Project Articles

This is a very basic introduction to the Game Maker Programming Language (GML). This was developed in Gamemaker Studio II. You will need to download the software from Yoyo Games if you want to try it out yourself. I started doing this a few years ago after watching a live musical performance in multiple locations through live coding. I found it fascinating and was amazed that people were willing to watch people program. I started doing simple game projects for tour groups and have enjoyed doing it ever since.

This is an exercise where we introduce younger students to computational thinking, simple geometry and a little bit of physics. This can be done with students as young as 12 (and maybe even younger). It is inspired by the classic arcade game Asteroids. I normally do this by live coding in the Digital Media Center Theater where students come to the computer one at a time. We then as a group decide how to approach the project. It always ends up differently each time have the team help solve the problem as a classroom.

I have posted an example of what a session might look like with a detailed PDF. If any other faculty is interested in doing this, please look at part 1 and part 2 of Cosmic Shooter on GitHub.