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Here are photos from our Christmas party and Show & Tell day at CoderDojo Athenry on 10 December 2016.

It was really impressive to see the things that our young people had built and created. There was also a great Robot Duels session, organised by mentor Declan in the Bodgers group: Bodgers – Robot Duels At CoderDojo Athenry

We are very grateful to our supporters in the community around Athenry:

• Clarin College and Principal Ciaran Folan, who are so generous with their space every week
• Galway & Roscommon Education & Training Board, who provide us with an annual Youth Club Grant
• Medtronic and Declan Fox, who have provided us with a grant linked to Declan’s volunteering
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Mark Davis, who provide us with loaner laptops
• Boston Scientific and Kevin Madden, who provided us with the loan of three 3D printers for the semester
• Supermacs and Joyces, both of whom gave us generous deals on the food for the Christmas party

And of course we are eternally grateful to our wonderful mentors, and to the parents who come along with their children every week. Thank you!

We look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!

As discussed in recent weeks, we will be awarding belts in Minecraft Modding on Saturday 28 May 2016, the same day that other belts are being awarded.

Here is a presentation that I have shown in the room in recent weeks, about the belt criteria and procedures: CoderDojoAthenry-Modding-PrepareForBelts (PDF).

It is belt awarding time at Athenry Coder Dojo! We are really excited to see what everyone is going to come up with this year. In previous years, we have had great projects that use many of the core principles of programming that we have been teaching since the beginning of the year. Here is a list:

1. MOTION – controlling the movement of a SPRITE by the keyboard, the mouse or randomly by the computer,
2. LOOPS – using forever or limited repeat blocks to keep something going,
3. VARIABLES – saving a value in computer memory where the computer can pick it up and use it or change it when necessary,
4. DECISION blocks – Using IF or IF/THEN blocks to decide if something should happen or not,
5. BROADCASTS – sending out a message to trigger a reaction in another part of the program,
6. ANIMATION – using costume edits and changes within loops to make it seem as though a sprite is moving.

You don’t need to use all of the above principles in your project, but we mentors need to know that you understand them in order to let you move up to the next level – Advanced Scratch. While we are helping you with your projects, we will be reinforcing the principles, so it will be fun and easy! The day of the awarding of belts, we will ask you questions on your project while you are demonstrating it.

You must be present on belt award day  to show us your projects. If you don’t get the belt you want, don’t worry! There is always the next belt award session and we love having you at Coder Dojo Athenry.

Here are some of the questions we might ask at the belt awards session:

1.Which block you would use to make the sprite speak?

2.How would you change the way your sprite looks?

3.How would you make a sprite move?

4.Can you show where you have used a loop block?

5.Can you show where you have used animation or sound?

6.Can you show us where you have used an IF block?

7.What blocks would you use to check if your sprite hit something?

8.How do you share a program online?

9.Show where you have used a variable or how would you create a new variable?

10.Show where you have used a broadcast or how would you create a new broadcast?

Here are some ideas for projects:

Squash Game

Control a bat to hit a ball

Ball bounces off wall on the other side

Game over when you miss 5 times

ABC Game – letters falling from the sky!

Sprites with A/B/C fall from random start point

Press A/B/C key to stop them

Keep score of how many you stop

DodgeBall –

Have Scratch cat avoid the flying beachballs while he is trying to grab a mouse

Use the arrow keys to control scratch cat and have three or four beachballs fly around randomly

If the cat gets touched by a ball make him lose strength/fade but he gets stronger if he touches a fish.

Use a broadcast to change the backdrop wen he gets his score to ten or to zero.

Good luck and be sure to ask questions! We love to help!

Julie

We are very excited to announce that Brenda and John Romero, who between them have been involved in developing exceptional games such as Doom, Quake, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, and Dungeons & Dragons, will be at CoderDojo Athenry on Saturday 9 April 2016. They will be speaking to us about their extensive experience as leading game developers. They will be joined by their 11-year old son Donovan, who has also started developing games.

Brenda and John have recently moved to Galway from the West Coast USA, and are currently in the process of establishing a game studio, called Romero Games, in Galway. Their brief biographies are below.

Regular attendees at CoderDojo Athenry are welcome to bring a friend if they wish. These talks should be really fascinating for our budding coders and game designers in CoderDojo Athenry, and inspirational for boys and girls alike!

PS: Huge credit to Kieran (lead mentor of the Unity stream) for organising this!

Brenda Romero 

Brenda is a game designer, artist, academic, and Fulbright Fellow. She has been in the games industry since the early 1980s. Her credits include such notable games series as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Wizardary and Dungeons & Dragons.  She’s previously sat on board of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and chaired several Special Interest Groups (SIGs) including one representing Women in Games. 

John Romero

John is best known as the founder of Id software. An exceptional programmer and game designer, he is the inventor of the “deathmatch”. His best known games include such timeless classics as Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake each of which broke new ground, both in technical and gameplay terms and even spawned new genres.

Additional 

John and Brenda are currently in the process of establishing a game studio, called Romero Games, in Galway. Their son Donovan, also visiting us, is writing a game with the help of his Dad and friends and will hopefully be demonstrating it on the day.

In a post from last year, we saw how to create crafting recipes in Java modding:

https://cdathenry.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/modderdojo-java-modding-6-creating-our-first-mod-adding-a-crafting-recipe/

It is also possible to do the same thing in Scriptcraft. Here is the code for a dirt to diamonds recipe in Scriptcraft:

Note: write the code in a file called something like “recipe1.js” and put it in the same folder as your other Scriptcraft mod (a sub-folder of scriptcraft – plugins). Note that this is the entire code – it does NOT go inside a function definition.

[code language="javascript"]
// Scriptcraft recipe for dirt to diamonds
var recipes = require('recipes');
var items = require('items'); 

// Here is the recipe: result from ingredients in a shape.
var dirt2diamond = {result: items.diamondBlock(10),
                    ingredients: {D: items.dirt(1)},
                    shape: [ ' D ',
                             'D D',
                             ' D ' ]};

// add the recipe to  the server
recipes.add(dirt2diamond);
[/code]

The code is reasonably easy to understand, I think. The result is a stack of 10 diamondBlock items, there is a single ingredient which is a dirt block that we indicate with a variable ‘D’, and they are arranged in a diamond shape. I have put in extra line breaks to make the shape clearer, but this is not necessary.

You can have more than one ingredient. Here is another example:

[code language="javascript"]
// A second recipe:
// diamond block made with a diagonal line of 2 dirt , 1 cobblestone, and 2 dirt
var recipe2 = {result: items.diamondBlock(1),
               ingredients: {D: items.dirt(2), C: items.cobblestone(1)},
               shape: [ 'D  ', ' C ', '  D' ]};
// add the recipe to  the server
recipes.add(recipe2);
[/code]

At the start of the session on Saturday 27 Feb, we had an information session about the CoderDojo Coolest Projects contest.

I think it is well worthwhile to consider entering. There are multiple categories and the event is very impressive and interesting.

Special thanks to Aliadh who spoke very well about her experience at Coolest Projects last year.

The notes are here: AboutCoolestProjects.pdf

On Saturday, following on from the general information session about Coolest Projects, we started planning a large collaborative mod in the JavaScript/Scriptcraft ModderDojo stream.

We used my favourite planning and design tool – a big whiteboard and a couple of markers.

As the image above shows, we first identified what kinds of things we are already able to make, and we used these as a startpoint for brainstorming some ideas that could build on our capabilities. Finally, we reviewed some of our brainstormed ideas to identify some common threads and in particular some kinds of capabilities we don’t have – things that we will have to learn how to do in future weeks.

For example, we now know that we need to learn about event-driven programming, creating recipes, creating NPCs, creating new block types, and maybe generating biomes. Alex and I will help you to figure out some of these ideas in future weeks.

Since attendance was low, we did not finish the planning and make a final decision about what the theme of our mod is, since we would like more people’s input. But we have made a great start!

Reminder: on Saturday 5 March, there will be no ModderDojo stream as both Alex and I happen to be travelling.