Additional Material: Video Games in Scratch

Summary

Over the years I have taught several different modules relating to Scratch. This module, on using Scratch to create "Video Games" was always a student favorite - lots of kids are motivated by video games. However, in the big picture of this course - a course where I am trying to teach you the Fundamentals of Programming - it eventually made sense to eliminate this topic from the main course content for three reasons:

1. This particular module doesn't ADD anything new of any real significance. It doesn't add new content. It just adds a new way of thinking about the content we have already covered.
2. The level of distributed computing and parallelism that goes into creating video games CAN be a bit overwhelming for some students. Your program can absolutely show me that you understand programming, but the video game wouldn't work because of a gotcha rather than a real misunderstanding.
3. There are a limited number of weeks in this course. Taking up a week for video games means I lose a week of practice on other topics later in the course.

Because of that, over time I have decided not to include it as a GRADED element of this course.

However, some teachers really appreciate still having access to some of my materials. This page gives you that access to these materials. You are welcome to use these for your own personal learning and/or to modify these materials for use with your own students (your classroom goals will be different from mine).

Key Concepts

As previously noted, this module will not add any new concepts as much as look at different ways to use those concepts we have been working with for the last few modules.

Lessons

The material in this module involves two separate sets of videos that produce two different types of video games. One focussing on they keyboard and one focussing on the mouse.

NOTE: These videos are several years old. What you see in the videos won't QUITE match what you see on your own screen

WONKY KONG - a keyboard controlled "catch a falling object" game

• 4.1 - Wonky Kong Setup
• 4.2 - Wonky Kong, Monkey starter
• 4.3 - Wonky Kong, Banana starter
• 4.4 - Wonky Kong, Catch the Bananas
• 4.5 - Wonky Kong, Get a point and repeat
• 4.6 - Wonky Kong, Using the Random block
• 4.7 - Wonky Kong, Missing the bananas
• 4.8 - Wonky Kong, Multiple Lives
• 4.9 - Wonky Kong, Adding Complexity
• 4.10 - Wonky Kong, Using a Game Variable

FISH CHOMP - a mouse controlled "chase and avoid" game

• 4.11 - "[TASK] Fish Chomp, Plan the game"
• 4.12 - "Fish Chomp, Shark Movement"
• 4.13 - "Fish Chomp, Good Fish Movement"
• 4.14 - "Fish Chomp, Eat the Fish"
• 4.15 - "Fish Chomp, Why We Have a Problem"
• 4.16 - "Fish Chomp, Solving the Problem"
• 4.17 - "Fish Chomp, Introducing Evil Crab"
• 4.18 - [EXTRA] "Fish Chomp, Using a Game Variable"
• 4.19 - [EXTRA] "Fish Chomp, Clones"

Assignment

When I have used this module with this class, this was the graded programming activity. [AGAIN, this is not part of this class this semester! You do not need to do this]