The first part of this took a bit longer than I had planned for - I meant it to take about 30 minutes, and it took 60 minutes. I'm glad we spent the time on it, though, for two reasons - one, it is an important skill to have, and I wanted everybody to feel like they had a handle on it, and two, because the second part was frustrating for a lot of people, and I'm glad it didn't drag on more than it did.
The second part of the class involved making a new project, importing graphics, creating classes to represent objects on the screen, and instantiating those objects. Basically, it was the next step in the learning process - instead of just copying what I was doing on screen, the students had to remember how to do stuff, and integrate what they had learned with a bit more independence.
It's hard to do - I am always tempted to reach in and "fix" everything for them, and sometimes I do. I think it was the right thing to do, but I don't want it to sap our momentum. Unless it needs to. I've worried (based on last year) that the class could become a grueling march of concepts without much chance for the students to innovate or practice on their own. So a pause in the "instructional" part of the class seemed like a good idea.
So what's coming up? Today, I plan on doing:
- Layers
- "SneakyInputs" - joysticks and buttons
- a lesson on Spritesheets (a.k.a. Texture Atlases) by Matt
- animation of sprites
- and perhaps, in the case of the bullets, keeping a stash of bullets that are hidden when not in use.
I think we'll be using this project for a couple of days. I can see us working on collision detection, text fields and possibly particle effects!
Stuff I want to emphasize today - I hope I remember at the start of class:
- Reading and commenting on each other's blogs
- One class per type of object
- The difference between sprites and things that hold sprites
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