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About the Course
Game Design is a 5 day course, run in conjunction with the Game Graphics course. This course introduces the campers to using GameMaker, a powerful game development environment, where they make several games of their own and learn some basic scripting as well.
We're trying to get the students to:
- Understand the basic elements of games - the idea, the artistic resources and the technical programming
- Have an introduction to GameMaker
- Experience both some drag-and-drop and textual programming
- Make their own games to take home
- Learn about the different types and genres of games
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.
It is worth noting however that at some points students may be allowed outside in pairs to record sounds - you need to be aware of who has gone and how long they have been outside of the classroom. You will need to give them a prescribed area that they can go if not directly accompanied by a staff member, and you must give them a specific limited area that they are allowed to be in.
Please Also See:
General Workshops Risk Assessment
The Kit List
Student consumables (one per student to take home)
- USB flash drive
Student non-consumables (one per student, not to take home)
- 1 x Headphones
Preparing Yourself
Like any practical course you'll find this much easier to teach if you have run through it yourself as completely as possible first.
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 videos on the Code College website
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 trial version of GameMaker Studio 2 from the YoYo Games website.
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 some of the games you have made by following the instructions on Code College.
- 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 GameMaker Studio 2 onto the computers, and setup the associated student accounts for them to login.
Pre-Course Setup
- Make sure students come with their flash drives (if run at a camp where we supply them at the start of the week).
Rules for Students
This course is primarily delivered by a number of video tutorials. For this to work well, the students should:
- Follow along with the videos, doing exactly the same steps
- Pause frequently so that they can do just one or two steps at a time
- Rewind if necessary to watch steps again
- Save their work regularly in case GameMaker crashes
Guidelines for Tutors
- All of the tutorials are on www.codecollege.co.uk, not this site unlike other courses - login details for the campers will vary between venues and these will be communicated to you via the Technical Manager.
- You will also have your own personal login to run through the course beforehand, which will be emailed to you in advance.
*Game Maker, like many game development systems can occasionally crash - remind the students to save their work regularly
- If a step appears not to have worked, check that you have pressed the 'OK' button to save any changes on the current screen (or the button with a picture of a tick on some screens)
- Sometimes funny things can happen if objects are placed outside of a room. By dragging the 'view port' around while in the room view, you can check if any objects are outside of the room and delete them (the outside of the room is shown as a checkerboard pattern).
Running the Session
As this course is mostly video based, it would be very easy for the campers to come into each session and immediately start watching a video. To avoid this, the tutor(s) give a short introductory demonstration or group discussion at the start of each half day about what the campers will be doing for the rest of the session. The rate at which campers will progress through this half of the course cam be much more varied than Game Graphics, and so we have given a variety of ideas for activities based on roughly which Code College modules have been completed, instead of a set schedule for each day. It is up to you to decide which of these are most appropriate at which time, and equally feel free to add/embellish/modify as you see fit depending on your group.
In general, before each session you need to have come up with what you are going to say/do, and run through it at least to yourself so you are comfortable with it.
Intro Activity 1
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 1 + 2
Introduction topic: 2D Game Genres
Introduce yourself and give a quick summary of the course, and what they will have achieved by the end.
Ask the campers to try and come up with 4/5 different game styles that suit 2D graphics, giving an example for each.
Here are some examples that can be shown if help is needed or to show after they have given some answers.
Top down shooter/fixed shooter - e.g. Space Invaders
Platformer - e.g. Super Mario Bros
RPG - e.g. Pokémon
Arcade - e.g. Mortal Kombat
Pacman
Action/Adventure - e.g. GTA
Intro Activity 2
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 3-7
Introduction topic: Types of input
Show the following 3 control types
Get the campers to decide which of these games suit which input type and why (Most of these games can be argued to each of the different controls)
Above games in order:
Super Smash Bros Brawl, Piano Tiles, Hearthstone, Forza, Dota, Battlefield
If they are unsure where to start you could give some examples such as:
- Controllers tend to be good for driving games because of analogue input
- Keyboard + mouse is good for MOBA games such as Dota due to the vast number of controls and input required for the game
- Touch screen/smartphone good for games with simple controls or fast tapping e.g. Geometry Dash/The Impossible Game
Intro Activity 3
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 8-10
Introduction topic: Good game UI
Explain to the campers the benefits and importance of a good GUI:
- How many clicks does it take the user to get to where they want to be (inventory menus etc)
- Making the most of screen space available without being too crowded
- Is it obvious what each thing on the screen is for
- Pros and cons of cool design/animation over functionality
An example of bad UI
This game is supposed to be a real-time fighting game but there is so much going on in the screen that you'd spend too much time figuring out what's what and keeping track of everything that the game wouldn't be enjoyable.
An example of good UI
The inventory menu from Dead Space has a really slick look but manages to cover a good amount of the screen without being too cluttered
Functionality vs looks
The Pipboy from Fallout is definitely up there with cool animations/good looking interfaces but after playing the game for not too long the animation time and lack of screen space covered starts to take away from the experience rather than adding to it.
Pipboy animation
On the other end of the spectrum you have games like Morrowind where (bearing in mind it's an older game) the looks aren't particularly spectacular, but you can resize and add any windows you like to any part of the screen depending on which things you like to quickly access etc making for a great user interface.
Intro Activity 4
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 11 + 12
Introduction topic: Game movement
Get the campers to think about movement in games, for example, (this activity might be better for younger campers) get two or 3 volunteers where 1 is representing the "player" and any others are representing "enemies". The player can only walk around but the enemies can run (carefully) with the player trying to catch the enemies. This should help them understand how it's important to think about the mechanics of the game and how things need to be tweaked as they design their game to make for the best user experience.
Could discuss how this is definitely necessary for the Maze Game but for the Bat and Ball game could arguably have the ball faster than the bat to give the game a higher skill level so the player has to judge where the ball will go.
Intro Activity 5
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 13-18
Introduction topic: Game Mechanics
Get the campers to discuss either in groups or with everyone different ideas for game mechanics such ways of scoring.
For example:
- Different block types worth different amounts of points
- Different amounts of points for ball breaking and destroying blocks with bullets
- Some blocks could pass through when breaking and some rebound the ball
- Unbreakable blocks, etc
Intro Activity 6
Sections of Code College to complete: Units 19-24
Introduction topic: Testing
Get the campers to try each other's games and suggest ways to improve their game.
Explain a little on Alpha/Beta testing in the game industry and why it is important to get so many people to test games.
Things to cover
- Finding bugs
- Feedback on design/gameplay
- Ease of use
- Does it make sense
Packing Up
There is very little pack up for this course - just make sure all headphones are tied up neatly and the workstations are left in a clean and organised state.