Course Description

 

Games made during the course include: Maze Shifter, Tumble Blocks, Jaywalking, Pac-Man clone, Q*bert clone, Breakout, Martian Invaders, Tank attack, and first-person view!

 

On average, students will complete 4-5 hours of work per week during the 9-week course. Students can also add to the games they create during the course or create their own games not included in class assignments. There is no limit on the number of games they can create! This course will follow a “flexible schedule” and does not have scheduled online meetings. This flexible schedule allows students to work at any time, 24/7 for the duration of the 9-week course. Thus, keeping all students working at a similar pace but not requiring them to attend a set online class meeting time.

 

Each Monday morning (12:00 am Pacific) the tasks for the week will be unlocked and available to enrolled students via the free online Canvas portal (https://canvas.instructure.com/). Instructions on how to access Canvas will be emailed prior to the start date of the course. The weekly checklists include reading notes and watching tutorial videos, creating your games, posting your games to the discussion forums, playing games created by other students and posting positive comments about those games in the discussion forum. Each class will have a  teacher that will participate in the online discussion forums to provide feedback and can always be reached via email and through Canvas.

 

To stay on track, students should follow the provided pacing guide for the week of which tasks should be completed each day (Mon-Fri). There is generally about 1 hour of work per day. Students should be sure to complete the weekly tasks before the next week of tasks are unlocked to stay on track. All game are created with *AgentCubes Online (ACO) software. ACO uses object-oriented programming to simplify the programming process while creating visually attractive and increasingly complex 3D video games. Because of this "low ceiling/high threshold" approach, prior coding and programming skills are not required. However, if you have some prior experience you can use your knowledge and skills to create more intricate games with advanced programming techniques.

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*ACO software accounts are included with the course fee for the duration of the course.