[Yr7-10it] Games Programming, Visual Basic, Game On, and other fun stuff

[ppascoe at sfx.vic.edu.au]

Hi, 

 

I am a first timer "Nube" doing a Y10 Games themed Programming course. 

 

We started off with Gamemaker using recommended resources from edulists and
VITTA like Newman College WA website, and the Tasmanian Government website
(Great How to Videos etc on these sites).  This has gone really well.  There
are four girls in the class of 24 students, and they have produced excellent
folio items and supply superb work quality to the class, (rather than
quantity in student numbers). 

 

I went into the city this week (ACMI at Fed Square) to see "Game On",  which
was superb, and I was only disappointed that my VIT Card did not get me any
concessional discount.  The rest was great. Take your own kids with you, as
they get $10 student concession entry, and will happily spend the whole
afternoon there playing the games (cheaper than $15 movie tickets!) 

 

If you want to culturally round the day off, go and see the Medieval Books
free exhibition at the State Library ("Medieval Imagination") and perhaps
nerdishly think about the similarities between web page banners of today,
and the intricate illumination paintings in the texts...... like I naturally
did.  

 

 

Second Term at school we are moving on to Games Programming using the FREE
version of Visual Basic .NET Express.  

 

Over the Holidays I have been doing some "self-PD'ing" working through two
books, which I recommend to anyone interested to buy through Cengage
Publishing online like I did : 

 

Graeme Summers book "Game Programming with Visual Basic.NET. 

ISBN-13: 9780170131254   ISBN-10: 0170131254   (and it comes with a CD) 

More Info at: web page: http://secondary.cengage.com.au/title/0170131254/633

 

Also Graeme Summers other Thomson book, "Programming with Visual Basic :
Introduction to Visual Basic.NET Third Edition" which also has a great CD
with it. 

ISBN-13: 9780170104104   ISBN-10: 0170104109  Webpage:
http://www.newhouse.co.nz/default.aspx?et=1&ei=366&subSiteID=352&ibcClientID
=2570400&ibcClientToken=232815511726&bookID=12200&categoryID=2510  

 

- Check out the free chapter PDFs on this at those websites to get an idea
of what the books are like. 

 

One thing to note is that on Graeme's spinning dice game, I had problems
using the supplied .GIF files of the dice, (kept getting horrible blurring
of the numbers). 

However, once I took them into Adobe Fireworks and re-saved them as .BMP
files and used these instead; everything became good. 

 

Another thing is to get Graeme's PDF notes about solving VB.NET Express
problems with "Overloads" from the VITTA website. (Do a search on Graeme
Summers"). 

 

 

Finally, one other useful item I plan to use in Term 2, came from this
month's "PC Authority" magazine, May 2008, page 87.  It has a tutorial on
how to use this free 3-dimensional drawing software called "Blender".  So we
will do 1 or 2 lessons on Blender, to show the Y10 Gamers the type of step
up it is from 2D drawing to 3D rendered drawings. 

 

Anyway, "Game Over" for now, 

 

Paul Pascoe 

IT Teacher  

St Francis Xavier College Beaconsfield.

ppascoe at sfx.vic.edu.au    (Work) 

 

 

 

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