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First Session Game Screenshots Quiz
About the Course
3D Game Design is an intensive 5 day course, all about using the powerful game engine Unity to create and develop 3D games. There are two different strands to this course - they are broadly similar and both revolve around making an FPS style game from scratch, but offer students 2 different focus options for the week.
Creator (all ages) - this course uses a template project file containing a large range of premade assets, materials and textures, that the students can use as building blocks to create several different types of games. This course is more suitable for younger students (unless they are particularly good for some reason, it is very strongly advised that all campers 11 and under do this course regardless) as it allows them to get things working quickly without getting bogged down in the details, and has no requirement for any C# coding. Campers can spend more time on things like level design, adding custom materials, terrains and textures, customising animations and so on.
Developer (11-12+ only) - this course steps campers through designing and creating a complete FPS game from scratch. It uses a few premade 3D models for enemies, some terrain elements and the very low level FPS control, but campers have to write all of their own scripts in C# to get things to work. This of course gives them a much more in depth understanding of creating games in Unity and will mean they can (hopefully) go on after the course to create different types of games after some light Googling, but due to the in depth nature their finished products at the end of the week will likely be less visually impressive than those produced from the Creator course. Make no mistake - this course is one of the hardest we have ever produced, and campers choosing this option will likely need some encouragement and help with several of the more difficult parts. That said, whilst they aren't given completed script files and must type things out themselves, screenshots of completed correct scripts are provided (along with detailed explanations) so no prior experience or knowledge is required to complete the course - just a brain and some determination!
We're trying to get the students to:
- Understand the process behind designing and making FPS games
- Get some experience using the Unity editor, through from first steps up to compiling and publishing their games
- Create some impressive final games to take home
- For the developers, learn lots of C# and how to integrate and write custom scripts with Unity
- Think about the more nuanced aspects of game design such as level progression, pacing, difficulty settings and so on to create a good end user experience
Health & Safety
As this course doesn't involve practical building projects there are limited risks involved outside of those involved in general workshops as outlined below.
General Workshops Risk Assessment
The Kit List
Student consumables (one per student to take home)
- USB flash drive
- 1x Headphones
- Stamp sheet - Creator/Developer as appropriate
- Course Badge
Student non-consumables (one per student, not to take home)
- Tutor stamp for marking stamp sheets
- 1x Help Flag per student
Preparing Yourself
Even if you have lots of experience with Unity, it is absolutely critical that you complete both the creator and developer courses completely yourself before the camps. They have lots of details, lots of assets, and lots of code that you will need to know inside out. It will make your life a lot easier if you know the structure well enough that you don't need to work out what part of the course a student is on when they get stuck and can fix it straight away instead - otherwise you won't be able to keep up with the students during the sessions!
As a minimum, you'll need to:
- Read through this guide completely and be comfortable with it
- Run through and complete all of the course material on both the developer and creator courses
As the start of this course and various introductory activities are tutor-led, you'll also need to run through your delivery of the course a couple of times - ideally out loud, but at least in your head. If you are working with more than one tutor, you will want to decide between yourselves how to split the tasks/explanations in this initial part of the lesson.
Tutor Training Day
When you arrive for the tutor training day (at Winchester this will be before the students arrive, for other camps it will be a number of weeks before the first camp), we will go through some general things (like child protection training), but the bulk of the day will be on preparing yourself for teaching the course.
What will I receive?
There is no equipment for this course as it is entirely computer based. You will need to download and install the personal version of Unity from their website and make an account for yourself (its free) if you don't have this setup already, as per the instructions at the start of both of the courses.
How will we check that you are prepared?
We will expect you to:
- Explain to us some of the concepts in the tutor guide - i.e. you need to be able to tell us how the course is organised, what some of the important points are about safety and efficiently operating the courses, and be able to answer questions about these things intelligently!
- We'll ask you to show us your finished games from both the developer and creator tracks - with all of the features from all of the guides completed
- We'll ask you to run through some of the introductory activities for the start of sessions which are detailed at the end of this guide, as if you were running the course for real.
What will we show you?
- There should be very little (if anything) that you can't complete yourself in advance - of course we will be able to answer any questions you may have about the running/content of the course.
Pre-Camp Setup (By Tech Camp)
- Install Unity onto the computers
Student Logins
All students will need to login to this online system to access the course material. They can login using the following details (everyone logs into the same account):
Username: 3dgamedesign@techcamp.org.uk
Password: techcamp
They can continue to login with these details to access the material at home after the course if they want to.
Pre-Course Setup
- Minimal - test that Unity works as expected on a few machines, and make sure projector etc. in the classroom is working with presentation setup in advance of the first session (see below).
Tech Camp Work Saving Policy
To minimise the possibility of lost files and work, and reduce the impact of campers losing their memory stick after the course, please follow these guidelines:
- Campers should create a folder in 'My Documents' on the computer they are working on for the week, and rename it to their full name
- They should use this as their working directory for the week, working from it and saving all of the things they make/use in that folder
- At the end of the week they should then just copy the entire folder onto their memory stick to take home
- This folder should be left on the machine after camp (machines are either imaged specially for us or we have our own logins depending on venue)
- This way, if a camper loses a memory stick after they leave there is a chance we can get their data back by just looking on the computer they were working on.
Rules for Students
The course consists of a relatively large number of in depth, and relatively complex tutorials. As you should have/will find from completing them yourself, they contain a huge amount of information, and indeed everything you need to (in theory!) complete the course without any help from a tutor. This of course will not be the case, and students will have issues you need to solve - to minimise these, you should run through the following points with the students just before they start on the first tutorials:
- Following a self paced course like this might be different to how they have learnt before at school for example - it might seem strange at first but persevere! Having a course written like this allows you to move forwards at your own pace, and speed through things you find easy and spend a bit more time on things you find more difficult, instead of an entire class having to be in the same place at the same time.
- That being the case, we will be going through a few of the more difficult points as a group on the projector when we get to them (see below)
- Follow along with the instructions as closely as you can
- Look carefully at the pictures and screenshots - click on any picture to enlarge it and see more detail
- If the Creator students want to download anything from the Asset Store, they should stick to things like simple map objects, textures, sounds and so on. Loading in random enemies, weapons and so on are going to at best not work at all with the framework they are working with, but more likely break things by adding all sorts of scripts that they will have no idea how to setup properly! Make sure you keep an eye on what they are downloading as it can be very easy to quickly break things by inserting complex things from the asset store.
- Point out how the coloured bullet points in the instructions match the annotations - they are there to help!
- DON'T just try to look at the pictures and complete the step without reading the text - you will get stuck very quickly and won't have an enjoyable experience
- Explain the stamp cards (see below)
- Save their work regularly in case Unity crashes - it does not autosave!
Guidelines for Tutors
- All of the tutorials are on this site, in either the Creator or Developer categories.
- One of your main challenges for this course, especially with the campers doing the Developer track, is keeping them focused on what is a difficult (and therefore potentially frustrating at times) course for the entirety of the session. It is all too easy for them to start playing other games/watching videos etc. if they get frustrated with what they are trying to do - it will require encouragement and keeping a close control of what is going on in the classroom on your part. There is a lot of material to get through so wasting time is the last thing they want to do!
- A tool to help you with this is the stamp card - the idea is to help the students want to work through each tutorial in order, as after completing the tutorial and showing you their progress they will get a stamp on their card. This both gives them a goal and a reason to work through the tutorials in order - it is very important (especially in the Developer course) that they don't miss things out as otherwise they won't understand things that later tutorials will assume knowledge of. Them showing you their progress and you giving them a stamp is also a good opportunity for you to give them some positive feedback and encouragement, and a good way of you keeping track of the progress of the students as well.
- Depending on your group of students, there are several parts of the course in particular that they might find difficult, or could benefit from being gone over again as a group on the projector at the start/end of a session. This also gives you a good way of breaking up longer sessions of everyone working on their own! You are very welcome to pick and choose topics to do this with, however we have some suggestions for the creator and developer courses in the two plan documents below (highlighted in yellow).
- Sometimes at Winchester, you need to plug the headphones into the computers before booting up, otherwise the sound won't work at all (will have a red cross in taskbar and not output until you reboot with headphones plugged in).
First Session
At the very start of the course, it's always good to do a few group activities before jumping straight into the course. We would suggest that:
- Start with some sort of icebreaker activity - it doesn't really matter what this is and there are a huge variety out there, however you will of course need to think through this in advance, especially if you are running the course with another tutor!
- Progress onto a short quiz/presentation (link here|new_window=true) - this is just a series of screenshots from lots of different games, many of which were created with Unity. Split the group into 2 teams and run it as a mini quiz show where they have to be the first to correctly guess the name of the game in the picture - you will be surprised how many they will know! This is a nice follow on from the initial icebreaker activity and gets them thinking and excited about the course they are about to do
- Next, explain about the 2 different strands to the course, and ask the 11/12+ students to decide which one they want to follow. Load up the complete projects in Unity first (links at the top of this guide) and show them what the final product looks like for the Creator course, and the same for the developer course with also looking at the large amount of code they are going to learn and create. Highlight the differences and make sure they are aware that the Developer course is difficult - again, they don't need any experience to do it, but just make sure they are aware that it will require them to put in some effort to get some good results as it is more difficult, but of course they will learn more detail about Unity in the end.
- Once you have explained the two options and whilst they are thinking about it, run through the Rules for Students as detailed above, explaining about stamp sheets etc. and showing them supporting things (such as this documentation system) on the projector where necessary.
- Next, do a tour of the Unity workspace, showing them how to login and so on as detailed in the first guide. They can also read through this themselves when they start on their computers but showing as a group as well will help to reinforce the concepts.
- Finally, depending on what course they want to do, assign them a computer to use for the week - it is strongly suggested that all of the students doing the same course sit next to each other as then they will be able to help each other instead of being distracted by other campers doing a different course
- Once they are seated, explain how to login to the system and get them started on the first guide
- Hand out the stamp cards
One of the first things they will need to do is create their own Unity ID to login to the software. To do this (explained in the student guides as well) they will need to use an email address that they can access there and then to confirm their email. This shouldn't be a problem for most, however sometimes the younger students aren't able to do this/don't have one at all. In this case, if they signup with with firstInitial.lastName@techcamp.org.uk, the confirmation email will be sent to the Technical Manager who looks after the catchall email address for techcamp.org.uk (basically you can send an email to anything@techcamp.org.uk and they will receive it if the email address doesn't already exist). They will be expecting these emails during the first session on the Monday and will activate the accounts as soon as they come through. Whilst students are waiting they can start reading through the first tutorials.
Subsequent Sessions
After this first session, as previously detailed the campers are free to progress at their own rates through the course with help from you. Where possible and practical, try to start the sessions by doing quick recap on the projector of what they have just been working on, or things they have been finding difficult, to make sure they understand everything they are doing and avoid every session being exactly the same as the last one!
Once they are starting to have some playable games, it can work well to gather them around the projector by group (e.g. just the creators or just developers), and get them to show off their games to each other. This allows you to break up the sessions a bit so they aren't just on their own all the time, and hopefully might inspire them to add some different ideas and features to their own games that they like from other peoples'.
Final Day
It is important that all of the students have completed the tutorials on building and distribution, so that they can create an executable version of their game that they can easily take home and run, as well as taking home all of their project files so that they can continue working in Unity at home. If they haven't made it to this part by lunchtime, make sure to get them to skip ahead and complete this tutorial before they run out of time!
At the end of the last session, they will need to copy their project files onto their memory sticks so that they can take them home. As the project folders contain thousands of tiny files, this can take a while - get them to zip the folder first and then copy it onto their stick which will be much quicker! Make sure to leave enough time to do this so it isn't a mad rush in the last 2 minutes of the last session.....
It will be very difficult/impossible to recover project files from computers after the camp if they forget to take things home on their memory sticks - please feel free to tell them this to make sure they remember to do so!
If you want, you could even get everyone to do this half an hour or so before the end, and then have a show and tell of everyone's games by running the executable file for each game on the projector so that everyone can show of their work - this way you know everyone has a working game to take home as well!
It is also likely that parents will come round at the end of the last session to see what their children have been doing and talk to you as well, or there will be a whole camp show and tell session elsewhere - the Camp Manager will talk to you about this well in advance of the last day.
Packing Up
There is very little pack up for this course - just make sure the workstations are left in a clean and organised state.