Today was the last of this groups game design sessions, with the group of  “future game designers”.

I have to say this first before I move on to the rest of the blog, they were an excellent group and it was a real privilege to work with them over a extended period of time.

Today was just inputting the rest of the level designs in to the game engine and finishing the game boxes (see picture), although they didn’t get to play on the game, they did get to see what it looks like on a huge screen. The game will be presented to them on CD tomorrow morning in assembly and I hope they feel proud of what they have acheived when they collect them.

We also had a long discussion about the project as a whole; what they liked, what they didn’t, what could be improved over time. I explained to them, that the only difference between what they did in these sessions and what professional game makers do, is have more time. They had 10 hours in total to create a concept, design it and create it as well as consider the marketing behind it.  I then went on to explain that 10 hours is something that a professional game maker may spend on creating a tiny element in a game like a layout of an options screen. The other factor I got them to consider was they were working alone on this project (except for one pair), in some major games there are hundreds of  people involved, designers programmers, designers, musicians, marketing. They were year 6 students and they made a whole game in 10 hours.

I hope more than anything, they have gained confidence from these sessions, this is another thing they “can do”, this “is” an option for them in their future. There are so many great game companies in the UK I know some of these students are destined to be their future designers.

Recently I was asked to run a workshop in a high school for year 11 students, and when they explained it would be for my old High School Chantry, I jumped at the chance.

It was quite apparent upon my arrival at the school that things had moved on a bit since I attended there circa 1993, long gone were the 286′s and RM machines. All the staff had pretty much been replaced too.

Today I had a huge class of 28 students much larger than my normal game workshop, but that is fine as we had lots to do and I divided them in to eight groups. I had four hours with them today, so the work had to be fast and furious, luckily the students were “fired up” as the ICT Carol Skeates put it, and they were able to get on with it and quick too.

I took them through the history of platform games and about some of the work I had done, then on to their designs on paper, then on computer, they even designed a DVD case for their game too!

All the graphics and level designs are now done (see Level Editor in picture), so it is just up to me to compile and test it and deliver it to them on Friday.

They were a great bunch of students who produced a high standard of work and I suspect quite a few might be interested in getting in to games development and taking what they have learned further. It was also nice to do the workshop at Chantry High School, I know I would have loved to do stuff like this when I was a student there, it just didn’t really exist then. Thanks to Carol Skeates and Mr Andrew Fell for letting me come by and run the workshop.

After giving a talk at BT recently about interesting and creative uses of technology, I was asked by Springfield Junior School, Ipswich to visit and help do some fun and creative projects with them. Today was our first session and it was fantastic.

I started by a simple introduction to the children about the types of projects I have done in the past. I then took them through a brief history of “platform games” showing them the key events in the evolution of the genre.  Following that was a brainstorming session with the children drawing, writing and discussing the games that they would like to make.   Finally the session ended with them filling in their “Game Design Diary” to help keep track of what they have done and hope to achieve over the course of the project.

I had a group of 12 year 6 students, I think it was equal number of boys and girls which was good to see.  They were all excellent, polite and attentitive, I really hope they enjoyed and learned from the session.

Next week we are going to look at character design and then have them present their ideas in the style of a 60 second pitch to game producer.

I am really pleased with todays outcome the kids got on with the work and were vocalising and visualising their ideas well.  A big thanks to Mr. Rogers Mr. Pearsons for their help and support.

Recently I was asked to work with a local school to help get kids involved in the design of video games, it was an excellent three day project and you can read more about in todays (July 29th, 20011) Evening Star on page 11.

Only just got the heads up about his article I am featured in and it’s good to see other are doing more to improve the level of creative digital activities in schools, good little article and you can read it all here.

I am hoping this will introduce some teachers to the possibility of running taster sessions on programming and game design not just in my local area but nationally.

Things are getting pretty hectic in the build up to Childhood Remixed, however I am still managing time to run some workshops. This time it’s a collaboration with The New Wolsey Theatre Creative Learning and Holywells High School. The plan is to use the green screen composite technique to put students in to a video game about students that have been shrunken down and teachers turned in to zombies. So this is gonna be good fun working with fellow project leader Laura Norman and her vast array of skills we shall be zombifying Holywells. More news an pics of the game in progress as it happens.

Today I did a Computer Graphics Workshop with two different schools the Academy of St.Francis of Assisi and Holly Lodge Girls College at FACT, Liverpool as part of the current Space Invaders exhibition. They were a fantastic group, so good in fact we even had time to make sound effects for the game as well. The space was perfect as we could beam the game on a huge cinema screen as we were making it.

The game will be all edited and back to them in a week for them to play on in school and at home. Next up tonight “An Evening With Pixelh8” all sold out!!!

After a long Christmas and New Year break, it’s back to coding, fortunately that break didn’t wash away all that they had learned and we were able to get on with Dimensional arrays. The best part of the lesson was when we started talking about how the Baddy AI will be implemented next lesson. They were beginning to think laterally, and how the computer doesn’t view the game as the player, but as a maze of 0 and 2′s in this case. The 2′s in the array are solid walls and so could 1,3, and 4 but they will be added later. 0′s are for nothing and is where both the goody and baddy can walk.The first row of 0′s is there to allow for space to draw the number of lives, score and level later on.

Every loop it redraws the level, and when key presses occur it checks if the position the character wants to head is clear, if it’s not it issues a return;. The following code builds upon last lesson here and adds the map drawing and good guy collision with it. The code as is also purposely presented the students with a dilemma, how do you get into the maze.

To get the below example to work

1) Load up processing and save immediately calling it “MazeGame” this will create a folder, example “MazeGame”

2) Within that folder create another folder called “data” so MazeGame\data

3) Within that folder put a graphic called “good.png” 40X40 pixels.

4) Run it

//MazeGame
//Copyright Room 1 Studios 2009
//Matthew C. Applegate – Pixelh8

int goodx, goody;

int level, column, row;
int[][][] mapper = {

//Level 1

{
{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
{2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2}},//End of Level 1

//Level 2
{
{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0},
{2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2},
{2,0,0,9,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2},
{2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2}} //End of Level 2
};

PImage hero;

void setup(){
background(0);
size(600, 400); // 15 X 10
hero = loadImage(“good.png“);
}

void draw (){
background(0);
updatescreen();
}

void updatescreen (){
image(hero, goodx*40, goody*40);

for (int row = 0; row < 10; row++){
for (int column = 0; column < 15; column++){
if (mapper [level] [row]

== 2){fill(255); rect (column*40,row*40, 40,40);}
}}
}

void keyReleased() {
if (key == CODED) {

//check if collision free
if (keyCode == UP)    {
if ((mapper [level] [goody-1][goodx]>0)&& (mapper[level] [goody-1][goodx]<4)){return;}}
if (keyCode == DOWN)    {
if ((mapper [level] [goody+1][goodx]>0)&& (mapper[level] [goody+1][goodx]<4)){return;}}
if (keyCode == LEFT)    {
if ((mapper [level] [goody][goodx-1]>0)&& (mapper[level] [goody][goodx-1]<4)){return;}}
if (keyCode == RIGHT)    {
if ((mapper[level]  [goody][goodx+1]>0)&& (mapper[level][goody][goodx+1]<4)){return;}}

//If collision free
if (keyCode == UP)    {goody=goody-1;}
if (keyCode == DOWN)  {goody=goody+1;}
if (keyCode == LEFT)  {goodx=goodx-1;}
if (keyCode == RIGHT) {goodx=goodx+1;}
}
}

Very pleased I got to finally written this up “A Choice to Compute: Rant in C++” it is part of a talk I give on the decline of programmers and some of the possible causes behind it. You can read the full article on Game People and all of the quotes can be referenced.

Although things are getting better there is still alot of work to be done to turn things around, and on the back of this rant instead of just complaining about the problems I have set up “Computer Club” with several schools to get people programming at an early age. You can see some of the example lessons and projects that I have undertaken with Holywells High School on this Blog here.

Enjoy.

I am genuinely very proud of my Computer Club only the second week in to programming with “Processing” and they are real getting it, they are really thinking logically and coherently. Below is a simple program to load a sprite place it on the screen and move it around using the cursor keys, they were all able to follow my instructions and get it to work.

I also set a few traps along the way for them to figure out for themselves and they were successful in solving the problem. Again this is just another piece of the overall project, and will later be merged with work from other sessions.

Cleverly they also worked out how to load other graphics and experimented with them too.

To get the below example to work

1) Load up processing and save immediately this will create a folder, example “MazeGame”

2) Within that folder create another folder called “data” so MazeGame\Data

3) Within that folder put a graphic called “good.png” 40X40 pixels.

4) Run it

//MazeGame
//Copyright Room 1 Studios 2009
//Matthew C. Applegate – Pixelh8

int goodx, goody;
PImage hero;

void setup(){
background(0);
size(600, 400); // 15 X 10
hero = loadImage(“good.png“);
}

void draw (){
background(0);
updatescreen();
}

void updatescreen (){
image(hero, goodx*40, goody*40);
}

void keyReleased() {
if (key == CODED) {
if (keyCode == UP)    {goody=goody-1;}
if (keyCode == DOWN)  {goody=goody+1;}
if (keyCode == LEFT)  {goodx=goodx-1;}
if (keyCode == RIGHT) {goodx=goodx+1;}
}
}