The course content is now available online! Woohoo! Click here to get to it.
Here's what you'll find:
Thanks for joining me this week - each and every one of you is very smart, so don't forget it! It was a pleasure teaching you.
The last day!! We'll work on finishing and polishing our games all day today. We will also go on a tour of the engineering building and have a pizza lunch with the Pathmakers, where we'll learn more about careers in science and engineering.
Today's topic was artificial intelligence. In the lab, you can continue working on your games.
We did two activities today. Both have a lot more discussion than we did in class.
Here's how to get to that funny animated guy's lectures on the Uncanny Valley and other game design topics: http://www.youtube.com/user/kirithem.
We learned all about computer graphics today. Check out the links below if you want to learn more about some of the things we saw in class.
You can choose to do any of these things:
There will be more links once I get the course notes online for you, but here are a few resources you can check out for now.
Here are links to some of the videos we saw in class today:
(Scroll down to get to Monday.)
Today's class was about Game Design and Usability. You can have a closer look at the CS Unplugged Activity about The Chocolate Factory if you want to know more about human computer interaction. I will make the class slides/notes available later in the week.
You have a choice for what you want to work on next. These two tutorials use the passwords given in class. Save the CD resources as explained in the "Game Maker: Your First Tutorial" from Monday's section below.
These three come from the Game Maker tutorials web site. When you click the links below, you will be asked to open or save the zip file. Save the zip file and follow the same instructions as "Game Maker: Your First Tutorial" from Monday's section below.
Bonus: You can use any of these games as a base for creating your own. You can then add in your own graphics, change the concept around, or even just use the games as reference for how to get the basics working (like moving) in your own games.
Welcome!
In class today, we talked about what computer science is all about, what games are, and how the two are connected. We also discussed the role of women in the industry. Now that we're in the computer lab, we're going to get a taste for programming with Game Maker!
By the time you read this, we'll have completed the CS Unplugged activity about programming languages. You can click here to see the whole activity if you want to. When we make our games in Game Maker, we have to be careful to give Game Maker the right instructions so the game we make works the way we want it to. But don't worry, it's not as hard as it sounds!
You're going to learn how to make a short but complete game in this tutorial. Click here to open the tutorial using the password given in class.
The first thing you should do is download the CD resources onto your USB key. When you click the link, save the zip file to your USB key (F: Removable Disk). Double click on "Computer" on the top left of the desktop, and double click on F: Removable Disk. Right click the file you saved, and choose "Extract Here...".
Then open up Game Maker from Start > Program Files > Gaming > Game Maker 7 > Game Maker.exe. Press ok for that annoying little error message that pops up, then choose "Do Not Upgrade Now" at the bottom (we only need the free version of Game Maker).
If you have any problems or questions at all, please just ask me or one of the other lab volunteers - there's no such thing as a dumb question!
When you're done the tutorial, feel free to play around with the game you just made, adding things or taking them away just to see what happens (sometimes you get an error, or just different behaviour). Then you can try the tutorials below if there's still some time left.
If you finish the first tutorial early, you can try one of these. (You can also download Game Maker for free here and try these at home.)