Game Maker: Design and Program Teams

Since the beginning of this semester when I began teaching Gamemaker, students and I have progressively been improving our repertoire of both design and programming skills.

It is to the point now where we have pushed on to designing both the art and concepts for original games. The first couple weeks saw students working independently, trying to attempt to create a game all on their own. After this time expired, none of us really had too much to offer. One student had made phenomenal characters, another excellent environments, and yet another who could program shapes and blocks well but had no artistic ability. It only made sense at this point to shake things up and create teams with a shared goal.

Students were organized based on strength in either the design team or the program team. The teams work independently on their tasks, but have to meet together to establish characters, plot-lines, level-ups, rewards, scoring, etc. Sounds strangely familiar to the corporate world.

My job in all of this effort has been to continue teaching the programming, work with teams on solving problems as they arise, make suggestions, and continue to be inspired by the complete dedication from the students.

With a common goal, students have been working 2-3 hours a day on their tasks. Here are some of the results.

A hand-drawn boss by B.S.

Boss digitally enhanced with color.

Early sketches of our hero

Enemy worm drawings by G.O.

Animating a character in Game Maker

Beta-Testing Alien Wars

A Journey Through Punishment

Take a few minutes out of your day to watch this report profiling a group of residents from Long Creek. You will have a chance to hear from them, and learn a bit about what has led them to prison. This was accomplished through a performance called, A Journey Through Punishment.

I had the chance to see the play firsthand and had to admit it was powerful to hear these young men put their past into words. 

Link to the article: http://www.wgme.com/news/top-stories/stories/wgme_vid_19644.shtml

The trailer:

Deconstructing Number Tricks

Number tricks have been around about as long as I can remember. They usually occur in one of two varieties, ending with the number they begin with, or ending with a specific number.

Here is an example involving squares:

Example 1

And another example with basic operations:

Example 2

In both of the above cases the answer is 3, that is simply just a coincidence based on the examples I chose.

These types of puzzles make for excellent examples of simplifying expressions for an algebra class. The  puzzle involves a variable (number selected), and then a number of operations. By translating these puzzles into an expression, students can test out whether the answer will be consistent for any number picked.

Here is Example 1 again but translated into an algebraic expression:

Example 1 translated into an algebraic expression.

When students complete the expression in the last step the resulting solution will be 3. This proves any value for x will not affect the solution. Have students try it with negative numbers, with decimals, or even π.

When students get the hang of translating the puzzles into algebraic expressions and simplifying, have them attempt to create their own number tricks. I challenged a few of my students to end with numbers they began with, and end with a specific number I've chosen. They can then translate them into algebraic expressions and prove their number trick.

Here is an example a student created yesterday, "Kick In the Nuts".

And the corresponding algebraic expression.

In Their Own Words

The follow article was written by a Long Creek Student in Mr. Cimato’s math class for the May issue of DocTalk. Read the whole issue here.

By Z.G.

Through the years math class has been very difficult, not only for me but for many math students everywhere. However, things are starting to seem a lot easier thanks to the new math program in Mr. Cimato’s class— Khan Academy’s self-paced math lessons. When I asked several students at Long Creek Youth Development Center (LCYDC) how they felt about the program, many responded in a positive way. “I like the math program because it helps me move through my work faster,” said D.C. a Long Creek resident. Not only does it help students move through work quicker, but also helps them understand the work better than any text book could. It gives tutorials and shows videos on the work that is being given. This is very beneficial to students. For my personal opinion it has helped me move through math work that I’ve never seen before. Now I’ll be taking Trigonometry—never in my life did I picture myself taking such an advanced math class. This is all due to Mr. Cimato, and this new program! But like most math classes and programs, it does get frustrating and “I hate losing all my points when I get a question wrong,” said C.S., another resident. The math program is based on a point system. 

When you get a certain amount of points your bar will turn green. This is when you can advance into different math, but if you get question wrong and the bar is not green it takes all your points. This is because the program wants you to master the math problems you are working on. Some say it drives them crazy but I feel it helps because the program is helping me get better without realizing it. All I want to do is get points, and all the program wants me to do is get better with my math work.

When asked if it is harder to work with the program Mr. Cimato said, “It is more difficult because the problems are more challenging, and there are more skills involved.” This is a very different response than students had given. When asked the same question kids said it was much easier because you have to be more precise with answers and this helps to learn the work better. Mr. Cimato also said, “Using the program students get a better understanding because they spend more time on each problem. If they get it wrong they want to know why so they don’t repeat the mistake. Prior to this students would just go through the problems and not care what they did wrong.”

The math program is a computer program we use on the MacBook, and does not have a textbook. This helps because many students get upset and don’t like sitting at a desk with a book in front of them, but using the MacBook they tend to come into class sit down and get right to work. It is done at the students pace and they are not rushed. The program is not timed and gives students something more effective to work with in math class.

Introducing Game Maker

This year, for the first time I've been here, we've been given the go ahead to design and teach STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) courses. I considered a few different options for my course, but eventually settled on one specifically drawing upon student interests and simultaneously upon my own skill-set, Game Maker. The focus of this course is to introduce students to the lengthy, tedious, and highly frustrating process of video game design.

As you can imagine with a teenage male population restricted from playing video games, interest was exceptionally high in participating. It meant the students would have to do plenty of research, play different types of games, analyze color schemes, sounds, music, story lines, scoring, etc. It also meant they would have to be exceptionally detailed, be technically proficient, creative, and be willing to work hard understanding and applying the underlying mathematics.

Not surprisingly, a few dropouts emerged over the first month when they realized it would be the most work they may ever put into a class.

Game Maker Programming Interface

Through a bit of luck and some initiative, I was able to acquire software for our Macbooks with a curriculum that included the anatomy of game design and game design itself.  This was all free which is a nice advantage to have with shrinking budgets.

In the 3 months we have been working at this, we have built a number of games including Pac-Man, Pong, Break-Thru, Helicopter and Pinball. Many of the students are now creating artwork and concepts for their own games which we plan to release before Christmas to the facility for a gaming competition.

Designing the Pac-Mac room

Aside from the technical aspects of teaching this class, there is another extraordinary angle the students and I have discovered...

We are our best version of ourselves when we are playing games. We work together showing pro-social behaviors. We believe any goal is attainable. We are disciplined enough to not give up. We learn new behaviors and apply them easily and effortlessly.

Our new goal is to figure out how to translate what we do in video games to everyday behavior.

Resources:
http://www.yoyogames.com

Exploring Perimeter

If I had to suggest one theme for teaching students who historically have difficulty in mathematics class, it would be to make learning meaningful and purposeful. The following geometry problem has a few great qualities that make it perfect in accomplishing this goal. The solution can be derived from a combination of geometric skills, algebraic skills and/or simple arithmetic. This provides a number of access points for students. There is also a part of this problem that defies explanation, and that’s the hook.

Thanks to James Tanton for bringing this problem to my attention.

Imagine having a magic rope that wraps itself around the Earth at the equator. Suspend belief during this time, and also imagine that it falls perfectly on the Earth’s surface. Mountains or oceans do not affect it. The rope forms a perfect circle. You measure the distance of this rope, which provides the circumference of the Earth, then add 10 feet to it. Your new rope is now wrapped around the Earth, and since it’s a magic rope, it also hovers evenly over the surface of the Earth. What is the distance from the ground to the rope?

To tackle this problem, most students (and teachers), begin with the radius of the Earth and then calculate the circumference. From here a student can add the necessary 10 feet, work backwards until they have derived the new radius. Comparing radii offers a solution. It looks like this.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this methodology, but what it fails to do is unlock the beauty of this problem. What if instead of the Earth, we were adding 10 feet of rope to the circumference of your coffee cup? What if we added 10 feet to the circumference of a penny? Would you believe me if the difference never changed?

On the left side of the equation I add 10 feet to the circumference, on the right I add an unknown quantity to the radius, which represents the distance between the radii. In the second step I sub in the definition of circumference for C (C=2πr). This allows me to solve for the unknown distance between the radii, exactly 1.59154!

With this knowledge in hand, invite your students to find circular objects, discover the circumference, add 10 feet to calculate the new circle and use string to trace the new circles. Students can now measure the differences between radii and experience the beauty of mathematics.

One last thing, do you really believe the magic rope would be 1.5 feet off the ground? Mindblowing.

The Ceiling Vent

Inside the facility there is a lot of repetition: white walls, red trim, locked doors, and many ceiling vents. The monotony can be a bit tiresome when you spend all day inside. This summer I invited a few classes to explore this monotony with me. Equipped with iPads we walked up and down the halls, into units, pods, classrooms, and staircases in search of the extraordinary. Our goal was simple, to take interesting photographs and transform them into mathematics problems.

One student’s photo was a bit less than extraordinary. Actually it was really ordinary. I want to share that one today to illustrate how a simple concept can be explored.

The Ceiling Vent

The student was interested in knowing how many tiny squares precisely comprised this ceiling vent. 100? 500? 1000? More? Now this type of question might seem quite elementary. Just count the amount of squares in the width and height, then multiply, but that’s not how we roll.

Instead we came up with a rule for this problem. No counting!

Since the student had been studying ratios, we thought it would be interesting to measure the width of one cell, and then measure the width of the entire vent and divide. We accomplished this task using the GeoGebra software on our Macbooks. We then applied the same strategy to the height. Given these two numbers, we could finally multiply them to discover how many squares comprise this vent.

Geogebra Analysis

In addition to determining the amount of squares, we were also able to determine whether this vent is actually a square by our measurements.

Now if we had just stopped here it probably would have been a good day's math class, but again we are  always looking to go the extra mile. Answer in hand, we took to the halls and surveyed staff and residents alike for an estimate of how many squares are actually in the ceiling vent. We developed averages, ranges, and medians to analyze how good our local population is at estimation.

It's amazing how such a simple photograph led to another interesting day in mathematics class.