Digitalkatie's blog

CPD: Game Making by Judy Robertson, Heriot-Watt

Judy Robertson from Heriot-Watt University gave a CPD session on Friday. I always like going to HW for meetings. There are ducks and swans there and I get to have lunch with my husband :-)

Here are the notes I made during the session.

Mapping CfE to game making:

Determination to reach high standards - often you will find yourself limiting children's ambitions to achievable targets. Reworking ideas is all part of the creative process.

The are high rewards for low effort at the beginning, but game making isn't simplistic, it stretches pupils skills and creativity.

Resilience is necessary because pupils will have to work and think about their aims in order to get the programming to do what they what.

Peer learning and sharing goes on with pupils as well as teachers collaboration.

CfE Technology Objectives:
TCH2-09a (P7) and TCH3-09a (S1-3)
P7 is just designing, S1-3 is design and implement.
Now not just games but "game, animation or other aplication" which is good.

CfE English Language principles:
"a text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated"
including "films, games and TV programmes".

We are now all teachers of literacy
As an example of literacy in programming, Judy said her husband once wrote a Prolog poem for her.

Scratch:
Free (big plus point!) and developed by MIT. Kids are learning programing in a really nice way but don't realise. Good teaching resources including 'Scratchcards'. Games can be shared online. It is great for kids to be able to share with kids outside of Scotland. Can change the language easily (eg into Polish)

Gamemaker
Better for older kids. Maybe too difficult for S2.
Free download at yoyogames.com
Excellent textbook and tutorials
http://book.gamemaker.nt/frames.htm

Crayon Physics and Phun
Phun free, Crayon $20. Cross between sketchpads and physics simulations. You can either design levels or play them. OK for a quick lesson on games design but not so good for teaching programing.

Second Life
Free. LTS apparently using OpenSim and integrating it into GLOW.

Adventure Author
Based at HW Uni, supported by EPSRC.
Aims to study the creative process learners go through when making their own computer games.
User-centred design is where users are frequently consulted when developing. Learner-centred design is where teachers and learners are an important part of the development process.
Worked with schools in Edinburgh, Dundee and East Lothian as well as holiday workshops (which are good because it lets kids get absorbed in the process without the bell ringing.
Based on Neverwinter Nights 2 but with free plugins with added educational tools and trickier parts of software removed. Free plugins at www.adventureauthor.org
3D environment which looks good, which is important for motivation.
Fridge Magnets tool is a colour coded design tool.
Conversation Writer tool has a tree branching structure displayed like a play scripts. Conditions possible, for example the first time you meet Cedric Bear he'll tell you a quest. Next time you meet him he'll say something different (depending on whether you've solved the quest)
Comments Card tool has been very successful as a discussion on evaluating the game.
My Tasks tool is a check list tool

Campie Primary School teacher has a blog about the experience. (I missed the link for this though)

We then got a demonstration of how to use Adventure Author and we were then able to try it out ourselves.

Another option suggested was RPG Maker 3000 which is free and doesn't need as powerful graphics card.

There are opportunities for using NWN2 in more depths. The programming is hidden by Adventure Author but can be shown to advanced students.

Suggestions of how to approach teaching Adventure Author:
Let kids "explore the sweety shop until they get sick"! The pupils will learn from just exploring.

Machinima movies are also possible using screen capture.

Judith at St. Augustine's described the difficulties of using this with classes - six weeks of a 50 minute lesson a week can make pupils very frustrated.

Heriot Watt are looking for teachers and schools to be involved in their Making Games In Schools project. The first training session will possibly be in September then a second cohort in November. The training is for 2.5 days at HW. They are ideally looking for two teachers per school, although this would be best to be different subjects. There is a small budget to help with hardware costs.

Samba de Amigo!

We bought Samba de Amigo yesterday.  It was our anniversary present to each other (yes, we're that sad!)  It is brilliant, even better than when it was on the Dreamcast.  Our friend Stuart had it and would bring it to our New Year's Day parties and we would hook it up to a data projector I had borrowed from work.  Ah those were the days! (Of course the vast amount of alcoholic cocktails helped with the inhibitions of standing shaking maracas)

We started to get quite despondent.  It took us about half an hour to configure the game.  The key factor is the new version is not so dependent on height as the Dreamcast version, where you would have to enter your height into the game.

The Wii version also factors in angle of the wiimotes/maracas.  If you are shaking high, point the wiimotes upwards.  You don't actually have to lift them too much.  For the middle shakes, keep the wiimotes level.  For posing with both wiimotes to one side (this is where we had the major block in the configuration stage) point them behind you.  It seems to work. 

Happy Samba-ing everyone!

Giraffe Hero: the making of...

We made a little film recently.  I had seen this fantastic red giraffe soft toy in TK Maxx and was quite taken by its spotty resemblance to the Guitar Hero controller.  I decided this would make a great film, and as TeachMeet08 was coming up, it was a good deadline for making it.

First of all we discussed how to animate the computer game part of the movie.  I wanted to show the dots floating down like they do in Guitar Hero.  Two options that came to mind were stop motion animation with a very large sheet of paper and some cardboard cutout dots, or using a graphics package like Paint.Net to produce a series of images to then put into an animation program.

I have been using Scratch, a simple games programming / multimedia program developed by MIT with my second years.  They have just finished working through the task cards that are provided on the website and now we're all starting to make Pacman games.

Sean pointed out that Scratch might be a good way to animate the Giraffe Hero game.  I then got very enthusiastic and spent a day creating the sprites and the board and trying to code it all (Sean and Louis had a lovely day out and about enjoying the real world away from computers :-)

The big issue was timing.  I wanted to create a game that worked, so that the individual sound clip for a chord played as the dot got to the bottom of the screen.  This worked first time round, but as it looped it became more and more out of sync.  Ideally I wanted to be able to adapt the game later so that it could be played.  You would press buttons 1-5 at the right times to get the chord to play and win a point.

Here's the first game attempt.  I did have the dots getting brighter and bigger as they got to the bases but I took that out thinking it might speed it up. (Click on the image to play) 

After this version I realised this wasn't helping me get on and make the movie.  I took out the sound clips, but that didn't help with the timing so I then copied the looping dots and made three sets instead that just wait until they're needed before floating down.  You can see that version here on Scratch.

Maybe some day I'll get round to making Giraffe Hero the game, but as you can see my target audience hasn't gor the hang of holding the wireless soft chewable red giraffe controller yet, let alone pressing the buttons on time!

Here's the finished movie: