[squeakland] Re: squeakland Digest, Vol 82, Issue 2
Steve Thomas
sthomas1 at gosargon.com
Tue Feb 2 01:58:55 EST 2010
Whichever motivates them most.
Pinball, hmmm great idea. Would appreciate it if you could share lesson
plans/projects.
Stephen
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:55 AM, Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>wrote:
> Wow! Thanks everyone! hmmnn...weird that I didn't get Bert and Scott's
> reply in my in-box nor is it indicated as a replies in the Squeakland
> community forum index.
>
> Steve the project and the step-by-step information are most helpful! Thank
> you! My students are basically done with their maze games but I'm debating
> whether to introduce this added complexity by request from a couple of them
> or move on and teach a pinball game for the last two sessions of my class.
>
> Thanks,
> Cherry
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:29 PM, Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>wrote:
>
>> Cherry,
>>
>> Attached is a Etoys Project (still in progress) that demonstrates the same
>> thing Scott had suggested along with some questions and Teacher notes (this
>> is very rough and still needs a lot of work, but good enough so that you
>> should get the idea.
>>
>> Some thoughts on teaching two player game creation:
>>
>> - They will notice problems when one child holds down their control
>> key and the other just keeps "tapping" thier control keys, the child who
>> taps will win. See if you can observe this and ask the kids why "Cherry"
>> always wins? What is she doing differently? Hopefully they will notice the
>> tapping vs holding down the key, if not you can help them make that
>> observation. Then ask why that matters? How do they think the computer
>> works? How and when does the keyboard send signals to indicate which key is
>> being input? The kids may come up with two answers: 1) it sends a signal as
>> long as the key is held down 2) it sends a signal each time the key is held
>> down. IF you are lucky enough to get both answers, ask: How can we test
>> which method the keyboards use? What can you observe and what results would
>> you expect if it only sends the signal one time when a key is pressed? What
>> would you observe and what would you expect the results to be if it kept
>> sending signals constantly as long as a key was held down? Then: "Well your
>> scientists, go forth and test your hypotheses!"
>> - If it is a racing game, most kids I have seen implement with basic
>> go forward and go backward and don't program in acceleration and "braking".
>> You may want to ask them the questions on page 5 of the attached project to
>> suggest they try acceleration and braking.
>> - Rather than showing them the project you may want to try questioning
>> them into it (Note: this may not be easy I have tried and not always
>> succeeded with this one) some thoughts on questions and things you can show:
>> - Start by mentioning/showing them about variables, then ask: How
>> can we use a variable to capture the direction someone wants to go in? How
>> many variables will we need.
>> - Then ask: How can you use that variable you have just defined in
>> a script to control the car's movement?
>> - Note: the method I showed in the attached project is probably not
>> the method the kids will use, they most likely will do a group of tests on
>> the variable and move accordingly.
>> - You can also ask what else a variable can be used for in a games (as
>> part of brainstorming) ex: score, # of lives a player has left, timer (FYI,
>> to implement a timer, use the tick rate and a variable that counts up to
>> track how long something takes or counts down if they only have so long to
>> complete a task).
>>
>> Lastly I would love it if you could share your observations on the two
>> player game creation and any interesting projects the kids might create.
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>> Message: 2
>>
>>> Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:35:06 -0500
>>> From: "CherryW" <squeakland-forum at squeakland.org>
>>> Subject: [squeakland] How to create a multi-player game
>>> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>>> Message-ID: <1265081706.m2f.19304 at squeakland.org/forums>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> My students are asking if it's possible to have multiple players in their
>>> games. They've programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have different sets of
>>> keyboard inputs. The problem is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA stops
>>> the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway to do bypass this problem?
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>> ---Cherry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>>
>>> (from forum)
>>> http://squeakland.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19304#19304
>>>
>>> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>>
>>>
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>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 20:43:50 -0800
>>> From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
>>> Subject: Re: [squeakland] How to create a multi-player game
>>> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>>> Message-ID: <31F10548-45F0-4DBF-9392-332BE66E8B7B at freudenbergs.de>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>>>
>>> On 01.02.2010, at 19:35, CherryW wrote:
>>> > Hello,
>>> >
>>> > My students are asking if it's possible to have multiple players in
>>> their games. They've programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have different
>>> sets of keyboard inputs. The problem is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA
>>> stops the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway to do bypass this
>>> problem?
>>> >
>>> > Thank you!
>>> > ---Cherry
>>>
>>> Not easily. Maybe one player can use the keyboard and another one a
>>> joystick?
>>>
>>> A more general solution would be this:
>>> http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-331
>>>
>>> - Bert -
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 4
>>> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 21:09:31 -0800
>>> From: Scott Wallace <scott.wallace at squeakland.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [squeakland] How to create a multi-player game
>>> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>>> Message-ID: <DF73943D-D5FE-4837-AEF1-CF40C693E745 at squeakland.org>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>>
>>> On Feb 1, 2010, at 7:35 PM, CherryW wrote:
>>>
>>> > Hello,
>>> >
>>> > My students are asking if it's possible to have multiple players in
>>> their games. They've programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have different
>>> sets of keyboard inputs. The problem is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA
>>> stops the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway to do bypass this
>>> problem?
>>> >
>>> > Thank you!
>>> > ---Cherry
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi, Cherry,
>>>
>>> One way is to have each an object's behavior governed not directly by
>>> "world's last keystroke" but rather by its own private variable telling it
>>> what "state" it is in, and hence what it should do. This can be
>>> accomplished by devoting one ticking script in each object to maintaing the
>>> object's "state"; this script can "watch" the world's last keystroke, and
>>> when it sees a keystroke that means something to it, it sets the
>>> corresponding state in the object's state variable, whereas when it sees
>>> keystrokes intended to control different objects, it ignores them; and
>>> devoting a second, separate, ticking script in each object to carrying out
>>> the action represented by the current "state".
>>>
>>> The attached project provides a simple illustration of this. It allows
>>> two objects to be navigated from the keyboard. Each object is looking for a
>>> different set of keys.
>>>
>>> A diamond-shaped cluster of four keys at the left edge of the keyboard is
>>> used to control Red:
>>>
>>> a rotate counterclockwise
>>> s rotate clockwise
>>> w go forward
>>> z go backward
>>>
>>>
>>> A second diamond-shaped cluster of four keys further to the right is used
>>> to control Blue:
>>>
>>> j rotate counterclockwise
>>> k rotate clockwise
>>> i go forward
>>> m go backward
>>>
>>> HTH...
>>>
>>> -- Scott
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> End of squeakland Digest, Vol 82, Issue 2
>>> *****************************************
>>>
>>
>>
>
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