Year 9 Game Development 3 - Solo Project: Start

• Computer Science
• Lower Secondary (Key Stage 3)

Game Development 3 - Solo Project: Start

Key Vocabulary:

Game engine

Placeholder

Asset

Script

Sprite

Object

Today's lesson objectives:

Discover the importance of game engines.

Learn how to setup the Gamemaker environment for your solo project.

Familiarise yourself with the program.

Create some assets for use in Gamemaker.

Starter & recall - Drag and drop

Allowing a two way flow of information between a computer and it's user/ responding to a user's input.

Features of a game, such as it's plot and the way it is played or feels.

A blueprint or template that defines the attributes and methods that objects of a specific type will have.

Basing classes on another class.

A fundamental building block of Object Oriented Programming, representing a real-world entity with specific characteristics.

Interactive

Gameplay

Class

Inheritance

Object

Game engine

🥈 Silver question: Why is it rare for a solo developer to create their own game engine?

Gold Task 1: Setup Checklist

1. Create a new folder inside your computer science/year9 folder named:  "Gamemaker_test".
2. Open the Gamemaker application on your computer.
3. On the home page select: New.
4. Select project type: Game.
5. Select Template: Blank Game.
6. Rename the project; "Placeholder_paradise".
7. Change the save path to your Gamemaker_test folder. your screen should look like the image on the right ->
8. Press the lets go button.
9. Take a screenshot of your project folder with the Placeholder_paradise folder visable. 
10. Save the screenshot as you will upload this on the next slide.

A showcase of Gamemaker's capabilities

Upload a screenshot here, containing your project folder and it's contents.
Write "F" as your answer below.

🥇Gold Part 2: Think;

What do you think "placeholder" means?

🥇Gold part 2: Pair;

What do you think "placeholder" means?

🥇Gold part 2: Share; What do you think "placeholder" means?

 Gamemaker

Open up Gamemaker

🥉 Platinum question 1: Why would a developer decide to create their own game engine, despite the drawbacks?

🥉 Platinum task 2 Create Some Placeholders

• We need some placeholders so we can get the game workingbefore we work on the art 

and other assets. 

• You can right click on the folders inside the Asset browser, on the right of the window

by default. See this image --->

• In the sprite folder, create four sprites with the following names:

"spr_bullet", "spr_player", "spr_rock_big", "spr_rock_small"

• One by one, double click them one by one and select edit image, Gamemaker has a 

simple bitmap editor built in. 

• Do a quick doodle to represent; a bullet, some rocks and the player so that you know

which way they're facing (an arrow will suffice).

Extension: Figure out how to edit the background of room 1, if you get stuck, ask the teacher. Pick a theme for an asteroids-like game (maybe it's a unicorn firing muffins at goblins instead of a spaceship shooting rocks). Tweak your placeholders toward your theme.

Screenshot all of your placeholders and share them here, then write "I love Computer Science" in the box below.