T5 Y5 Creating a game piece by piece

Mar 022022
 

LF1:  Decomposing the game

  • Have a go playing this game.
  • Then have a think from a coding point of view.   How many different elements can you list – characters, moving parts, actions, consequences, backgrounds…?
  • By answering the questions above, you have decomposed  the game = broken it up into simpler parts.  This is a great way of thinking about how to code something as you can code each simple part one at at a time.

LF2 Characters, actions and consequences

This whole unit will be thinking about those elements and how we can translate them into Scrach.

  • Characters and moving parts will be sprites
  • Actions will be blocks – may be movement blocks and control blocks
  • Consequences might be if…then blocks

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/502331640

Please let me know by commenting on this post if you get stuck or need another video later on…

Jungle Rush Sketch videos:

  1. Video 1  – Home screen – gliding on title, sprite and play button
  2. Video 2 – Move to play mode – title, play disappear, sprite to correct position
  3. Video 3 – Moving background – trees
  4. Video 4 – Sprite jumping
  5. Video 5 – More background – clouds
  6. Stage 6 – Enemy sprites
    1. Make a new sprite
    2. When it receives play message, show, go to the right hand side of screen, glide to left hand side of screen – keep doing this (forever).
    3. When green flag clicked, hide
    5. Electrify enemies
      1. instead of hide – what do you want to happen?
  7. Stage 7 – Back to home screen when dead; Two states home/play
    1. Enemy sprite code – when it hits the cat (forever, if, touching cat sprite), broadcast – new message “home”
    2. Replace all green flag code starters with “When I receive home” blocks
    3. Make one block with: when green flag clicked, broadcast home
  8. Stage 8 – Timer/score
    1. Variables: Make a new variable “Score”
    2. Two blocks:
      1. When I receive home, stop counting
      2. When I receive play, set to 0, start counting
  9. Can you announce the score before going back to the home screen?
    1. Change background? Sprite says score? Wait for a few seconds then go to home screen
    2. You could have a message called “score” for this?

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Y6 Create a Scratch game

Feb 272022
 

Young coders competition

This year’s theme is ‘My World, Our Planet’. We are looking for participants to create a reactive game which encourages children to take care of natural resources and improve the environment. The opportunities are endless and you are in charge of creativity!
Think about the content of your game, we are looking for something engaging, fun, interactive and reactive!

Project pack
  • You can enter individually or as a team of 2-6. 
  • You must design a reactive computer game using Scratch based on the theme My World our Planet
  • The game needs to comply to the PEGI 7 rating. More details on the PEGI rating system can be found via the PEGI website below: What do the labels mean?
  • After you have finished making your game, you must submit it to your teacher. Make sure instructions for the game, notes and credits are included. 
  • To submit your game you need your teacher to submit it here with your name, team name and a link to your Scratch game.

The judging criteria are as follows:

Functionality and innovation (50%)Marketing (25%)Community responsibility (25%)
Does the game work as intended?Is the game easy to use?Is the game imaginative?Is the game reactive?Does the game include original and well written code?Aesthetics of the game – Does the game display correctly and look nice?Creativity and design of your game’s namePresentation of your game Is your game accessible for its target audience? I.e., is it suitable for the age range you built it for?How does your game address the theme of Keeping yourself and others safe?

Idea generation

  1. Look at different types of games that can be made with Scratch – scroller, platform, maze, choice – can you find or think of any other types?
  2. Come up with some ideas of games to fit the theme – the more ideas, the better
  3. Share ideas with others, form teams or decide to work on your own.

Next steps…

  • Create game brief/plan
  • Decompose elements
  • Decompose code

LF Decompose your game idea

  1. Fill out this form: Y6 Scratch game
  2. If time, start to create characters and backgrounds in Scratch
    1. If you are working in a team, how can we transfer sprites from team members to the project?
    2. Do shared class accounts work?

Term 4 Computing

Feb 222021
 

Here are some Computing and other activities for this term.

  1. Y3 Create a safari scene in Scratch
  2. Y4 Create a Roman maze game in Scratch
  3. Y5 Create a jungle game piece by piece
  4. Y6 Create a WW2 Blackout game in Scratch

Other Computing skills

Use Computing in other subjects

  • Create a Coggle mind map of your topic (See Y5T5 unit)
  • Create an animation using JIT5, Scratch, Gifpaint or an phone/tablet animation app – see Y4 animated story unit
  • Use j2e5 templates or visual tools to explore ideas in your topic or complete topic work set by your teachers.
  • Install Google Expeditions  on a phone or tablet and explore places related to your topics

Other activities

  •     Thinking starters – great for getting your brain going.  Learning Zone leave a comment with your ideas.
  •   Zooniverse – people-powered research – take part in real scientific research on a range of projects
  •    #DoGoodFromHome!

Y3 LF Scratch animated words

Mar 022020
 
  1. Go to Scratch
  2. Click on 
  3. Click on this one  
  4. Choose a positive word, eg JOY, FUN, HOPE, HAPPY, YAY, PLAY…
  5. Follow the instructions to bring your word to life
  6. Can you make the animations suit the word?

LF2 Using different blocks

  1. Go to Scratch
  2. file – Load from your computer
  3. Google Drive – double click on your project from last week
  4. Can you make your letters do different things?
    1. Make a noise when you click on them 
    2. Spin around when your click on them 
    3. Grow and shrink when you click on them 
    4. Change colour when you click on them 
    5. Keep changing colour              
    6. Glide up and down when green flag clicked  
    7. Glide in from a random position when you click the green flag
    9. What other ideas have you got?  Can you find blocks that do it?

Y6: Scratch Blackout Game

Feb 252020
 

We are going to make a WW2 Blackout game

LF1 Computational Thinking

LF2 Game brief – decompose

A game company would like you to make a WW2 blackout themed computer game featuring, the landscape of a UK city threatened by the Blitz.  The aim is to put up blackout curtains in the daytime before nightfall so that the bombers will pass harmlessly overhead during the night.  Successive screen will become harder with more windows to cover and bigger buildings.  Wardens will be patrolling.  You may have to find or buy blackout material.  Depending on how completely you blackout the city, bombs will fall.  How long can you keep your city from being destroyed – a percentage score could drop after each night of bombing….

  • Work through CT principles for the brief
    • 1 Don’t panic – understand the problem
      • Questions and answers, notes
    • 2 Break it down (decomposition)
      • Make a list of characters, backgrounds, objects
      • What do each need to do?
      • Make a list of simple steps – these need to be as small as possible
    • 3 Use your knowledge and experience
      • In Scratch – remind yourselves of the different types of blocks and what they do
    • 4 Create a plan (algorithm)
      • Take your steps from stage 2 one at a time and use Scratch blocks to code them
    • 5 Try it!
      • Test it out often
    • 6 Evaluate
      • What works?  What do you need to change? Tinker

Here is an example of decomposing – just looking at the main character, break it down into what we will need to code:

LF3 Drawing sprites, costumes and backgrounds

  • Refer to your notes from last week  (in j2e – Scratch Blackout Game)
  • Draw new sprites and costumes
  • Draw the background
  • By the end of the lesson, you must have at least a sketch of every sprite, costume and background.

Example video 2

LF3: Triggers and actions

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step ~ Ancient Chinese proverb

Take one single simple idea at a time and turn it into Scratch code.

For every thing you want to happen, there are two parts

  • Trigger – what sets it off
  • Action – what the consequence is

Examples of triggers:

  • Beginning of the game  
  • When keys are pressed 
  • When one object touches another object 
  • When one sprite touches a colour
  • When a play button clicked  
  • Other examples in Events blocks

Examples of actions

  • Turn the background dark (night time approaching) – repeat, change brightness effect by -10, wait 1 second
  • Sprite walking – forever, costume 1, costume 2
  • Keyboard controls move right – when right arrow pressed, change x by 5
  • Bomb dropping – go to random position, set y to (top of page), repeat 20, change y by -10
  • Bomb exploding – next costume, play sound

Example video 3

LF4 One step at a time

  1. Keep working on little bits of coding
  2. Feedback – How did that go? form
    1. List what you have coded, eg boy steps, keyboard controls, bomb drops

Y6 LF Code a Scratch game (3)

Apr 252019
 
  1. Darkness
    1. variable counting down
    2. Background brightness effect
  2. Movement
    1. follow mouse?
    2. arrow keys?
    3. left-right-jump? (+ platforms?)
  3. Lights out
  4. Disable movement at 0

Computational thinking

  1. Don’t panic! Understand the problem
    1. Game brief
    2. Q and A
  2. Simplify! (decomposition)
    1. Pick ONE part at a time
      1. Sky going dark
      2. Sprite moving UDLR
      3. Turn off lights when touched by sprite
  3. De ja vu?
    1. Have we done anything similar before?
    2. What Scratch blocks do you remember?
  4. Create a plan – algorithm
  5. Have a go…!

Game brief

A game company would like you to make a WW2 blackout themed computer game featuring, the landscape of a UK city threatened by the Blitz.  The aim is to put up blackout curtains in the daytime before nightfall so that the bombers will pass harmlessly overhead during the night.  Successive screen will become harder with more windows to cover and bigger buildings.  Wardens will be patrolling.  You may have to find or buy blackout material.  Depending on how completely you blackout the city, bombs will fall.  How long can you keep your city from being destroyed – a percentage score could drop after each night of bombing….

 

Y6 LF: Plan a Scratch game – decomposition (2)

Apr 042019
 

Computational thinking

  1. Don’t panic! Understand the problem
    1. Game brief
    2. Q and A
  2. Simplify! (decomposition)
    1. Pick ONE part at a time
      1. Sky going dark
      2. Sprite moving UDLR
      3. Turn off lights when touched by sprite
  3. De ja vu?
    1. Have we done anything similar before?
    2. What Scratch blocks do you remember?
  4. Create a plan – algorithm
  5. Have a go…!

Game brief

A game company would like you to make a WW2 blackout themed computer game featuring, the landscape of a UK city threatened by the Blitz.  The aim is to put up blackout curtains in the daytime before nightfall so that the bombers will pass harmlessly overhead during the night.  Successive screen will become harder with more windows to cover and bigger buildings.  Wardens will be patrolling.  You may have to find or buy blackout material.  Depending on how completely you blackout the city, bombs will fall.  How long can you keep your city from being destroyed – a percentage score could drop after each night of bombing….

 

Y4 Egyptian maze game

Mar 202019
 

CT principles poster

LF1 Logging on!

LF2 Movement controls

  1. Go to “My stuff” and click on your maze project
  2. (Original project =  https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/205492019/ _
  3. See inside
  4. Scratch cat code
    1. Make Scratch move up, down, left, right when you press the arrow keys:
      1. Events – when up arrow pressed…ScreenHunter_155 Feb. 22 08.16
      2. Up = change y by  5 ; Down = change y by -5ScreenHunter_157 Feb. 22 08.17
    2. Test it out by trying to get past the Egyptian god!

LF3 Choosing coordinates

  1. Look at the Egyptian God script – can you work out how it works?
  2. RH-click on the Egyptian god and duplicate to get two more – one for each level
  3. Change the x y numbers so they patrol left and right
  4. Test the game – make sure it is just possible to get past by going into the tunnels

LF 4 Use drawing tools

  1. Stage – Backdrops
  2. RH click to duplicate
  3. Edit the second backdrop to make a new level

LF5 Make sprites interact

  1. Scratch script
    1. Add blocks so that, when Scratch touches the door, the background changes
    2. Make a new set of blocks so that, when Scratch touches a baddie, it returns (go to…) to the start position
    3. How can we make Scratch only move when it is not touching the walls?
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