ulo.tricho.us

On day 4, we wanted to talk a little about the basics of the way that software thinks about things and introduce a few of the fundamental abstractions of programming. I know it’s a whippersnappers/get off my lawn/uphill both ways in the snow kind of moment, but the computing experience of the 80s really did prepare us beautifully for software engineering careers, and, well, these kids don’t have to type in 6 pages of code if they want their computer to draw a picture of Alfred E. Newman like we did. Anyway, I introduced Eric as someone who writes software for a living, and he talked about variables and collisions and things that the computer would have to keep track of.

On day 5, the topic was the main loop of the game and continuing to build on the distinction between property and state; and the notion of stepping through the loop many times per second; when it updates positions, when it implements input from the players, checking for collisions or scoring, etc. Of course, this may not be the exact way that the engine handles events, but it’s helpful to analyze what would be needed to make a game happen.

On monday, we’re going to talk about the process of making a game, the types of jobs that are involved (including looking through the credits and seeing if I can hint them into guessing what QA means) and a few ideas about game design. We’ll play a few of the minigame modes and they’ll come up some of their own ideas for minigame modes. We’ll see how it goes!

Also, I have to say that we could no longer resist the opportunity to let them play Little Big Planet of Friday… we’ll see if they demand it first thing on monday.