Introduction

Scratch is a great website for beginners but what happens when you are no longer a beginner? What do you do after scratch? What do you learn next? What do you create and with what? This question is always beings asked so I decided to compile a list of the best most useful software that can further your progress.

Art
When continuing from scratch you will surely miss the easy to use art editors bundled inside of it. When you continue of scratch you will find that many premium art services cost a lot of money but luckily there are a lot of free programs out there that offer the basically the same thing as the paid versions.

1. Blender


Blender is an open source 3d creation software. It's been around for a long time and so boast impressive features while the learning curve is not high at all. Some places to learn Blender.
CGgeek's channel
Blender Guru
CGcookie


Operating systems: WIndows, OS X, Linux
2.Autodesk


Autodesk is mostly known for their world class products like MAX and MAYA and CAD but they also have a basic raster program in the form of Sketchbook( it does have a premium version) Sketchbook is significantly better if you possess a tablet for sketching. Autodesk's most famous programs are expensive but you can get them for free if you are a student registered in an official education facility in your country.

I don't recommed Autodesk.

First you have to head over to the Autodesk Education Communityand sign up for it then you have all the software at your disposal.

But be careful.
You can only use the software for non-profit noncommercial projects.

Operating systems: Depends on what program you install

3. Serif DrawPlusStarter


Serif DrawPlusStarter is a free watered down version of their award winning DrawPlus. Its downside is that it is only for windows.

4. Gimp

Gimp is seen as a free replacement to the more expensive Photoshop. Gimp is an excellent program but is a little hard to grasp.

5. Inkscape
Inkscape is a professional vector editing tool. It rivals industry standard illustrator in some parts.But Inkscape's fault lies in its GUI. Its User Interface looks abominable for a program focused on creating clean art. But if you can get past this u
you'll find an excellent program hidden underneath.

That concludes our Art section it is time to move unto the best game engines and coding languages after scratch.


1. Javascript and HTML+CSS
These three coding languages power the internet world. Most websites are written in them including Scratch. The provide a way to make online games and are relatively simple to learn. The folks at Codecademy have a great course [adfly link removed] written specifically for this.

Some good libraries:
jquery
processing.js(Thanks Rumanti)
moment.js
bcrypt.js


Helpful places:
s2js(thanks waimate01)


2. Python
Pretty similar to Javascript except in syntax. Can be learned at Codecademy

3. C++

The most widely used for creating applications. C++ is a must learn if you are planning to code without an engine. C++ is harder than most languages so I don't recommend you should learn it first. First, try C.

4. C
C is a programming language created by Dennis Ritchie. C++ is C but with more/harder features. C is very easy to learn and forces you to gain a better understanding of how your code works. I recommend it 100%.


Game Engines

Here we reach the climax of our topic…What engines to use after Scratch.

For this we'll be looking at two world-class free software and comparing them.

Lets start

1. Unreal Engine

The boy and his kite demo reel

The above video pretty much demonstrates the capabilities of Unreal engine. Unreal Engine used to cost 750,000 dollars but it is completely free(except for royalties when you make over $3000). Unreal also features a blueprint coding language that functions just like scratch so you don't even have to learn another language. Unreal Engine is very nice but requires a decent computer.

2. Unity3D

Feature video
Unity's free version is not very good. It's completely watered down to the point that you have to include their splash screen. If you want to use advanced shaders in unity then you will have to write them with their special programming language. I don't recommend this at all.

Text editors

Since most programming languages are text-based, one must use a program that allows to input such text. These are some of my favourite (well not all of them) editors.

I know that many people will include VS Code but it is one of my least favourite editors. I don't recommend it to anyone. We will go through GUI editors and then the text-based editors.


1. Sublime Text

Sublime text is a mature programming editor with many plugins. You can customise its looks and add extra functionality. Sublime Text is also very fast.
Sublime Text has an unlimited free trial but costs money to use the full version.

It is cross-platform

2. TextWrangler by Bare Bones

This was one of my first text editors. It was sort of an appetiser to vim. It featured many shortcuts and many commands to quickly edit text. It is very fast, I think that it is faster than all the other GUI editors, but it is very Bare Bones. Though you can customise it, it looks very basic. It is still my preferred GUI editor for quickly changing files.

TextWrangler is free.

It is for Mac OS X only.

3. Atom by Github

Atom is a hackable text editor made by GitHub. It is very slow because it uses Github's electron engine to run. Atom integrates very nicely with Git. It is the most customizable editor, with thousands of plugins and themes. Atom is also free and cross-platform.

I particularly like the way Atom has a vim-mode-plugin so I can use vim inside of Atom.

4. Brackets by Adobe

_init_ wrote:

Brackets is a pretty nice editor for web design. It has some cool features such as live refresh, inline CSS editing, and inline documentation. It's based on web technology, but is much lighter than something like Atom

Real editors

1. Nano

Nano is the most basic terminal editor.I honestly wouldn't recommed to anyone. It is even slower than using a GUI.

1. Ed

Ed is the standard editor on all Unix based systems. It is the standard editor in the world. Type ed into bash to use it. Why use ed? Because it is the standard editor.

2. Emacs

Emacs is a very customizable editor written in Lisp. It is easier to learn than vim and ed but you can't really do as much. Emacs also uses the control key too much.

Jonathan50 wrote:

. You can do so much more with Emacs to the point that you can do too much with Emacs. It has built in packages for an email client, news reader, web browser, and I used to use the EMMS media player like iTunes! (I would still, but I'd have to install it again.).

3. Vim

Vim is the greatest editor in the world. Type

vim example.txt

into your terminal to use it.

To learn vim type

vimtutor

Vim has two (main) modes. Insert mode and Normal mode. In insert mode, each letter you type is written into the file. In the normal mode each letter you type is a command. You use letters to move through the document, delete words, change words and other things.

The best thing about vIM is that you can chain commands together. This means that rather than doing this to delete a word and move down 3 lines:

1. Highlight word with mouse
2. Click delete
3. Manually and slowly move cursor 3 lines down
4. Click.

In Vim you would just do this command

dw 3j i

Or together

dw3ji

I recommed that you use Sublime Text/Textwrangler before you move onto Vim/Emacs then to ed.

Yes, I know I forgot about Gedit.

Hmm, interesting. Nice to see art alternatives as opposed to programming alternatives (as in The Seasoned Scratcher).

Um, I don't see that much similarities between JavaScript and Python.. They have different uses, different backgrounds, different syntax, etc. Also, Python 2.7 or 3.4? :package:

Rumanti wrote:

Um, I don't see that much similarities between JavaScript and Python.. They have different uses, different backgrounds, different syntax, etc. Also, Python 2.7 or 3.4? :package:

. meant as in once you learn one its easy to learn the other. Maybe I should have clarified that a bit better.

Blaze349 wrote:

Rumanti wrote:

Um, I don't see that much similarities between JavaScript and Python.. They have different uses, different backgrounds, different syntax, etc. Also, Python 2.7 or 3.4? :package:

. meant as in once you learn one its easy to learn the other. Maybe I should have clarified that a bit better.

Ah, okay.

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

A few additions:
Autodesk 123D Design
Another good choice for 3D Design. However, this is not particularly aimed at game development. If something like product design is something that appeals to you, try it out!

Autodesk Stingray
Another game engine, available as part of Autodesk's free education software.

The Autodesk Suite in General
Most (see 90%) of Autodesk products are free to school, college and university students. If you want to learn 3DS Max, Maya, Inventor, AutoCAD, etcetc, it's a good start!

Krita
A good choice for Art in the style of “painting”.

—

If you are looking into development, getting a good IDE is also a very big help.

Java - Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA, both have free versions.
C++/C - NetBeans with C/C++ Support or CLion. The former is free.*
PHP - PhpStorm is awesome, hands down. There are other IDEs however, so take a look around.*
Python - While IDLE is nice, I personally prefer PyCharm, which also just gained a free version.*


* ALL JetBrains products (PhpStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, etc) are free for students .

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

Rumanti wrote:

Um, I don't see that much similarities between JavaScript and Python.. They have different uses, different backgrounds, different syntax, etc. Also, Python 2.7 or 3.4? :package:

They're both imperative and object oriented

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

It is against the rules. IIRC the Scratch Team considers adf.ly commercial spam.

djdolphin wrote:

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

It is against the rules. IIRC the Scratch Team considers adf.ly commercial spam.

It's also pretty cheap to get ad revenue on something that you do not contribute to. I'm sure that could be illegal because you're making money off of something that can

You can only use the software for non-profit noncommercial projects.

djdolphin wrote:

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

It is against the rules. IIRC the Scratch Team considers adf.ly commercial spam.

Also it is likely illegal to make profits out of someone else's work without permission, and with commercial software that may be enforced.

Cool anyway.

Rumanti wrote:

Um, I don't see that much similarities between JavaScript and Python.. They have different uses, different backgrounds, different syntax, etc. Also, Python 2.7 or 3.4? :package:

2.7 all the way, even though 3 makes more logical sense.
Python for all around, JS for web/all around.

djdolphin wrote:

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

It is against the rules. IIRC the Scratch Team considers adf.ly commercial spam.

WooHooBoy wrote:

djdolphin wrote:

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

It is against the rules. IIRC the Scratch Team considers adf.ly commercial spam.

It's also pretty cheap to get ad revenue on something that you do not contribute to. I'm sure that could be illegal because you're making money off of something that can

You can only use the software for non-profit noncommercial projects.

novice27b wrote:

Zeusking19 wrote:

Was it really necessary to use adf.ly? All I see in that is greed.

Might even be against scratch rules, since there are often some pretty dodgy ads on adf.ly.

Sorry guys all adfly links are removed. I started using it recently to shorten all my links but didn't realise people were annoyed by it.

Blaze349 wrote:

-snip-
Sorry guys all adfly links are removed. I started using it recently to shorten all my links but didn't realise people were annoyed by it.

Ok!
It's just moreover with other people's work.

Well you can also use these.
1. Stencyl
2. Game Creator
3. Roblox
These all work.

Suggestion: You might want to add Processing programming language for people who really really likes Pen, or a web-friendly alternative, the ProcessingJS library for JavaScript.

Rumanti wrote:

Suggestion: You might want to add Processing programming language for people who really really likes Pen, or a web-friendly alternative, the ProcessingJS library for JavaScript.

+1

Javascript is a good choice for a host of reasons, and S2JS is a tool specifically aimed at helping Scratchers make the transition.

It explains Javascript in terms of Scratch, showing simple Scratch fragments and projects, and explaining how to achieve the same outcome in Javascript using the HTML5 canvas. It's a tutorial and development tool in one, and lets kids write simple games that will run directly on their smartphones or whatever.

It eases the transition from the approachability of Scratch to traditional text-based languages, and teaches “straight” Javascript without any frameworks.

www.s2js.com

WooHooBoy wrote:

Rumanti wrote:

Suggestion: You might want to add Processing programming language for people who really really likes Pen, or a web-friendly alternative, the ProcessingJS library for JavaScript.

+1

+1

Rumanti wrote:

Suggestion: You might want to add Processing programming language for people who really really likes Pen, or a web-friendly alternative, the ProcessingJS library for JavaScript.

waimate01 wrote:

Javascript is a good choice for a host of reasons, and S2JS is a tool specifically aimed at helping Scratchers make the transition.

It explains Javascript in terms of Scratch, showing simple Scratch fragments and projects, and explaining how to achieve the same outcome in Javascript using the HTML5 canvas. It's a tutorial and development tool in one, and lets kids write simple games that will run directly on their smartphones or whatever.

It eases the transition from the approachability of Scratch to traditional text-based languages, and teaches “straight” Javascript without any frameworks.

www.s2js.com

Thanks for the ideas, I've implemented them.