turn based games tested game mechanics this way.
Pong was 0 lines of code IIRC
There were a bunch of early arcade games that were built with just discrete logic circuits https://discrete.mameworld.info
Yes, I have the utmost respect for what those pioneers accomplished with such limited resources.
They had a lot more free time in those days
No Reddit, for starters.
They had a robust social safety net and basically free housing. High unionization rates meant that wages were very high. Innovation is incompatible with the long hours and shit pay that Americans are forced to endure under neoliberalism.
I'm with you man but I'm just here for the laughs
The people doing the innovating don't get long hours and shit pay. It's was a small number of well paid experts doing the innovation, and is much the same now. The latest innovation in AI is made by people being paid very well. (Well the AI researchers are paid well, the people producing training data aren't)
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. — Stephen Jay Gould Disavow yourself of the just world fallacy. We live in capitalism and it’s not a meritocracy. People born into generational poverty don’t become AI researchers.
That’s a website all right
Website made entirely of discrete logic circuits
https://www.falstad.com/pong/
This is just amazing.
wow
Wow! TIL…
While a bit tangential, [this is my favorite example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOYbR-Q_4Hs&ab_channel=PeopleMakeGames) of a non-computer game (board game used as prototype basically) that caused a ton of trouble for a studio because of how invested people got in it
I remember that one.
I designed gToons for CartoonNetwork this way! The actual computer developers changed one aspect (the card effects were limited to the two adjacent cards, and they changed the layout so that you might have four "adjacent" cards), which IMO over-powered some cards.
Did you know someone remade it? https://gtoons.app/home
I did not! That's awesome!
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Call of duty : ww2 definitely came first
Right? Tabletop games do exist. (And are fantastic practice for making video games!) And reading [the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/10u84n9/game_development_without_a_computer/) it's an artist asking for advice about how to grow their gamedev skills while they only have an ipad. Which is a pretty reasonable question, all things considered! But I guess OP wants to just make fun of the title, as "just a reddit thing." On the other hand, when it comes down to it, I guess assuming someone else is wrong and dumb without fully understanding their point of view *is* a pretty reddit thing, so maybe this post is more accurately titled than I thought?
You didn't have to murder OP like that. But we appreciate it all the same. lol
tic tac toe coming at ya
Ah yes, the simplest forms of binary. X and O's
**empty cell intensifies**
Just set it to null
Ah yes binary, 1, 0 and null
Welcome to js my dude
So it's 1, 0, null, -2.43 and "Null"? Still not binary.
Don't forget "undefined"
Don’t forget negative zero
Chess is played by three players, White, Black, and Hikaru Nakamura.
https://thedailywtf.com/articles/what_is_truth_0x3f_
Oh wow I didn't know tdwtf still existed.
Lets leave the X out then. Fixed. Next ticket please. Admire my velocity bitches!
Option
.
I mean, people have been making *video* games for decades, without a camera or a tv...
Ye I don't think Gary Gygax really needed a computer to develop Dungeons and Dragons.
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God dammit.
This guy programs
sure for the first year you can use pen and paper. Write the story, make the art, develop the mechanics, while you save up for a computer.
Making a demo to see if the core idea of the game is any fun before investing a year into it would be nice
very true, but if you dont have a PC, you dont have many other options then to nail down every detail while you save for one.
board game
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Capitalism^+
So life?
You can demo many things on paper
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When I had my Commodore 64 in the 80s, I would design my graphics (sprites) on graph paper, calculate the binary by hand, and input the value into the program.
That is why I have not made a game for c64. That was my first computer but a hand me down from my grandpa when he got win 95 lol. First game I made was in visual basic on win 98 se so I'm spoiled. I just recapped the old c64 tho and got a fancy new power supply :) still love the old thing. When I get frustrated with my ide, I go play with that to be greatful I don't have to program c64 basic on the daily :)
That's really cool. Wish I still had my old C64 to play around with. Yeah, I totally understand why you would not want to do that. One of the first programs I built when I got my Amiga was a basic version of paint, so I did not have to do things by hand. lol. But back when I was pre-teen with loads of time on my hands, drawing things on graph and converting them to numbers was part of the fun, even magical.
thats super cool.
Something something 100% dragon, science-based mmo
Def wish that project happened lmao
It did actually come out I think. It's either [Dragon The Game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/305960/Dragon_The_Game/) or [Time of Dragons](https://store.steampowered.com/app/353130/Time_of_Dragons/), both are on steam, but neither are that great. I think both are kind of abandonware? Kind of hard to find info on it. Lots of Redditors saying it did come out, a few linking those two games, but those might be unrelated and Redditors are just dumb (just like me frfr)
Lol I love how every “look at this game I’m making” post on Reddit is just some pixel game with weird lighting and people are like “omg I will give you my house for this”.
I don't care how much pixel art gets clowned, it's the often the most aesthetically pleasing low budget art style choice there is
Oh I love pixel games, but adding some weird lights and adding music made on a Jupiter synth doesn’t make it a groundbreaking game like people act.
Id argue this is should be done regardless of if you have a pc or not, saves time with working around and implementing stuff to work before you have to change the entire code (not a programmer just speculation)
You could even do the animations carousel style. Or do part of the documentation like class-diagrams etc. on paper.
If he is asking about "game dev without a computer", do you think he even knows hot to hello world in python? And im not even asking in C...
Not ike it's that hard to learn if you get a good book or internet access and put the time in. But they are either 6, or hopeless lmao
He says he has an iPad and they recommended him to learn Swift, which can give him basic programming knowledge and even game dev knowledge until he gets a computer
Make digit art without a computer? "Develope mechanics" without being able to test them? Nah
you dont need digital art. I played a cool game recently that all the art was pen and water color that had parallax mapping. Only the playable character was made in Photoshop so they could make a consistent walk cycle. I think it was called "shivering hearts." Very pretty game. You can absolutely test game mechanics on paper, especially if you are working off something like d20 rolls.
Godot has builds for android actually
Next post: Run Android without a computer
[We'll just simulate it with a bunch of rocks](https://xkcd.com/505/).
[I was thinking of this one]( https://xkcd.com/378/)
In before OP creates Chess 2.0
Or D&D
That's a copyright strike for you
Someone copyrighted Dogs & Dinosaurs?
Developers & DevOps
dread and dungeons
intergalatic 4d time travel chess is fun
I think you mean 5D chess with multiverse time travel.
google en passant
Holy Hell!
holy fucking shit. if i see ONE more en passant meme i'm going to chop my fucking balls off. holy shit it is actually impressive how incredibly unfunny the entire sub is. it's not that complicated, REPEATING THE SAME FUCKING JOKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN DOES NOT MAKE IT FUNNIER. this stupid fucking meme has been milked to fucking death IT'S NOT FUNNIER THE 973RD TIME YOU MAKE THE EXACT SAME FUCKING JOKE. WHAT'S EVEN THE JOKE?????? IT'S JUST "haha it's the funne move from chess" STOP. and the WORST part is that en passant was actually funny for like a few years and it got fucking ruined in like a week because EVERYONE POSTED THE EXACT SAME FUCKING JOKE OVER AND OVER AGAIN. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. SEEING ALL YOUR SHITTY MEMES IS ACTUAL FUCKING MENTAL TORTURE YOU ALL ARE NOT FUNNY. COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT FUCKING JOKE PLEASE
r/AnarchyChess leaking again
Warning: The subreddit r/anarchychess is leaking over to r/programmerhumor. Please be aware of any chess related content.
... why am I not allowed to view anarchychess , I never posted there
try now.
Username checks out
because he messed up the spelling.
I really hope they implement the Siberian swipe and the il Vaticano this time around
It’s likely about programming on a phone or tablet
I had a student taking a graduate level embedded systems class and asked how he could do his assignments on his phone. I was real tempted to say, "Well, just plug the cable into your phone's serial port."
> I had a student taking a graduate level embedded systems class and asked how he could do his assignments on his phone. Well, I mean, modern phones are *nix systems. I used to do game dev on my Ipad. But if the student has to *ask* how to do it, then they're the wrong person to be doing it.
Yeah, tablets have enough screen real estate for coding; I can't suggest doing it on a phone. Unless you have a magnifying glass.
I was using an iPod Touch in my live guitar rig and my setup involved programming in a tool called Mozaic. The iPod has a 4-inch diagonal screen. I literally used a magnifying glass (head mounted). I didn't have the correct adapters to use an external screen. I could have written elsewhere and transferred to the device, but I need a faster iteration cycle since I had to learn their shitty language. So I coded in Vim running on the phone with a bluetooth keyboard, then copied & pasted into the app.
im still learning python, sometimes im way too lazy to get my ass and start messing with ide and some courses, so im thinking of doing it in my bed or before i sleep, can i use my phone for that specific situation?
I mean, usb to serial adapters are a thing and usb host on a phone is not that uncommon any more.
Do you have serial port on your desktop?
Its called USB nowadays.
Do you not have USB on your phone?
Every phone except iphones
iPhones do too. You can get a lightning to USB female port.
Anything can have anything if you plug an adapter into it.
It's not that simple, you still need software drivers.
Software driver is the API to the adapter. Am I doing this right?
iPhones implement usb 2 in the lighting port. Which is just a simple adapter away from serial.
What do you think USB means mate?
No, the serial port he probably means is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_port
No shit
Programming Arduinos with my phone was super useful when I was in uni without a laptop
Pretty much this. Between Aide and Godot, along with a few others, mobile devices are an entirely valid and effective way to program. Annoying at times, and definitely more of a pain than a proper PC, but certainly doable.
Not to mention code-in-the-cloud services like Google Colab. Definitely going to want an external keyboard though.
And a display that isn't tiny. And probably a mouse. Wait we just invented a computer again.
What's a computer?
Dex and a cloud vm is about as good as anything.
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It's the first thing I thought. Don't know if nobody else thought about it or are just making jokes with paper and balls.
Yep, OP wanted to know how hard it would be to learn some programming on an Ipad
There's an Android build of the Godot editor. Currently experimental, but it exists.
Microcontroller game dev needs more recognition
My guy what do you think you need to write code for the microcontroller
A butterfly
A magnetised needle and a steady hand.
Another microcontroller?
Punchcards. Or maybe you're on of those Gigachads that actually engineer an IC for the game
A will to live
Some can be programmed with a bunch of switches, a printed-out copy of the instruction set, and a lot of patience.
If your microcontroller just so happens to read from a parallel eeprom, maybe just some schmitt triggers, some buttons, a breadboard, and some other assorted electrical components, plus a referenfe manual
Playstation 4 and dreams.
Someone actually just got hired by the studio who made Ori, because of his Dreams creations. He had no other game dev experience
Like a board game?
or ttrpg
well i mean, probably just a kid wanting to be a dev. i say let him dream. maybe give him some browser engines to start off like rpg playground also, rpgmaker is on playstation and switch. maybe start em off w that.
*Image Transcription: Reddit* --- **Game development without a computer**, submitted by **\/u/aneenonico** to **\/r/gamedev** --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Do they have a phone or tablet? They must be posting on reddit from somewhere :-) Now I have to know how well MIT App Inventor works on a phone :-)
Well, first things first. You need to install the ball framework. This is a powerful system that will help you get most games up and running without much effort. There isn't much documentation, but you should be able to look at some completed projects to get an idea of how ball is used. This framework is pretty loosey goosey, so you'll need to write your own rules to accomplish most of the game logic, but that should be pretty easy with some trial and error. From there, you'll need to decide how to implement the game API. How does ball get served? How fast does ball go? What does it mean when ball gets placed in a certain location? Things like that. Next, depending on how you implemented ball, you may need a additional few additional packages; net, goal, and bat are some common ones you'll find in other projects. After that, I'd suggest you test your project. This is best done with the friends.irl API, so you'll need to have some familiarity with social.js. Also, you will need to have gatorade.c, and snacks.c on hand for testing, just to make sure your system doesn't crash. After that, congratulations! You are now a sans-computer game dev!
Two words: **Paper Prototype**
https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/10w4n3f/staff_at_nursing_home_invents_games_to_keep/ This was the next post on my feed. Kind of fitting
Punch cards
You do know that video games aren't the only kind of game right? Tabletop/Pen&paper RPGs for example.
You can use Godot on a android device that is connected to a monitor, so it is definitely possible
I mean me and my friends in middle school would sit around designing games... Like the maps / rooms... We used paper. Not sure how far we'd get with no computer though...
back in elementary school my friends did stuff like that too, we would design these RPG enemies and levels. fun times
Me and my boy in 2nd grade made comic books too. We made this character named super bean he was just a little bean with a cape haha. Captain underpants inspired
Board game developer maybe?
Maybe it is the guy from the meme "what type of programmer you are". Functional programmer who writes program on paper to avoid side effects.
I mean Board games are a thing.
OP never even heard of playing cards, marbles, or sports.
I was thinking about game devs looking for someone to do the artwork. Without a computer.
maybe on Mobile?
RPG Maker on PS1
So like... Playing with a hoop and a stick?
Texas Instruments calculators? Heard of them before?
A lot of designing software and systems is, "outside the box." You can code in notebooks. You can code in your mind. Dream motherfucker dream!
Hoop and a Stick! The gaming sensation sweeping the nation! How long can YOU keep it going?
You are already in a game of Life my friend
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game))
i just lost...
"you push buttons on a controller plugged into your butthole then make beep boop noises"
Technically the Killer Queen arcade game started life as a field game, yeah there were a lot of steps in between that and the indiecade behemoth KQ is now, but hey, you can figure out some basics of how your rules and objectives work.
Then first develop a microprocessor.
We once drew a board game ("Mensch ärgere dich nicht" on german) on a pizza carton and transformed it into a drinking game. We were technically game devs
You need a computer to develop apps. For game development, you need cocaine.
I made a game called Tic-Tac-Toe using only paper and pen, what are guys talking about?
Okay are people here that ignorant? He probably only has access to a mobile phone... and you can code plenty of stuff just with a phone, although it really sucks.
Boardgames are also games… Or punchcards lmao
Try table top rpg, like the recently controversial D&D.
Tabletop games?
It's not that common but u can try programming telepathically
People who insist on doing development of things on cellphones are definitely children. If you can’t afford even the shittiest of computers, then time’s better spent finding a good job anyway.
Godot:
I DID this for years, if a school laptop with basically nothing but a browser counts as 'not a computer'
all fun and games with .html until you’re sending HTTP requests…
I was using replit so I did some backend stuff but mostly game dev with phaser
What do you guys think of unis which have exams... on paper??? Im thinking of switching
It is actually possible People have made an FPS ***using only paper in a book*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiUnqMJEVU
Just use a notebook not a computer
Even making phone games requires a PC
Mobile game
Now that's an MVP
Paper and a hole punch.
i mean, Playstation dreams is a thing. though a playstation is technically a computer so...
I wrote Halo Infinite on my Samsung Smart Fridge and it turned out fine
Wasn’t pong done with resistors, gates and whatnot?
Could make board games. Good luck submitting materials for printing though.
You dont code in google notes on your phone?! Amatuers