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

Sat Apr 5 10:51:34 EST 2008

Hi Paul 

Your approaches sound interesting 

Like the idea to combining the ACMI visit with the Medieval Imagination
- there's a mix worth trying! 

(I'm also coming down again to ACMI this year - they ran a somewhat
tailored program for us last year - mix of their game culture /
programming discussion / with gamemaker tutorials in the afternoon - was
fun and lead to interesting spinoffs with Swinburne ) 

Be interested to hear how you go with the switch to VB.NET after
gamemaker - do they find it too much of a jump into language etc ; did
the 

GM concepts help? 

( I did it the other way last year, by necessity - and will do it your
way this year - semester 2 - might do some Alice / Scratch there as
well) 

Your dice comment reminded me of a roulette wheel I wrote in VB (VBA) in
Excel once 

(the maths coordinator at the time got nervous it might be perceived as
teaching gambling so due caution!) 

Here tis  http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/roulette.xls

Didn't finish the 2nd wheel - maybe of interest for a kid  

(needs macro security on medium (- tools macros security) 

interested to hear how VB.NET goes - have only used vb6

Good luck 

Cheers 

Rob 

________________________________

From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of
ppascoe at sfx.vic.edu.au
Sent: Thursday, 3 April 2008 7:44 AM
To: 'Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List'
Subject: [Yr7-10it] Games Programming, Visual Basic, Game On,and other
fun stuff

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&ibcClie
ntID=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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