I had a discussion via Discord on Sunday with someone willing to answer some of my questions. This post is like the TLDR of a nearly hour long discussion, plus some "notes to myself" as to what I need to do about what I learned.
Recommended course:
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
It can be done for free. You just won't get official academic credit if you do it for free.
It's possible to mod non-FOSS games as a project.
Minecraft is not FOSS and there are lots of mods of it. It can potentially be used as a city building platform.
Unity was mentioned. It's a framework. If you start with a framework, you don't have to write a game from scratch.
I think Gems of War uses Unity and I think I have discussed this with my sons a little.
FreeCiv has poor documentation. Modding it is probably not a good place to start learning to code. Minecraft has a more robust community, etc. That's probably a better place to try to mod something as a learning experience.
The stuff listed in the Lambda School curriculum is all specific technologies and I don't necessarily need to know most of them (because there can be other things that would serve the goal in their place), other than Git. I should learn about Git. It's really important.
I have a Github account. I've done their introductory tutorials. I don't know if that is sufficient.
I'm not the first person to be unclear what the difference is between Git and Github: Difference between Git and GitHub
I need to maybe look up each item listed in the curriculum and get kind of an overview of what it does and what are other things that do the same kind of thing so I can get some context.
Writing an offline game would be vastly simpler than an online game. Online games get really complicated. Not so for offline games.
Recommended course:
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
It can be done for free. You just won't get official academic credit if you do it for free.
It's possible to mod non-FOSS games as a project.
Minecraft is not FOSS and there are lots of mods of it. It can potentially be used as a city building platform.
Unity was mentioned. It's a framework. If you start with a framework, you don't have to write a game from scratch.
I think Gems of War uses Unity and I think I have discussed this with my sons a little.
FreeCiv has poor documentation. Modding it is probably not a good place to start learning to code. Minecraft has a more robust community, etc. That's probably a better place to try to mod something as a learning experience.
The stuff listed in the Lambda School curriculum is all specific technologies and I don't necessarily need to know most of them (because there can be other things that would serve the goal in their place), other than Git. I should learn about Git. It's really important.
I have a Github account. I've done their introductory tutorials. I don't know if that is sufficient.
I'm not the first person to be unclear what the difference is between Git and Github: Difference between Git and GitHub
I need to maybe look up each item listed in the curriculum and get kind of an overview of what it does and what are other things that do the same kind of thing so I can get some context.
Writing an offline game would be vastly simpler than an online game. Online games get really complicated. Not so for offline games.
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