Stencyl the program for me? (specific situation)

Hey all,

I really want to ask my question here, because whenever i search about using Stencyl on other websites, most of them suggest using construct, scratch or game maker... Here's my situation:

I am a teacher on a secondary school in the Netherlands and in half a year I will be teaching 'game development' as a subject. The subject will be 2 x 45 minutes a week for around 40 weeks, giving me around 60 hours (without homework assignments) to get 14-15 year old teenager to create a game.  They basically have no prior experience with programming whatsoever. My school has a wifi network for all pupils and we have a 'bring your own device' way of working. This is an immediate reason why Construct won't work for my school.

I've been looking around and Stencyl seems easy enough to learn in this time with the blocks, with plenty of resources to use and basically free (a big plus as opposed to gamemaker). Pupils who like doing this will be free to get advanced techniques from the web or try to start using the text code editor. Here's another part of the deal: I need to be able to teach the use of the program so I will need to learn using the program to myself in 6 months. I've been doing both crash courses, got some assets from another website, started importing them into my own project and am starting to make my very first own game.  This all seems very easy to do and I can see how to get things working in a lot of game types.

Here are some questions which will help me make my decision:
* How is the Stencyl community? Will I be able to forward my pupils questions if I don't know the answer (yet)?
* How stable is Stencyl? Nothing will mess up my lesson more then bugs / crashes, etc.
* If you read the above situation, do you think this will be manageable?
* Is Stencyl a useful / realistic program if pupils will want to work in game development after their secondary school?

Thanks for any response or feedback!

Hi !

* How is the Stencyl community? Will I be able to forward my pupils questions if I don't know the answer (yet)?
I think the community is quite dynamic, so it won't be a problem

* How stable is Stencyl? Nothing will mess up my lesson more then bugs / crashes, etc.
It is quite stable. There  were some time it wasn't stable but usually because of problems like changing Java.
The actual version is really stable I think   ( for Windows at least).

* If you read the above situation, do you think this will be manageable?
yes .

* Is Stencyl a useful / realistic program if pupils will want to work in game development after their secondary school?

The advantage of Stencyl is that it uses real code. You can actually preview the code and see the code written. You can also just view the code for blocks.   Which is really great for learning.
So even if it less known than some other constructions engines, I think it's better for this reason.

The other great thing is that it's cross platform, you can test on android in the free version for example . This should be motivating for students.

Hi there zaxxo! I personally cant respond to you about stencyl itself as im fairly new to the software, however you mentioned game maker, if you have any previous experience with Game Maker (which i presume you do) I honestly think you should go for that teaching wise, extreamly simple to create a game, a bunch of children could easily pump out a "basic game" in under a 60 min lecture!

How ever for a longer more stretched out project i would look more into stencyl, as i would say Game maker is a great tool but stencyl from what i have seen defiantly has alot more to offer! For game developers supposed to children learning "how to make a game" .

Thanks for the replies so far.

@yoplalala: From what I've seen, the use of blocks is a really easy way to get pupils comfortable with what coding does to a computer, and the code itself can be used to show what it is really like.

@BenVader: no experience with Game Maker but a lot of my pupils have macbooks, the macbook version for Game Maker is way out of date as far as i can see. This makes it near impossible to teach classes with different versions of the same program.

Game Maker is terrible compared to Stencyl.

I'd say Stencyl is perfect for what you're looking for. I'd focus on flash based games before starting with mobile; flash is simpler.

There could be some useful information and content for you on the Education pages also.
http://www.stencyl.com/education/

Adding on to what the others have said:

* How is the Stencyl community? Will I be able to forward my pupils questions if I don't know the answer (yet)?

A lot of questions get asked in this forum. It is rare that a question is not answered by someone.

* How stable is Stencyl? Nothing will mess up my lesson more then bugs / crashes, etc.

Everything has bugs at some point. When I was beginning to tutor my current student, his version of Stencyl was constantly popping up error messages. Most of the time, we could just ignore them. At worst, we had to close the game and reopen. This current public version of Stencyl is much more stable.

On a side note, I was using Unreal Engine on my Mac last year and the errors popping up actually corrupted my file. I cannot even open it now. I have never seen an error do that with Stencyl. Be on the safe side, though, and have the students save a backup copy at least once a week.

* Is Stencyl a useful / realistic program if pupils will want to work in game development after their secondary school?

I actually am a full-time Stencyl programmer. For the past year, I have been living on the revenue from making games. I would never say that it is an easy business. The number of people who make a significant amount of revenue is very small. But that would be the same for any programming language or game engine.

Every engine or language uses the same computer logic. For example, if you want something to move from point A to point B, you have to give it motion parameters. Even if the students do not use Stencyl in their future careers, they will begin to understand computer logic. That knowledge is applicable to anything related to programming.

Thanks for all the replies, I'll be working with Stencyl see you all around!

If you dont mind me asking, what school will you be teaching in ?

Here are some questions which will help me make my decision:
* How is the Stencyl community? Will I be able to forward my pupils questions if I don't know the answer (yet)?
* How stable is Stencyl? Nothing will mess up my lesson more then bugs / crashes, etc.
* If you read the above situation, do you think this will be manageable?
* Is Stencyl a useful / realistic program if pupils will want to work in game development after their secondary school?

Thanks for any response or feedback!

1. The community is small but there are some good ghosts that keep forum alive.

2. Tell them to save, a lot! And make sure they make back-up... A lot! The biggest problem of Stencyl that it can crash in such way that it won't allow you to re-open the project again. You can scavange pieces of code from old project but it's painful.

3.  I think you should go for crash course in Unity and do it during classes (first tutorial the rolling ball). Yes it requires some coding but data types, functions, if statement would take up to 4 hours (6 max). It's acceptable lose for using much better and more popular tool. Beside you can learn great as you progress with building your game ("wild if statement appears" - and then you explain what is it)

4.  Hell no! Everyone is using Unity or Unreal. Whenever I see "tools for 8 year old to make games" compare list Stnecyl doesn't even make it there. When your pupils will go on with their life and say they used to program in Stencyl people would ask what is?


Don't make it 2x45 make it 90.

I probably started learning C around 14-15. Programming is easy, it's teahcers fault that they can explain it right. If you think your students will manage go for Unity if not go for Stencyl.

First thing I do in Stencyl is disable the phycis engine - I don't understnad  it. After playing the scene actors gets randomly relocated. So if you go with  I see lots of your students falling in the same trap.

Don't use official tutorial, they are terrible.  Use one of the "good ghosts tutorial" from their private sites but it would better if you did tutorial on your own (this way you knows exactly what goes in your code).

Stencyl will teach logic like how to apply math and create simple interaction. Though it only gets as advanced as the user's ambition.

I'm an artist and stencyl bridges the visual and technical nicely. It's easy to learn too so you can focus on learning logic.

If you dont mind me asking, what school will you be teaching in ?

@TheIndieStation: Wolfert van Borselen, school based in Rotterdam.

@t4u: clearly, you tell me this is not a popular tool and isn't used in professional development, i understand. Thing is my pupils have zero knowledge and I really think Unity is too big too fast.

@Rimrook: thanks, I don't expect them to make incredibly difficult titles, but more like get the basics rolling. Even more so, all they need to be able to do for their exam is create a game from an assignment so i get to lay down the rules. Even though my own vision is that more 'freedom' in their choices will enable them to make better games, it's not what the exam demands.

I already used all these Engines. Stencyl is the best engine to learn how to create games.

Unity the student takes a week just to move the character on the screen. It is not the best way to start. It's for those who decided to become only a programmer and do only that. Not all students want it.

Construct the free version is limited, is a agglomerate of configuration, and launch update every week that do not work on other versions. Stencyl only launch stable releases.

Unity and Unreal the performance for version web is very bad - when it works.

Game maker free nobody wants to install exe game.

Best engines are Stencyl, Cocos2d and Phaser. And to learn Stencyl is better, is more organized, has the best layout, is the fastest to develop, is open source, is no royalties, is truly multiplatform, and also has the best community.

Stencyl with Cocos2d framework would be my Dream Engine.

i have been working as game developer for years and i have been using only stencyl, stencyl is a good program especially when you have no prior programming knowledge before.

@t4u: clearly, you tell me this is not a popular tool and isn't used in professional development, i understand. Thing is my pupils have zero knowledge and I really think Unity is too big too fast.

Actually, what he said is incorrect. If you check out the chit-chat and published games forums, there are a few of us that make a decent amount of money using Stencyl.

I have a financial transparency log in the chit chat forum, documenting my revenue as a full-time Stencyl developer. I have only been developing game for ~2 years. I wish that I had learned Stencyl 20 years ago while in school.