The second game development summer camp

Yes, the second Game Development Summer Camp had already been started!

Basic programming class

Like the previous summer  camp, we had a trip to EA in the first day. It was a fun trip. In the morning the kids learnt about game: what make game fun, which people are needed to make games, and brainstorming. Then in the evening, after lunch, we went to EA. The kids learnt a lot about game development process and got some suggestion from the professional to prepare for their career either as artist or programmer in game industry. All kids thought the trip to EA was the most fun part of the day.

Introduction to Game Maker

The curriculum for the second day, I believe all kids thought, was more interesting that the first day. In the morning they had basic programming class then introduced to the technology they were going to use to make their game, GameMaker and in the afternoon start the process of making their game. Chris did his lecture pretty neat and as I could tell, better than his first lecture on the first mobile game summer camp. He did it slowly that every kids could catch up. Even those kids whose yesterday worried me for their lacking of computer usage knowledge, could follow the lecture perfectly.

Cade, one of the kid, told us that he ever used GameMaker before. It worried me a bit that he would feel bored during the tutorial class. Gladly, he was OK with the class and in fact, he did more than what we taught during the class! I hoped he won't be bored as well tomorrow with the slow tutorial class and I couldn't wait to see how he would progress with his game.

Around 11 PM, Mikeh and Becky came to ask the kids playtest the NEF game we were working on. It was a good playtesting. We found that some kids had trouble understanding the game and some struggling with the control as we (me) hadn't put the control help yet.

Right after lunch, we divided the kids into team who interested in art and whose interested in programming. Thankfully, there were a balanced number of people who interested in either art or programming. There were 8 people interested in arts and the rest 7 interested in programming. So, we paired each programmer with each artist with one team has 2 artists. We didn't mean to pair them up. It was a spur of change because we forgot to tell the kids to make the team of 2 during lunch. Well, pairing them up wasn't a bad idea at all. We only had one girl in this camp and she was eating alone yesterday. She didn't talk a lot with the other kids. If we asked the kid to pair themself, she might ended being a team of herself.

The second day afternoon was the time the kids discussed about their game and learnt art. Two of the team I was helping with used brainstorming method we used yesterday! They told me that the brainstorming session we had yesterday was really helpful. That was a encouraging thing!