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Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

  • 1.  Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-11-2024 03:48 PM

    What are your students doing as we finish out the year.

    My Game Dev 1 classes are doing a tabletop game jam. I used a randomizer to spit out a prompt for each period. 3rd period is doing "Chaos", 4th is "Darkness"

    My Game Dev 2 (Graphics) students propose their own final, so they are making a variety of pixel art stuff and blender things.



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    Brian Bautista k12teacher
    Citrus Heights CA
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  • 2.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-11-2024 04:01 PM
    My students are working on a long-term projects in groups of 3-5. After 5+ years of trying, I am finally doing a collaboration with the new digital art teacher. Each team of 3-5 game designers in my class is working with 2 artists from our Commercial Art 2 CTE class. It is the first time and has had it's bumps, but has been really cool. The students are communicating with the artists, walking over to that class, setting meeting times as a whole team. It has been really interesting.

    My class did a 2 week sprint at the end of November to get a playable prototype without art up and running, to test the controls and gameplay. They posted these to Unity Play in WebGL format.

    After returning from Thanksgiving break they are working on the main 3 week sprint to fill out art, level design, and implement main gameplay. Before we leave, students will again publish their updated version to Unity Play in WebGL format.

    When we return from Christmas break we are having other classes playtest our games, and then spending a 2 week sprint improving and polishing the games. We will post the final games on Itch.io in WebGL format.

    Then we switch to 3D at the end of January.

    --
    Brendan Dilloughery
    Mathematics & Computer Science Teacher
    National Board Certified Teacher
    Mountain View High School



    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-11-2024 04:06 PM
    Are these going up on itch or something at the end?

    --



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  • 4.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-11-2024 04:07 PM
    Yeah, we use Unity Play for all the prototypes mid project, but our final builds go up on our itch.io page at the end. I have some solid students this year. I'm excited to see what their end projects look like.




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  • 5.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-11-2024 05:27 PM

    Level 1: presenting to a panel their board/card game based on an historical event. They have been working on these games for 6 weeks on and off and have to produce the game with accompanying art and physical assets, a rules document (hardest part of the whole process), and a Sell Sheet for marketing.

    Level 2: adding functionality (some stuff I covered, some I didn't so they have to research) to some of their prototypes from throughout the semester (different enemies, making things spawn at different rates/percentages, randomizing colors of assets, etc.). These are all in Unity.

    Level 3: Mad dash to get their projects done for SkillsUSA. Working in teams of 2-4 they have built puzzle-platformers with steampunk aesthetics. They have to submit: a truly long game design doc from a provided template, a marketing plan, a 5-7 minute video about their design and project outcomes, a portfolio of level design and concept art, and a game prototype with core functionality. It is A LOT this year. When we return from break they have to get their resumes done and probably a another take of their videos to turn in everything Friday January 10th.



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    Wesley Jeffries k12teacher
    Riverside CA
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-12-2024 08:24 AM

    My Game Design students are working on finishing their personal project in Unity.  They have do develop a game that is at least playable. I'm not worried about whether they get the visuals perfected, just something that they designed and uses code.

    In my CSA class, as a fun end of semester project, we are re creating the school, to scale, with Minecraft Education.  Its a fun team effort.



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    John Hadenfeldt k12teacher
    Grand Island NE
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-12-2024 09:58 AM

    That sounds awesome building out the school like that.



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    Brian Bautista k12teacher
    Citrus Heights CA
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 12-12-2024 03:40 PM
    It's been a lot of fun so far.  I've got some Minecraft experts, and my project leader wants to be an aerospace engineer so he is VERY particular with the planning.


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    John Hadenfeldt k12teacher
    Grand Island NE
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 01-29-2025 10:54 AM
    My students finally finished their final 2D projects. These were about 7-8 weeks. We ran three 2.5 week sprints in groups of 3-5 during December and January. I'm really happy with how all of the games turned out.

    Here they are in case you want to check them out:




    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 01-29-2025 03:57 PM

    sweet, I will check it out when I get home!



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    Brian Bautista k12teacher
    Citrus Heights CA
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 11:03 AM

    These are really neat!   How did you get the games to the point where they can be accessed just via the internet?  

    Is there a certain way to publish them and post them?

    (I'm in my second year of offering Game Design and I'm hoping I have 1 or two that can be published by the end of the year)



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    John Hadenfeldt k12teacher
    Grand Island NE
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    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 11:08 AM
    Two ways are the easiest:

    1. WebGL Publisher package. Add it from the package manager. Switch build type in build settings to WebGL. In the top menu, you can now go to Tools --> WebGL Publisher --> Build and Publish
    This hosts it on Unity Play. This is super quick and we use this for mid-project playtesting and sharing. These expire after some amount of time, like a few months. I also find the website to sometimes be glitchy/laggy but that seems to have gotten better.

    2. Create a WebGL build and host it on Itch.io.
    This lasts forever? Create an itch.io account. Install the WebGL module with Unity. Create a WebGL build. This will be an index.html and around one or two folders. Select all of this, right click and send to a zip file. Then upload this to itch.io as a playable HTML build. You might have to play with a few things like dimensions, or sometimes compression settings in Unity (but that seems fixed).

    Shoot me an email at brendan.dilloughery@mvla.net when you get closer and I can give you more details

    --
    Brendan Dilloughery
    Mathematics & Computer Science Teacher
    National Board Certified Teacher
    Mountain View High School



    Original Message


  • 13.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 11:11 AM

    What grade level are the students, and is this their first year? The diver game is really impressive.



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    Wesley Jeffries k12teacher
    Riverside CA
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    Original Message


  • 14.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 12:46 PM
    The class is a mix of grade levels and skill levels. We have 3 years of CS and my Game Design pathway. Students in the class have 0-3 years of previous coding experience.

    All three kids in the diving game group are seniors with a lot of coding experience, and one loves game design and did all of the art herself.

    The other groups are a mix. I have 4 freshman, 5 sophomores, 6 juniors and 10 seniors.

    Our CS CTE pathways are a bit funky.
    My pathway is:  CS1 --> Game Design
    Our software engineer pathway is:   CS2 --> CS3             (CS2 = AP CS A)

    Most common/advanced pathway is:  CS1 --> CS2 --> CS3 --> Game Design

    But our school is "Open Enrollment" meaning we aren't allowed to have required prerequisites. Kids can sign up for any math/science/CTE classes they want. It can be frustrating at times, but just means I get a really interesting mix in the class. I would say about 30-40% of my class are solid coders, another 40-50% of the students have some coding ability, and about 10-20% of the class has no, or very little, coding skills.




    Original Message


  • 15.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 12:47 PM

    No Prereqs sounds like a nightmare.



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    Brian Bautista k12teacher
    Citrus Heights CA
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    Original Message


  • 16.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 12:58 PM
    It might have been at first, but it has been that way the whole time I've been here (9 years) and isn't too bad.

    Our biggest problem is just SUPER intensely motivated parents and students overloading themselves with literally every single class in their schedule being AP/Honors and us not limiting that. Every kid thinks they need a weighted GPA of like 4.6 or 4.7 and a huge percent of the graduating population has that GPA (like 50%). This leads to a lot of stress, depression, and anxiety. That is our biggest problem here.

    But in my class, it isn't so bad. We work in groups of 3-5 on most every project. I just make sure every group has at least one solid coder. Most freshman that sign up for the class are pretty motivated.

    This year, for the first time, we are collaborating with our school's new CTE commercial art class. They made some of the game art for the games. It was a first attempt at collaboration and worked fairly well.




    Original Message


  • 17.  RE: Wednesday Chat - Finals/Midterms season

    Posted 02-10-2025 05:11 PM

    Year 1 students worked for 4-6 weeks on and off on an analog game based on an Historical Event. They made all the art assets by hand, did a cost projection of print costs on GameCrafter, made a rules doc with illustrations, a one-page sell sheet, and each team presented their game to a panel for 10ish minutes the day of the final. The best games this year were a game about oil extraction in Abu Dhabi (mechanically light, but good art/documentation), Arab Spring (area control), Chernobyl (weak game but crushed their artwork and presentation).

    2nd years had coding tasks to complete like adding a new enemy to a game they did previously, adding buttons to the UI, and adding new collectables.

    3rd years were finalizing their submissions for SkillsUSA, so Unity builds, marketing plans, design documentation, resumes; it's a whole thing.



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    Wesley Jeffries k12teacher
    Riverside CA
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    Original Message


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