I made two scratch games: 1) Racing doggy, 2) Nuclear Pong.
You can click the link and play it.
Title: Racing doggy (with Makey Makey)
Tool: Scratch & MakeyMakey
Team: Johnny Cho, Vivian Zou
Description:
Our Scratch remix project is a collaborative project that involves Johnny and me who belong to a same affinity group: dog lovers who own dogs. Thus, the design of this project is centered around our dogs, and we wanted to remix an existing running game that include two characters representing our dogs: B.B and Happy (see figure 1).
After we made our decision, we took the first step searching racing games that are available from Scratch. Of all the running game created by others, we found one game that is similar to our initial idea (See figure 2 and 3). This game offers one-player and two-player mode, and we planned to create a game provides a two-player mode in which one player controls one dog to compete against another player. Since the original game has both one-player and two-player modes, we should write the coding ourselves. So, we first spent two hours puzzling out the coding of this game and noticed that sometimes even single move involves several complex coding. Then we took another hour watching YouTube videos about how to create games with two-player mode on Scratch, and we realized that it was more complicated than we expected. Starting with our own project, we took pictures of our dogs with different positions, and then erase the background using Photoshop to create the main characters of this game (see figure 4 and 5). We then created other objects such as the “bone” and the “finish line” (see figure 6). However, transforming static pictures into animations requires extra efforts. Having questions in our minds, we watched YouTube tutorial on how to create animation from Scratch, in particular, how to create “running” animations. Going back and forth to our game and trying out the coding, we finally figured out how to involve two players in one game in which “up” and “down” keys control one dog, buttons “left” and “right” control another dog. After we completed the game design, we then tried to play the game using computer keyboards to ensure the smoothness of the game. As you can see in figure 6, players can select the difficulty of their game, since easy mode provides easy control, and harder mode increases the difficulty which requires more efforts when controlling the dogs. Meanwhile, figure 8 demonstrates the interface of this game when the game starts. The player who reaches the “bone” first wins the game, and the reward is the voice of owner’s praise that we recorded. Our control pads for this game is made of playdoh and cardboard, and we used MakeyMakey to construct a parallel circuit, so it allows two players to control their dogs simultaneously. In this instance, to win the game, players should tap the control pad continuously using both hands to make the dogs run as fast as possible (see figure 9). In our opinion, compared to the keyboard, the control pad made of playdoh provides players better sense of control than taping the keyboard with two fingers.
Figure 7 and 8 shows the interface of this game on which two dogs Happy and BB are waiting at the starting line. As mentioned, this competitive game is designed for two players, and the goal is to make their dogs run towards the right as fast as possible to reach the bone on the right. As we were trying to play the game designed by us, even though it only involves most straightforward game mechanics---tapping continuously, it still offers us a sense of fulfillment and achievement.
To conclude, the challenges that we encountered can be categorized into two themes: technical issues and design challenges. Since none of us has game designing or programming experiences, we encountered various of technical difficulties at the beginning such as using Photoshop to create the objects, changing them into animations, and manipulating every element and object on the screen. Although there are similar games on Scratch, we still had to construct from nothing; these include the objects used to represent the finishing line, the background images, and our voice recorded when one dog reaches the finishing line (see figure 10). The second challenge we experienced is to balance between our wonderful ideas with the reality and limitations. In the beginning, we had various creative design ideas after we watched Scratch projects designed by others. In the first place, we even wanted to create a dog-feeding game in which players could control and feed the dog on demand. However, we realized that due to the time and technical limitation, we had to choose our idea wisely based on the reality.
As a constructionism programming activity, the implementation of Scratch and Makey Makey into k-12 classroom has promising benefits to STEM education and growing self-efficacy toward science. As Berland et al. (2010) described, we should not neglect the effectiveness of programming instruction, so that it is no longer a hard-to-learn concept to younger kids once they have constructed something on their own. I believe our goal is not to teach programming as a cognitive demanding task to students, instead the goal is to encourage our students experience the idea of programming earlier through Scratch in which they participate activities that are engaging and relative, as well as immerse in the concepts of programming.
Title: Nuclear Pong
Description:
I redesigned simple ping-pong game to contextual game. It did not have any content on the game. They just had one ball and two players’ bar. While I was watching news, I realized the game can reflect the context and provide lesson to people. My topic on ping-pong game is “nuclear pong” (see Figure 1). In current situation, North Korea keep warning to U.S by using nuclear bomb, and U.S can warm North Korea by using nuclear bomb vice versa. I want to express this dangerous situation in a game. Thus, the music I put increases the fear and anxiety. The two players should defense the country. As background, I used the world map to present that nuclear war is happened over the world. Throughout the game, I wish players can understand the current situation about nuclear war, and it supposes to defense our country from the nuclear war.
As a beginner of the game designer, Scratch has many benefits to use. The UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) are pretty easy to build the game. While I was making the game, I did not expect that I was fascinated to make game eagerly. The more I involve making the game, the more motivation is increased.
In addition, making a game is something bring your imagination to a real world. Einstein said, “imagination is more important than knowledge”. However, from my perspective, imagination itself should not just stick on the brain. I believe that game is the bridge between imagination and reality. The idea or imagination should be expressed and shared with people. Thus, this game design experience gave me lots of motivation and inspiration.
Lastly, my computational thinking was increased. If I do not how to code a certain function, for example, adding sound, I had to search other contents and tried myself to understand the code. I strongly believe that Scratch has constructivist function and it makes people who use Scratch as an active learner. Overall, I enjoyed making a game and was happy to have a chance to expand my idea to the educational game. P.S: the world needs peace. Let’s prevent WAR!
Figure 1. the appearance of Nuclear Pong game