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;}
}
}

Very pleased this article got out there, which talks about Mobile App development in Suffolk, the work I am doing with UCS students to prepare them for the workplace with the most current technology we can offer them. Not only are they developing for the iPhone, but the Nintendo DS and Java based phones.

It also talks about fellow local developper Paul Hutson and the success of his Kingdom Game and Outer Empires projects, all good news for Suffolk and University Campus Suffolk and I am sure I will update you on my students progress.

I hate to give the game away in the first sentance, but the lesson was perfect, it had to be. I knew from the moment I woke up this morning this first lesson in Processing had to run smoothly as it was their first lesson with it, their first exposure to code. It may not have been make or break with them, but a bad introduction to coding could put them off for years. Luckily their ICT teachers have been teaching them how to use good tools like Scratch and Opus, so they were already familar with things like variables so we could speed through some of it a lot quicker.

I simply talked them through the interface, how the variable, set-up, and draw areas of Processing work with eachother. The full example is below, but it’s important to note we did it in stages, purposely missing things out to cause “problems” which we set about solving.

Now bearing in mind these were 13-14 year old kids who inhabit a full on multimedia world and computers are pretty much part of their everday life, it was still nice to know that having the ability and being empowered to do even the most basic tasks in Processing (like draw a box on the screen), was still really enjoyable. It was like watching lights flicker on as I said to “experiment” with the different values in the code, but they worked it all out very quickly.

Processing was chosen for several reasons for this project.

1) It’s free and runs and outputs to most operating systems including a webpage.

2) There is also Mobile Processing which means lessons learnt in this environment can be moved to mobile phones and other mobile devices.

3) There is also Arduino which is based on Processing for controlling external devices like motors, solenoids, lights & robotics.

So in the space of an hour they learnt about integers, variables, loops, how to output to the debugging console and to load a font and display all the information to a screen. Next week we will show them how to load a graphic and move it around the screen, no prizes for guessing where we are heading. And yes I am aware all this does is count down from 300 and keeps going, thats because this small example forms part of a much larger project.

This work forms part of my Masters Degree and soon my PhD and will all be written up shortly for others to read in it’s entirety. I am also very glad that several other schools have now taken up my offer to run this 8 week after school course for their students.

Below is the code, but to get it to work, you will.

1) Start processing, and save immediately, call it whatever you want, you do this so it will create a folder.

2) Create a font in the drop down tools menu, size 24, type Arial MT, that way the code will find it and load it correctly. From the folder you just created by saving.

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

int counter;
PFont fontA;

void setup(){
counter = 300;
size(300,300);
fontA = loadFont(“ArialMT-24.vlw”);
textAlign(CENTER);
textFont(fontA, 24);

}

void draw(){
background(0);
counter=counter-1;
delay(100);
println(counter);
text(counter,150,150);
}