my daughter is into video games and would like to try to build a game. what type of software is required? tia ed
How old is your daughter? If she's in her teens, I would say get her into coding. There is no specific software for it. Games are made with a few different languages out there. A good start would be to just create some fun applications. Like super basic applications where she can input her name or what not. I did that with visual basic and a little bit of c++. Hope it helps.
There are tons of software now. https://lifehacker.com/the-best-free-tools-for-making-your-own-video-games-1689905461
As I've tried to make several small ones before, but found out that I wouldn't have the time to finish my first big "true" game, I decided to quit on making them. However, these are my go-to IDE's. http://www.stencyl.com Stencyl: If your daughter has no initial coding experience, then I recommend starting off with the easiest, Stencyl. This is a coding "block" type of experience, and best suited for 2D platformers. It "technically" requires no actual hard-coding experience, but if you do know actual hard-coding, then you can virtually "hack" stencil, and get extra out of the coding blocks, if you want to. But if you don't have the knowledge, then it really doesn't matter that much in my opinion. Stencyl also comes with built-in features to make it easier to export. Granted, if you're looking for "kudos" points from other devs, then I don't recommend stencyl. They really won't respect you that much. Another downside to stencil, is that if you want to publish to the iOS store or Steam, it'll cost $200 a year, otherwise its free to publish to the web. https://unity3d.com Unity3D: I have a love-hate relationship with Unity. I love that its asset store is so good, and that its so versatile. If you want to make either games or just simply an animated movie, it can do both. However, to do anything in Unity, you would need to know C#. If she knows or wants to know C#, she can do Unity. Unity has a month-by-month pay plan. If you're personal or make under $100k a year, then you can do the free plan. But if you want more features, you would need to pay. And if she's really serious about making a game, then they have a $125 a month plan. Otherwise, its free. If she decides to sell it, Unity is royalty-free. Now comes my "hate" relationship. Unity requires a healthy bit of studying to get the deeper understanding of Unity's "personal" IDE lingo. Hope this helps. See ya.