Here are the activities that each group will be working on today:

Newcomers

If you are new to CoderDojo and new to computer programming this is where you start:

Go to Newcomers Activities

Scratch – Beginner

1. Make a Platform Game

If you haven’t finished (or haven’t started) the Platform game from last week you can work on this today. In this activity, you will create a simple platform game. You will program a player sprite to move and jump across platforms when the arrow keys are pressed.
Click here for instructions

2. Complete all the Platform Game Add-Ons

  1. Winning celebrtion
  2. Moving platforms
  3. Shrinking platforms
  4. Splash! You loose
  5. Add some tunes
  6. Bug fix – land on your feet

3. Make your own platform game

This is a good project to customise and use as a base for your own platform game. You can make your own platform game using what you have learned in this project. Save a copy of your completed project (File > Save as a copy) and use that as a starting point. You can also make the game your own by:

  • change the graphics and sound effects
  • add levels
  • add scoring system and high score
  • add new challenges

Making your custom version of the platform game should keep you busy for this session but if you really need something else to work on then try this.

Scratch – Intermediate & Advanced

Continue working on your Agar.io game

1. Watch this video and follow the instructions to get started making your Agar.io style game:

RESOURCES:

Click here for a graph paper image that you can use

2. If you’ve completed all the instructions in the video you will have some of the basics of the Agar.io game working. However you will notice there are some issues still to be solved:

  • The dots can’t go off the visible grid area – it looks like they get dragged along at the edge
  • There are no boundaries on the playing grid – you can go past the graph paper and keep going
  • The dots are all the same size – in the actual Agar.io game the bigger ones can eat you
  • The dots just stay at one point on the grid – the bigger ones should chase you, the smaller ones should move away
  • New dots spawn somewhere in the visible area of the screen – it would be more like the real game if they spawned outside the visible area
  • There should be lots of dots in the playing grid when the game starts

Can you work out solutions to any of these issues and make the game behave more like the actual Agar.io game?

Here is an example that has some added features including:

  • boundaries
  • random dot sizes – can only eat smaller dots
  • bigger dots move towards the player, smaller dots move away
  • scaling – as the player grows everything else shrinks
  • scoring – based on mass of dots eaten and survival time

Learn JavaScript

Continue working through the lessons on Khan Academy to learn JavaScript, just click the link below to get started. Use the login you have already created or if this your first time, start by clicking the Sign in / Sign up link in top right corner of screen and then click the Create a new account link to create a new account for yourself to track your progress.

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/programming

Raspberry Pi (with Microcontrollers and other cool stuff)

A collaborative group exploring how computers can interact with the outside world through a range of sensors and controllers. Primarily we’ll be using the Raspberry Pi (http://raspberrypi.org) computer in conjunction with Arduinos (http://arduino.cc) and along the way we’ll learn about Python, C and C++ programming, digital and analogue electronics and about working together.

Electronics, Microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi session information