I thought a little bit more structure would have been better for this session.
"Go make a game" is really, REALLY scary, even for professionals. The design process alone is an infinite loop!
I've found that giving students a strong base, and asking them to run with that, works pretty well. I teach classes where I give my students the basic code for a roguelike, and ask them to implement stuff: maps with collision detection, doors with keys, monsters, combat, abilities, items and inventory, dialog of some kind, or anything else they can think of. They end up doing a lot of their own programming, and having plenty of fun, even though I start them off with something. Something like that (starting with a base game and ideas for features) feels better to me.
This idea I'm proposing is basically what each of the sessions have been up to this point anyway, but the previous sessions didn't explicitly have no defined goal; students had a code base AND a clearly defined goal. I think taking both away at the same time was a little bit awkward for a few of the students.
I thought a little bit more structure would have been better for this session.
"Go make a game" is really, REALLY scary, even for professionals. The design process alone is an infinite loop!
I've found that giving students a strong base, and asking them to run with that, works pretty well. I teach classes where I give my students the basic code for a roguelike, and ask them to implement stuff: maps with collision detection, doors with keys, monsters, combat, abilities, items and inventory, dialog of some kind, or anything else they can think of. They end up doing a lot of their own programming, and having plenty of fun, even though I start them off with something. Something like that (starting with a base game and ideas for features) feels better to me.
This idea I'm proposing is basically what each of the sessions have been up to this point anyway, but the previous sessions didn't explicitly have no defined goal; students had a code base AND a clearly defined goal. I think taking both away at the same time was a little bit awkward for a few of the students.