MrW's Computing Blog

We are going to make a WW2 Blackout game

LF1 Computational Thinking

• Read CT principles poster
• When have you used each one before?

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