Game design
Lesson 4
Designing your game
Introduction
In this lesson you will modify the 'Eat the fruit' code in order to design your own game. This will bring your character and storyline to life!
Watch the video for an introduction to the lesson.
Understanding the tasks
Rating the tasks
This lesson contains a few activities. Each activity will have one or more tasks. These tasks have been given a rating.
Some of the tasks in this lesson are must do. These are important to help you understand the introductory ideas or skills.
Have a go at the should do tasks and reach out to your friends or teacher if you need some advice. These will usually take a bit longer to complete than must do tasks.
Could do tasks will probably take you some extra time and might need you to get creative or problem solve. We strongly encourage you to try these.
Activity 1 - On start
Task 2 - Sprite pixel art
Read the Sprite pixel art Google Slides to learn how to design your sprites.
Open your game in a new tab.
Design your player and projectiles using pixel art.
Task 3 - Player speed, point scoring and lives
Read the Player speed, point scoring and lives Google Slides.
Open your game in a new tab.
Set your player’s speed.
Set the number of lives your player starts the game with.
Set the number of lives your player loses each time it hits an unwanted projectile.
Set the number of points scored each time the player hits a wanted projectile.
Activity 2 - Projectiles
Task 2 - Design a splash screen
The splash block allows for a message or image to pop up on screen for the player to view, and then dismiss with a button press. This can be added to the on start command or at any time during the game.
A splash screen can help communicate the storyline, moral or key messages of the game.
Follow the instructions below to learn how to add a splash to your game.
Task 3 - Turn it up
Work through the interactive presentation to learn how to add music to your video game.
Activity 3 - Add extra functionality
Task 1 - Happy Flower code
Now that you know how projectiles work in the game, see if you can modify and add new code to change the way they behave.
Try the Happy Flower tutorial from the MakeCode Arcade web page below.
If you prefer the way this code works, you can choose to include it in your game design.
Task 2 - The follower code
The follower game demonstrates a code that enables the character sprite to chase after the slice of pizza. You, as the player, control the pizza and try to escape.
Spend 5 minutes playing the follower.
Explore the code behind the game by clicking edit code at the top of the screen.
Take note of the way the conditionals are written – the movement of the enemy sprite is dependent on the location of the player sprite.
See if you can use this code in your game and create enemy sprites that follow your character around.
Handing in your work
Don't forget to hand in the work you completed today!
Your teacher will have told you to do one of the following:
Upload any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your Learning Management system (MS Teams, Google Classroom for example).
Email any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your teacher.
Make sure you keep any handwritten work you did in your exercise book or folder as your teacher may need to see these when you are back in class.