Thursday 25 March 2010

Conversations and decisions

Having played the NWN2 game in the past and dabbled in module construction (this was a long time ago though) I was very happy with the prospect of taking an S1 class through.

So how has it gone? Well, I've been frustrated with the problems due to the setup of our network and more frustrated with the random glitches that pop up from time to time.

After the success of SC's post-it solution to fridge magnets, I used that with my class to varying degrees of success. Their work on the computers has been very good with some exceptional worlds being built however I feel that due to time constraints and technical difficulties that the pupils have been more focussed on the technical side of their worlds rather than crafting a gaming experience through plot and story-telling.

This is something I feel the English department would really be able to improve upon and there has already been discussion between staff regarding this.

We have looked at conversations the past couple of weeks with the first lesson an introduction. All pupils seemed to find using the editor quite straightforward after a demonstration and a couple of reminders about adding speakers. However it did prompt a number of the boys to ask
"Can I have it so that after talking to my creature that it can follow me?"

"Is it possible to make the all the other creatures attack me after talking to this creature?"
The following week we decided to go into this kind of depth and I was wary of how well the pupils would grasp the idea of programming creatures based on conditions. The demo went really well as I showed them how simple it actually was as long as they remembered to initially set hostile creatures to "commoner". Most found the right-click menu system quite easily to work with. What let the lesson down was that for every pupil, clicking on the conversation editor brought up the window but didn't display the content - a graphics glitch perhaps?

My on-the-spot solution (and I feel I deserved a macaroon bar for this one) was to have them shake the cursor across the window as if painting it. This had the effect of causing the interactive elements of the window to appear such as the drop-down box, checkbox and OK/CANCEL buttons to display. I had to speak them through this once and after that, they simply repeated.

I would have liked to have worked more on testing so that they could take more time to decide the placement and types of creatures used as many of them were either making it ridiculously easy or incredibly hard, but time is against me and I have to take them back onto the PC Passport course that we had initally started.

I'll finish with my Adventure Author mantra, something I keep saying in the class...

Save it, Bake it, Play it

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Fridge Magnets and Improvisation

Our machines are locked in such a way that pupils cannot access the system tray. This was done to stop inquisitive pupils accessing things they shouldn't. Therefore we have a slight problem when it comes to using Fridge Magnets - a problem that I had discovered when my S6 pupils tried to use it back in October, but one I had forgotten about when I demonstrated it to my S1 pupils two weeks ago! What to do? I really wanted the pupils to take time to sit down and plan out their adventures so they were more focussed rather than having numerous random dragons/spiders/ghouls etc all over the place. After some thought I decided to revert to large pieces of white paper(fridges), pens, coloured card(magnets) and glue. As I was handing out the materials on Monday, having not mentioned yet what we were going to do, one very switched on pupil said "Miss are we doing fridge magnets today!". This is even more impressive since we have had half term in between the aborted fridge magnets lesson and this week's improvised one.
The pupils put a lot of thought into what they wanted to write and spent longer at their desks planning their game than I expected. Only one pupil rushed through his planning in order to get onto the computer. So far we only have some outlines the odd quest and some characters at the moment but we will revisit their fridges over the next couple of weeks at the start of each lesson and build on their ideas.
And a possible advantage to improvised fridge magnets - a couple of the girls have also drawn pictures on their fridges to show how their characters might look so I might have some nice posters for my room too!

Sheila

Thursday 28 January 2010

Dipping My Toe In The Water

On Wednesday I embarked upon the NWN adventure with my S1 class. I am a 'Second Generation' teacher, having not attended the course at Heriot Watt University but been trained and mentored by the 'Games Masters' in my department who did attend.

Excitement was in the air and with only two problems - one machine suddenly switching itself off and another not having the DVD inserted at the start - they were all eagerly exploring their new world.

My first objective was just to let the students play about with the game, to get a good understanding of the program. This went quite well, with some students working together and others working alone.

The class were so involved in the task, we almost missed the bell!

So far - so good...

Mrs K

Wednesday 27 January 2010

Progress to date, adventure author from S6 to S1

This is the first week that we have used NWN2 with our S1 pupils. Although only two of us attended the training sessions with Judy and Cathrin all the teachers in our department are going to be teaching the software to all our S1 classes.
On an extremely positive note ALL my class came armed with their permission slips signed ready to start!
As an introduction we let them play the Village Adventure module to familiarise themselves. None of my class knew of the game so this was a useful exercise before starting to look at the Adventure Author toolkit. On the whole, aside from the odd machine crashing and some pupils being unsure of what to do with the game then becoming frustrated it, it seems to worked. I am looking forward to next week to see what they will do when they are let loose to create their own worlds!
Although we are only just beginning the Adventure Author project with all our S1 classes, I have been using my S6 Digital Gaming Class as guinea pigs for the project since December. From a teaching point this has been great as I have had the chance to try things out and learn from mistakes along the way so I am more confident about the whole thing. From pupil point there has been mixed results. Some of the pupils are keeping me on my toes and asking how to do things that have me stuck - "How do I create a waypoint so I can teleport Miss?" (now I know I asked exactly the same question when I was at Heriot Watt so I will have it written down somewhere!), others are still getting to grips with basics. Having said that most of them have some kind of area complete with conversations and the odd transition. Today we started to do a little scripting which worked well, even the pupils I was dubious about managed to produce some working code. I may use some of the S6 pupils work as demo modules for the S1 to see what it is possible to create. It may also be an idea to have the S6 pupils as classroom helpers during the project - they need a bit of persuasion though.

Sheila

James Young and Heriot Watt University Computer Games Research Project

In September, two members of the Department of Computing Science and ICT at The James Young High School attended a Games Design course at Heriot-Watt University. This 3 day course involved the use of such games as Neverwinter Nights 2 and Adventure Author.

Adventure Author is a game-authoring tool designed to support interactive storytelling skills through the use of game technologies. Drawing on traditional role-playing techniques, it moves away from firstperson- shooter game formats, by emphasizing character, plot and narration.

By modifying existing game engine technology, Adventure Author has been developed as a means to guide the young people (10-14 year-olds) through a series of steps, via ‘wizards’, which are aimed at supporting thinking about character and storyline development on a scene-by-scene basis. In addition, an overall map easily allows users to arrange and link scenes to support nonlinear storytelling.

Having authored their own game, the young people can then play this and share it with others. Through this process of play and critical feedback from peers, young people are offered the opportunity to improve their game design and storytelling techniques.

The pupils at James Young together with school staff will be liaising with Heriot-Watt University in a major educational research project during the first half of 2010. Watch this space!