[game_edu] Suggestions for HS Game Design Software

[Simon Etienne Rozner]

Hi Charlie,

Gamemaker as well as Construct are great for beginners to get some simple 2d prototypes up and running. If you teach about game design, thats more important to get something working quickly. More advanced and more time intense is Actionscript. Now also allows games to be built in 3d with stage 3d. It is quite to pick up and ideal for course durations as yours and students can focus on implementing game mechanics and create a good user experience instead of building engine foundations a lot. Also, it is very stable to work with. There are many great engines built on actionacript too such as flixel and isoLib. I suggest for starters the book game programming university. Gets you right into the thick of it and super for instructors to assist in creating a curriculum. Don't use it as is for class  directly though.

Let me know if you wanna know more. I fared very well over here at Digipen teaching gamedesign students in flash and As3.

Cheers,
Simon

Simon Rozner
Lecturer
DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore

On Oct 12, 2011, at 6:21, Coach Payne <coachpayne at aol.com> wrote:


> Hi Folks:

> 

> Quick question - I'm developing a mini-term introduction to Game Design course at a high school.  In a course I taught in a prior school, a one-semester block course (90 minutes/day, 5 days/week), students used Alice, Scratch, Python, Ruby, and Game Maker to make games.  The favorites were Game Maker and Scratch.  I'd be interested in what the professional community might suggest.  I've used Ian Schreiber's material for a lot of my resource material.  An idea of what I've done in the past may be found at http://dpsgaming.wikispaces.com/ .

> 

> Second question - when I lived near the Research Triangle, I was able to talk directly to game development professionals, and attended events in the area.  The area to which I've relocated seems to have a dearth of game developers.  I'd love to develop a relationship with people who REALLY make games, even at a distance.  I've had Skype-conferences in the past with West Coast developers, during which time the students would ask questions and interact with developers.  As a side note, the school where I'm currently teaching is an independent girls' school, but the minicourse would also include boys from their adjacent school.  I might be interested in developing this into a larger, perhaps year-long course at both schools, should I develop an interest in the idea.  I'm a physics teacher, but I taught computer science for many years.  (I'd love to teach Game Development with C++ or Java, but that's not going to happen in a miniterm!)

> 

> Thanks.  I really would appreciate suggestions!

> 

> Charlie Payne, M.Ed.

> Teacher of Physics

> St. Catherine's School

> Richmond, VA

> _______________________________________________

> game_edu mailing list

> game_edu at igda.org

> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_edu

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_edu/attachments/20111012/f6d251d7/attachment.html>