Introduction
Welcome parents and students to my school blog. Here you will find useful information about homework, tests, and what we are doing in each of our classes. In this post I will introduce the class and explain what we have done so far this year.
If you ever have questions you may always contact me via e-mail or come by and talk to me in person. You are certainly welcome to even come sit in on the class and participate!
The story so far...
Game Design 2nd-3rd period
This is an exciting new class for me because of my background. Before I decided to teach I worked in the game design industry. First let me explain what game design is. To actually make a game three main parts are required: programming, art, and design. Programming is what makes the game work. It handles all of the math, all of the "physics", all of the statistics that games require. Without programming, there is no game. Art is what makes that game look grate. At one time there was no art. Games were text based which was great because I love to read, but a lot of people wanted something more. Now we have high resolution graphics in HD and in many cases the games look nearly real. Finally there is game design. Game design is what makes the game fun. We are the ones who create a story for a game. We decide what the layout will be, the path the story will take, what the dialogue will be, and much much more. I may be a bit biased, but for me, game design is the most enjoyable part of making a video game.
Game design is very much like a literature class in many respects. In this class we will study various pieces of literature such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and George Lucas's Star Wars universe among others. Students will learn about the Hero's Journey, a literary framework for writing stories. They will also learn to apply story archs (conflict, rising action, ante-climax, climax, falling action, resolution), scope, voice, and other literary concepts to the game they will eventually design.
The engine we will use to do the design is from the Neverwinter Nights Platinum Edition (can be purchased at bioware.com if your kid wants a personal copy). The toolset is called the Aurora Toolset and has a powerful set of art assets, scripting, dialogue creation, and other tools.
At the moment we have finished researching the Tolkien world and are learning about scope. They have done some writing excercises. Soon we will have the computer lab set up in the classroom and the students will play the Neverwinter Nights core games to become familiar with the capacity of the engine. In the third six weeks they will design a small set (think of it as a stage) with a small story. In the 4th and 5th six weeks they will actually design their game as a group effort. The last six weeks will be play testing the other class's game and putting their own game up on the NWN forums for the world to play. This last will constitute their semester exam.
Again, if you ever have any questions or concerns about the classes, please come by and talk with me. My door is always open to parents and I appreciate any parent who takes an active role in their child's education.
