I... can't say I have any experience with MUD engines in particular...

... but in theory, it does not seem impossible, or even that difficult?

Basically, just have a preset world space that is cordoned off into strips, bands, and that functions as essentially an overlay layer.

Split it into 24 slices, give each slice an offset from "UTC" ... every time the ... "UTC" of this world rolls over another hour, iterate each local time zone between... sunrise, morning, midday, evening, sunset, night.

Something like that basic framework.

Hell, you could also vary the length of days, of each of those 'lighting condition states' by latitude, with another set of strips, and then use both of them together to come up with some kind of 'season' offset.

To maintain your own sanity, if trying to travel long distances or something, just convert everything to 'UTC' time, then calc travel time, then calc back to local time once you've arrived.

... And be wary of crossing the 'international date line'.

Localized weather is... well, it can be as simple as just having like, another grid splitting up the world into weather regions, and then you have something like a 'climatic zone index' that you assign to each grid square, and each climatic zone has its own lookup table of possible weather states, which have some weight value associated, and then just every hour or 6 hours or day or w/e, you randomly roll for a new weather state.

You could also get much more complicated if you want to simulate things like moving pressure systems that interact with significant terrain elevations, moving humidity patterns, ocean temperature circulation patterns, wind speed, etc...

I... am assuming this is either 2d or just like ascii character based?

When I was in highschool, I did a course on games that used this:

gamemaker.io/en

It was free, very simple to learn, and reasonably powerful, you could build 3D games similar to the first Doom with some effort.

~~After that, Unity would probably be the next step up?~~

So yes, a kid can definitely create games with a small amount of effort.

I was teaching myself assembly language and C when I was in 7th grade, so sure. If a kid is self-motivated enough then the sky is the limit.

Kids are capable of some amazing things if given the right tools, enough time and plenty of positive reinforcement.

As others mentioned, Scratch is a good option.

Another one is Hopscotch.

Hopscotch: Learn to Code | Make Games, Animations & More!

© Hopscotch Technologies 2025

^{www.gethopscotch.com}

Yes with enough time and effort. But beware: they become a "wiz" during the pursuit of that goal. Game hacking/modding/making are usually the kid gateway drugs to an IT career.

Tho this isn't always the case. They could focus on game making in the artistic direction, utilizing existing tools and engines without too much deep knowledge

Of course, just... temper the expectations of what the means. A kid can probably do tic tac toe, chess, that kind of stuff.

"Real video games" take a lot of work and I would be super impressed if a "normal" kid who just "sort of likes playing" video games could bring up the dedication for learning and problem solving it needs.

It's like asking if a kid can learn to be a really good painter or musician. Sure. They can. It just takes a lot of practice.

I know nothing about software or game development.

I think it would depend on how old, how motivated and how interested the kid is. Never in history has there ever been a time when we've had this much free resource immediately available to us. My cousin started his son on learning game development at about 11 or 12. He learned coding, used online resources and video courses and pretty much self-taught in the way any student would learn in a programming course. He's making simple Android games and he's been happy jumping on the deep and and doing it "properly".

An underrated place to start is with Doom modding. The various ports of Doom engines have grown to have surprizingly rich feature sets these days, and a lot of indie games have been getting made in these engines. It's easy to get into because you can get started pretty much right away by making mods for existing games.

So for example, you could download the free game FreeDoom, get the UZDoom engine to play it on, the map maker Ultimate Doom Builder to make maps for FreeDoom, SLADE for the other aspects of editing, and then finally the ZDoom wiki should be able to point you toward everything you'll want to learn to be able to make whatever you'd like.

So you can start learning and producing content very quickly by making maps, learn and develop those maps into more extensive mods, eventually learn and develop those mods so far they become "total conversions" - meaning that it's still technically a mod, and still would depend on the Freedoom game you're building on, but has grown extensively enough to replace all assets; and then finally it is possible to convert that total conversion into a full fledged standalone game.

And of course once you have enough experience with this, you can develop standalone games right from the start of a project.

Freedoom

Freedoom's website

^{Free content game using the Doom engine}

That's how I started. When I was 10 years old, I discovered game maker and accidentally gained a lifelong passion for programming.

not the computer wizkid, but the average one

I can assure you that 10 year old me was below average with computers. It's a miracle I managed to figure out how to install gamemaker at all. The only thing that matters is interest, passion, and determination. If the child doesn't have those things, they probably won't succeed, and you probably can't force them to, which is fine. It doesn't mean they won't become a software engineer in the future, just that they won't do it at an early age. I know engineers who started learning programming in college, and are way smarter than me even though I had almost a decade head start.

EDIT: btw, I don't know if I'd recommend gamemaker today. When I started with it, it was simple and specifically aimed at learning. Today, it's trying to be a full-blown commercial game engine and it has gotten pretty complex. Another option might be Godot, but I'd strongly recommend against it. Godot is way too complex for someone's first game engine. Some people like Scratch, but IMO it's pretty lame and feels more like a homework assignment.

Some possible alternatives (haven't used them myself):
* construct.net/en
* gdevelop.io/
* rpgmakerweb.com/

Or just search for "no code game engine" in your favorite search engine. There are probably tons of those today.

Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share

Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

^{scratch.mit.edu}

This video could have been a text post.

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Obligatory Godot reply:

Consider a Unity competitor like Godot

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godot\_(game_engine)
• godotengine.org/

Godot Engine - Free and open source 2D and 3D game engine

Godot provides a huge set of common tools, so you can just focus on making your game without reinventing the wheel.

^{Godot Engine}