I’m trying to direct my 11 year-old son’s interest in computer games towards something worthwhile. One idea is to get him interested in the development of the games as opposed to just playing them. I remember that the old Duke Nukem game had the ability to add your own maps, sounds, etc.
Do the current games out there allow that? Are there any that you would recommend that might be easy enough for a young boy to work with?
There are many games out there with toolsets but by far the EASIEST I’ve come accross is Neverwinter Night’s toolset.
It’s also very powerful, and even though it is the easiest I’ve ever used (and have used fo rthe past year or so) it’s still going to take some time to acquainted with it.
Check out the website: www.Neverwinternights.com
The Sims lets you modify loads of stuff in the game, both graphically and otherwise. XML based if I remember correctly, but you can start with just a graphic program and then go deeper and deeper as time goes on.
Most games these days come with/have tools to modify them with. Half-Life(a couple years old now, but still popular) has a huge number of mods, so it can’t be that difficult to add your own stuff. Battlefield 1942 has many user made mods - Desert Combat being the most notable. Also, Battlefield Vietnam just came out, and it too has tools for custom map-making, though it needs a powerful machine - a Geforce3 or Radeon 8500 are the minimum require video cards.
I agree with Kinthalis the toolset with Neverwinter Nights is fairly easy to use.
A freely available game is NetHack, which an ascii dungeon adventure game. Of course, it doesn’t have fancy graphics, so it might not initially attract his attention, but the game is actually quite difficult and addictive. The source is in C, and on a Linux system it’s fairly easy to compile and modify. A bright 11-year-old with a couple introductory C books could tweak it.
Allow me to also suggest Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. You can create your own weapons, characters, storylines, guilds… it’s really extensive. There is a strong modding community on their forums (which can be found [URL=http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php]here[/URL), and the game itself is amazing good fun. It’s one of the most open-ended games I’ve ever beaten; I’ve seen more than a few people who have amazing characters who have never even started the main quest.
But I’m getting a little carried away. I suggest that game because one can start modding it slowly and there is an active and helpful community.
Goofed on the coding for the boards. They can be found here.
I’ll go ahead and state now that so far the toolsets mentioned aren’t as close to what you want as the NWN toolset.
The reasons:
NWN’s toolset does not require you to learn a #D graphic app, which can take a long time to learn properly. Yet if you want to learn to use one, you can certainly add more 3d content if you want.
Ease of use: NWN’s beats all the toolsets mentioned so far in this department, and I’ve tried them all, except for the free text-based game creator Pleonast.
Community size and resources are unmatched except by some of the most popular shooter games out there.
The environment is very malleable by the designer in terms of goals for the players. In a shooter type game like Unreal Tournament or Battlefield 1942 the map will ever only be used for one purpose: a place to shoot the opposing team! 
NWN is an RPG so the game can be anything you want it to be.
In fact the wy I got my girlfriend into the game was by designing a short light-hearted adventure where I had her character collect herbs from the gardens of local witches in order to brew a potion that will save her character’s friend from a poisonous bite. There was really no combat at all involved, instead she had to convince the witches to allow her to collect the herbs. This involved solving riddles, solving problems, and helping clear a cellar of bats (the only but of combat I added in).
Good luck finding something for your son, I plan on doing the same in the future should I be so lucky to have one too
Another good one is Warcraft III, a real-time strategy game. The game comes with a toolkit that can be used to create cusom maps, and while it may be kind of cumbersome to make a new map from scratch, it’s not very difficult to use existing maps to create something new. Then again, I’m 34, so someone one-third my age may pick up on the tools much more easily than me.
Blizzard also makes a similar game called Starcraft, which also comes with a map editor, but that one uses relatively old technology and may not have all the bells and whistles to dazzle the hip young kids. 
D
Thanks for all those great responses. I just got my $4.95 worth. I’ll start looking into some of these games.
It appears that my son mostly plays first person shooter games (I think that’s what they’re called). Are any of the games mentioned so far in that category?
Half-Life, Battlefield 1942 &Vietnam, are all first person shooters. Other popular examples are Unreal Tournament 2004, which just came out, Quake III, and Doom3 and Half-Life 2 should be out shortly.
Might I suggest one of the RPG Maker programs? While not as slick or easy to use as the NWN Aurora set, it lets you make some pretty good 16-bit style games.
Civilization III allows modding where you can edit unit strengths and movements, the world layout, each civilization’s characteristics, all kinds of parameters. The forums at www.civfanatics.com is where the players trade all kinds of tips and advice on modding and upload their favorites mods to compare with each other.
I play a good amount of Quake, and I know you can modify the hell out of it. There’s a utility called QTradient that allows you to design levels, and lets you learn a good deal about 3D design. There are plenty of tutorials on the net that can hep get you started. Me and my roomie are casual players and we picked it up pretty quickly.
Good to hear someone taking an interest in their kid’s interest and trying to help them extract some realworld skills out of it.
Kinthalis: I just googled Pleonast and can’t find anything about it, do you know where I could download it? Sounds interesting.
RPG Maker is an awesome game creation tool. Another tool that teaches you about game creation and programming is Click-And-Create and it’s sequel Multimedia Fusion.
There is a version of RPG Maker and Fighter Maker for Playstation as well.
So what’s wrong with Nukem? I still have a shortcut to Build.exe on my Win98 desktop. It’s much better for 3-D modeling as you can create multiple levels on top of each other very quickly. I’ve still got a map of my apartment from college with aliens in the bathroom.
MacBrickout (or WinBrickout) allows for building new levels.
In the same vein as the Civilization games, you could go with Age of Empires II or Age of Mythology, both of which have expansion packs with new civilizations and Map Editors so you can create your own games. Neither is terribly violent, the violence is a consequence of economic power and tribal warfare. In other words, if you neglect your economy you ain’t gonna win, and even with a vibrant economy that’s no guarantee that you won’t be sacked anyway. I love those games.
On a slightly different note, one game (not on computer, but PS2) that involves creativity into the actual gameplay is Magic Pengel. It’s a dueling monster game, but the kicker is that you draw your own monster. The computer will take your 2d drawing and render it in 3d. It will allow you to add movable parts - heads, arms, legs, wings, and so on. You can spend hours drawing and manipulating, adding decorations and so on. The system is remarkably perceptive - draw a “wiggle” bit (there are “wiggle” “hard” and “soft” bits for miscellaneous body parts) on the back and you might get a tail attack. Make big, beefy arms and it’ll have different attacks from smaller, thin ones. Draw a mouth on the head and you’ll get a bite attack. It’s really quite neat – you basically duel to get additional colors and access to new body parts, and you can sell colors for more brushes and so on.
It’s quite neat - depending on how you draw legs, for example, you could get human-like movement, or change the joints around and it could be horse-like (one of my monster has goat legs for a satyrish look), or insect/spider-like. It’d be great for a kid interested in art and drawing.