Course Outline

This course is part of the Applied Skills 8 rotation (~20 classes/8 weeks). Students will explore and develop creative and critical thinking skills. Students will create games, loading and editing sprites, creating objects with events and actions, designing levels with objects and tiling backgrounds. Students are expected to use class time wisely and ask for help when needed. 

Units & Objectives

Ball Games:

  1. Click It: ball moves, bounces off walls; player gets points if clicks on ball, loses points if clicks on bad guy
  2. Pong: side bats moving up/down, ball bounces off bats, wall; score object on sides gives points, keep count & display with set & draw score/lives
  3. Breakout: player moves bat along bottom; ball bounces off bat; stones become damaged each time hit until destroyed; keep track of how many stones in room, when all stones gone, game over

Scrolling Shooter Game

  1. Illusion of Motion: room = big, using views; controller: room view moves at constant speed, if reach top of room, game over; islands show randomly; score panel at bottom draws lives, score; if run out of health, lose a life
  2. Main Plane: moves L/R if not too close to an edge, U/D – stays in room view
  3. Shooting Bullets: bullet moves up, relative to plane, destroyed if out of room; main plane can shoot bullets, spaced out (1x/sec – if > 200pts, faster)
  4. Enemy 1: plane flies down, can be hit by bullets; if hits main plane, little explosion, lose some health; if lose all health, bigger explosion & lose life
  5. Enemy 2: flies down, shoots bullets (straight down), if enemy or bullets hit main plane, small explosion and lose some health
  6. Enemy 3: flies down, shoots special bullets (go towards main plane wherever it is), if main plane hit by enemy3/bullets, lose some health
  7. Change the Look: change room background, sprites used by objects (islands, main plane, enemy planes; change score panel (logo, life sprites)
  8. Room Design: make room bigger, place variety of enemy planes into interesting/challenging formations

Platform Game

  1. Character Moving: character moves L/R, facing direction; jumping when on floor/platform; check if in air, then use gravity so only goes certain height, and make sure land on floor/solid objects
  2. Room Design: use tile set to create room design, place block objects on top
  3. Basic Game:  mushrooms (randomize), get points; nextLevel; pits (lose a life)
  4. Score Panel: game start (3 lives); no more lives; draw score panel with lives
  5. Monsters: move L/R, between marker objects; character collides, lose a life
  6. Killing Monsters: character jumps on top of monster, squishes it, gets points
  7. Shooting Monsters: get gun, can shoot monsters, shows in score panel
  8. Ramps: slides up/down ramp (if something solid that’s half a block height)
  9. Ladders: character goes up/down ladder, climbing sprite

Maze Game:

  1. Basic Game: player moves L/R/U/D, stops moving when no key, collides with wall; collect diamonds, score goes up; if reach goal, go to next room; tests when all diamonds gone, door disappears
  2. Monsters: LR (moves horizontally), UD (moves vertically); ALL (creep along walls); person loses life when hits one; make rooms bigger, place controller at bottom of rooms (start with 5 lives, no more lives, n-key, r-key, draw score and lives as little life images); design 2 rooms
  3. Bombs: when trigger, turns bomb objects into explosions; design room
  4. Blocks & Holes: person can push block in all directions; player can’t go through hole; block pushed into hole will make it disappear; design room
  5. Facing directions: have the following change sprites so facing direction they’re moving in: person, monster LR, monster UD, monster ALL

Assessment

Students will receive a rubric sheet with their report card detailing their progress in the objectives/skill areas for each assignment/unit. The levels are:

  • No participation: student missed those skills due to absence, did not complete that part of the assignment or project due to lack of focus/time, or did not make enough progress on a project to get to this skill area.
  • Beginning: student made some progress in this skill area
  • Developing: student made good progress in this skill area, completing most of the steps/assignment; not able to complete the steps independently, needed a lot of correction/help
  • Applying: student made good progress, completing all assignments/steps with some correction/help
  • Extending: student completed all steps in the assignment with no correction/help; or student went beyond the assignment requirements