Game.lab Session 5 - Catchup

The session tonight was mostly a catchup for two pupils who couldn't make the last two Game.lab sessions.  As in Session 4, we covered moving the sprite of a man through a maze using the cursor arrow keys and collecting diamonds, for which points were scored. To make sure the man didn't get stuck in some parts of the maze, the 'Align to Grid' action was included with a grid size of 32 x 32, the same as the room grid.

The new learning in this session was to automatically display a suitable image of the man depending on the direction he was moving in.  This is quite simple as all that is needed is a 'Change Sprite' action at the start of each Key Press event.

To develop the maze game a little faster, the pupils used ready-made sprites for each of the man's four directions (left, right, up and down). In addition each sprite consisted of four images which, when displayed in a sequence, make the man look as if he is walking.

The only problem with this is that the man appeared to be walking even when not moving, so a 'still man' sprite was created by using just one of the walking images.  Then a new event was added to check for all the movement keys being released with the first action being 'Change Sprite' to the still man sprite.

This was just about all we did in this session, but the pupils had lots of ideas for where this game could go in the future.

Game.lab Session 4 - Maze Game

In tonight's session we looked at programming a maze game in which the player moves through the maze using the four cursor direction keys on the keyboard.

Game.lab Session 3 - Start and End Screens

In tonight's session we added a start and end screen to our game as well as scoring and a high score table.

Game.lab Session 2 - Bombs and Rooms

In tonight's session we extended our game by adding a new room and a bomb sprite.

Game.lab Session 1 - Game.lab Kicks Off!

Tonight we held our first Game.lab metting which is part of Loreto High School's Computer.lab after school club.  Seven very enthusiastic pupils attended: Bijoux, Ethan, Ewa, Anthony, Eleanor, Dorota and Soloman.  After a quick introduction about the Game Maker software we'll be using, the pupils started their learning journey about creating computer games.

We started by talking about the four main things that make up a Game Maker game:

• Sprites or Graphics
• Objects which have Actions and Events
• Rooms or Screens
• Sounds

Each of these items was then demonstrated in turn with the pupils using laptops to create their games. We started by making two sprites, one for a wall and another for a ball.  Game Maker uses a sprite editor which is similar to most Painting programs on computers.

Next the pupils turned the sprites into two separate objects so that they could be given actions and events.  A room was created in which the objects could be placed and the wall object was used to create a wall aorund the whole screen. The ball was then placed in the room.

The pupils all seemed to grasp these main concepts easily after being shown to how to create each of them.  We didn't use any sounds in this session, but that will be first on the agenda for next time.

The end of the Game.lab session came all to soon for the pupils and they all said they'd enjoyed it and were already looking forward to the next session.