game programming
There are 17 entries for the tag
game programming
At the Marriott Hotel in San Antonio, TX, there were close to 200 teachers from across the world attending the annual Computer Science Teachers Association Symposium. I have been fortunate to attend this event in the past as an attendee and as a speaker and I always look forward to it every year. I enjoy meeting new teachers and talking to them about what they are doing in the class. I also enjoy seeing old friends and the opportunity to learn something new at this event. My presentation was on Web...
Well, we are in the home stretch of our learning of XNA. We have used the excellent tutorial by Charles Cook that is located on the XNA creators club site. Beginner's Guide to XNA Game Studio Express This all-in-one tutorial is everything you need to get started with XNA Game Studio Express. Follow along with in-depth video tutorials with source code examples to learn how to create 2D and 3D games from scratch. I'm hoping this tutorial can get updated to XNA version 2. My students concentrated on...
For the past several weeks, my students have learned C# and started to learn XNA by reviewing the tutorial that Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss put together on his site. Today, we reviewed how to put sound into the game. The XNA Creators Club has a good video on this topic. I would highly recommend using the Sound.cs file that Bill uses in his tutorial for you to create your own sounds using XACT. You just need to change the namespace to the project you are working on and then initialize the sound under...
Today in class, I shared with my students a video that Logan and Buzz did in their XNA online Programming class located at 3dbuzz.com. The training was excellent preparation for me to be able to teach my students game programing. My students have learned how to program in C# ,the basic concepts of decision making, repetition etc. and needed to see how all of this applies to game play so the Bouncing X video was needed at this time. There are 2 class files that are created in this application. One...
Next week our class will be talking about the taxonomy of games. I showed students some XNA games and told them that we will be learning XNA by the end of February. Lots of C# learning ahead like decision making, repetition, classes, structs and arrays. Students will be learning about collision with the Brix Game that they are programming. They will replace some code to make the bricks disappear upon collision. Needless to say, the motivation of my students is up and we are moving forward. We have...
In my Honors Programming I class this semester I have 18 students. Ten males and eight females. I'm extremely happy because this is the largest amount of females that I've had in a programming class. We are starting to use Alice and already I can see the excitement of all students working with the software. Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching...
When doing research for my XNA Game Programming class, I came across a great site that Jay Crossler has that had lecture slides that I could download and use in my class. One slide deck on the Theory of Fun will be used soon with my students. The slides review why are games not fun and how do we think. In addition, there's a section on how people choose games and reviews Bartle Personality Types. Finally, demographics are reviewed, time spent playing games, occupational status, what do players want...
In my game programming class next week, my students will be learning about C# data types and working with variables. I have several small programs for them to program so that they feel comfortable programming in C# and working with the IDE. These are console applications and will be easy for them to master. The students will start to learn how to program a basic windows game called BRIX. Here's a description of the game. Game Design Overview As its name implies, this is a Windows-based game named...
I've only taught my Honors Programming II Game Programming class for 3 days now and I'm evaluating my students C# skills with various beginner programs. In addition, I am introducing Gaming concepts with my students using the free online book called The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. I am also using some the Video Gaming Webcast that Microsoft has available with Matthew Mead who is a Computer Science Instructor from Digipen Institute of Technology. The Webcasts does not cover XNA...
Here is an outline of the Honors Programming II class that I'll be teaching next semester which begins next week. The curriculum that I'll be using for C# was written by Digipen and Microsoft. Introduction to C# C# Types & Variables C# Input & Output C# Expressions & Operators C# Functions & Flow Control C# Classes C# Arrays C# Structures The curriculum that I'll be using for some of the XNA training will come from Bill Reiss and Blue Rose Games. Introduction to XNA Getting Started...
O)rlando Elec(tron)ic (I)nteractive Entertainment (Con)vention The inaugural event in 2006 attracted more than 16,000 to experience how the cultural phenomenon of video games is changing everything from art to education to business to military training. Otronicon is uniquely Orlando and spotlights Central Florida's growing digital media industry. Last year's event in January 2007 attracted an incredibly diverse audience of 18,000, including parents with kids, grandparents with grandchildren, couples,...
For over a year now, I've been busy learning XNA and then try to put together some curriculum for my Honors Programming II class to use. 3dbuzz has an excellent online class and. I would highly recommend their training. I am using moodle class management system with my students and it is a very convenient way of organizing a course. I'll be doing weekly blogs on the progress of the course . I am hoping more high school teachers would teach XNA to their students and we all can share games together....
Back in February I blogged about me going to the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development which was held in Orlando and on the Disney Wonder Ship which took us to the Bahamas. Several of the speakers have put up their slides from their presentation on the Academic Resource Center site. You can search for other information on the site as well. It is categorized like this: Special Collaboration Areas Compilers, Languages, Runtimes Robotics Embedded Systems Sensor Networks Gaming and Graphics Software...
Tech night 07 was a great success at Lake Highland Prep. There were close to 50 students and parents in attendance to listen to Tom Carbone who is the Technical Director at the Florida Interactive Academy in Orlando. Tom has many years of game programming experience working for Microsoft and Electronic Arts and other companies as well. He spoke on how math and science are used to create video games. Tom spoke about mathematics and the skills programmers must have to create games. His emphasis on...
The 2nd semester of the school year starts next week after a two week hiatus to rest, relax, and be with family. Most of my classes are semester long classes so I get a chance to meet new students when I go back to school next week. My AP students will be the same and there's always pressure with that class to meet the goals of the AP curriculum and prepare them for the AP exam in early May. They have much more to learn in OOP like inheritance, polymorphism, and they need to learn about recursion...
In my search to learn more about XNA programming, I came across a good site on game programming with JAVA. Now you might be asking what does XNA programming have to do with JAVA programming. Right? Well, what's nice about this site is that you can learn more about game design and learn about the basics of graphics as well. The section on the basics of sound was very good. The site is worth taking a look at if you're interested in learning about game programming...
Let me start by saying that I'm always a sucker to new techniques, platforms, and ideas to teach my students about programming. I'm also trying to increase my enrollment as well. I have used web programming for a couple of years including web services. I introduced them to game programming using Gamemaker and Blitz Basic several years ago and now this new XNA framework is available to use in the class. I have downloaded the framework and just started to look at the code which is in C#. A good start...