This is actually what made me start my programming journey. Made small games using PowerPoint until I was starting to make an level editor on a 12x12 grid. My father thankfully stopped me pretty early on and showed me Game Maker 7. Not sure for how long i would have continued.

[–] gerryflap 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Are you me lol? I did exactly the same, and at some point I started computing how many slides I had to make to make anything larger and I pivoted. My dad didn't know this stuff but I also ended up at gamemaker

[–] x0x7@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I did the same but it was the TI-83 plus calculator. This was in middle school. Eventually I made games for it a more reasonable way. But I spent a month thinking this is how games were made, by knowing every possible image of the game and knowing how to map from one image state to another based on the controls.

There's something kind of plato's cave to say about it. When all you see are images on the screen you think that's the state.

Makes you wonder if there is something deeper we refuse to see because we got down to a level of state we could actually work with. Could it be RAM is not really the program state, and only what you think the program state is?

[–] gerryflap 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oh the TI-83 Plus also definitely was the subject of my experimentation during that time, or maybe a bit after it. But then with the programming mode and actual code. The TI-83 Plus is actually what got me the advice to study computer science. During a physics class we got a lesson on modelling in some silly programming language. Because it was going very slow, I translated the program/simulation my teacher was showing to the calculator. At the end of the lesson I came up to her and showed it to her. She was like "That's impressive, you should look into computer science". Somehow I hadn't considered that before

[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

hey, there is an inherent fun in maing games/programs using things that were never meant to.

once i did a CPU/RAM emulator using excel, so you could see every bit.

it was fun to make loops, and programs

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is how I got into game development myself. I used to use Javascript to make dumb little interactive games in the early 2000s before it was ever meant to do such things, emulating what is now modern day HTML5 canvas and such

[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

bes way to learn is by doing what you're not supposed to

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

True enough! Mistakes are the best teacher. That said, I'm still making games in Javascript to this day, so I guess you can say I haven't learned enough lol.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

Considering that enough pro's are doing the same, perhaps you didn't really do it wrong?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 4 days ago

PowerPoint is actually turning complete so... https://youtu.be/uNjxe8ShM-8

[–] tinkermeister@lemm.ee 4 points 4 days ago

I suddenly feel in good company. I got my start doing crazy things with PowerPoint and Excel because it was what I knew.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 4 points 4 days ago

I coded basic games in PowerPoint using animations plus VBA. Not good.