Week 4 – 2018 Explorers – Scrolling Backgrounds

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Martha Fahy

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for coming again on Saturday and welcome to our new people!
This week we looked at some of the elements we will use in A Mario game we will make in a couple of weeks time. We will use scrolling of objects in the background to achieve movement rather than making the Sprite itself move as we would normally do.
It can be a difficult concept to grasp for the younger ones, but we will go through it again before we make the Mario game.

Firstly we select our Sprite and we decided we would only move left and right.

We then had to create some Backgrounds. NOTE: EACH BACKGROUND IS A SPRITE. You do not create it as you normally would.

I have put the game on the Scratch Website http://www.scratch.mit.edu. Login with the User name and Password in the Notes Below.

Here are this weeks notes in PDF CDA-S7-Week 4-Scrolling.PDF

See you all on Saturday, we will do a new game that I think you will all like and maybe a little competitive!!!

Martha

Week 3 – Scratch Beginners – Ghostcatcher

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Martha Fahy

Hello Everyone

Great to see so many of you there on Saturday, 85 Ninjas!. Hope you had a good time. And a special welcome to our new Ninjas.

This week we created a Ghostcatcher game. We used the paint editor in Scratch for the first time. As I said on Saturday, It makes things easier if you think in shapes.

Using the code we have learned so far, we moved the Ghostcatcher with the mouse and the Ghosts randomly. We also added sounded and score.

For those of you who would like to add more complexity, I have a couple of ideas at the end of the notes. Give it a go and if you need any help, just ask one of the mentors at the beginning of the next session.

From next week the Scratch Beginners Group will be given by Julie. I won’t be too far away, so you will see me around! We have a new session this year called Unity. It is a games platform and we expect a large number of the kids will take it so I am going to help out in that room with Kieran.

A big THANK YOU to Julie for taking over for me.

Here are this weeks notes in PDF. CDA-S5-Week_03-Ghostcatcher.pdf

ModderDojo Countries Mod: How to Upload Files to GitHub

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Michael Madden

Thanks to Ninja James for these excellent and detailed instructions, and for setting up a GitHub repository for us to share our code when working on the Countries Mod.

How to stage files to a repository.

WARNING: Please upload your mod in a folder with your topic.

Step 1. Create a folder with the name of the topic your doing for the country mod.

Step 2. Install git = www.git-scm.com, keep pressing next as we will not need any changes to the installation.

Step 3. For example I have my folder on my desktop, so I right click my desktop and click “GIT GUI”. A box should pop up.

Step 4. Click “Clone existing repository”, The source location is the git repo its self, so in the box put this : https://github.com/FrictionlessPortals/Local-Repository.git

Now the Target directory is your folder, click browse and find your folder, for example mine would be on the desktop, its called biomes, select your folder.

Example : My target dir is C:/Users/coderdojo/Desktop/Test Git/Biomes.

Click Clone, This may take a couple of minutes depending on your internet speed.

Step 5. A window should pop up, looks like this ——->

For this example im going to put 2 files in my CLONED FOLDER!. WARNING: Put your your forge files in a folder with your name. Then once your have done that click [RESCAN], your forge files should pop up. Then click [STAGE CHANGED] and click [YES], all your files should move into the [GREEN AREA]. In the box that says [COMMIT MESSAGE], put a message that is related to your Topic in the mod.

Step 6. Click [COMMIT] after you have written your message.

Your files in the [GREEN AREA] should not be there.

Step 7. Now click [PUSH], a box should pop up click push again!

It should ask for my details… Username = FrictionlessPortals

My Password, you will have to ask me through skype, Due to security reasons.

If it says [SUCESS] you’ve sucessfully put your files on github!

If you want more help add me on skype as hypixel.jamertheredstonegamer.

Week 9 2015 – Scratch Beginners – Piano

Posted on April 19, 2015 by cdathenry

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for coming yesterday on such a lovely day.

Thank you to Sean Shanley for demoing a 2D plotter that is controlled by Arduino, with 3D printed parts, and programmed with a Scratch variant called mblock.

The Arduino kits are available to buy on Amazon and the website where you can get all the ideas and instructions is called Instructables.

This week we did a simple Piano.

We only had to draw two keys, and then could duplicate these and change the names. The same applied to the code. The code is the same for each key apart from one small change so the note is the appropriate for the key.

See you all next week, our last session before we have a one week break for the bank holiday and then we will be back working on individual projects, getting ready for our final day and the day we will award the belts.

Here are notes from this week in PDF CDA-S4-Challenge-PrepareForBelts and Piano.pdf

Martha

Week 8 – 2015 Scratch Beginners

Posted on April 1, 2015 by cdathenry

Hi everyone,

We completed our Mario game this week. We coded Mario so that he always floated down on to the wall. We added a fraction of a second of a wait so that it appears that he floats as he comes down. This also allows time for you to navigate left or right as needed.

We also introduced a more advanced concept, the Parallax effect, whereby objects further away appear to move slower than objects nearer. We coded mountains and a Sun to demonstrate this.

You will a full version of the my notes in pdf form here. CDA-S4-Challenge09-Scrolling.pdf

Have a great Easter!

Martha

Week 5 – 2015 – Scratch Beginners

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Martha Fahy

Hello everyone.

Good to see everyone there on Saturday. We made a game called Wipeout similar to on old game called Breakout.

We used a number of important coding concepts again this week, loops and decisions, Variables, broadcasting, etc.

Yesterday during class, we didn’t have time to add the Lives and the Scores but I am hoping everyone will try it themselves at home. We have done it many times now and I am sure you are well able to do it. Try it first on your own but I have put my game up on the scratch website so you can take a look at it if you get stuck. Here is a link Wipeout Game

No Coderdojo Athenry for the next two weeks but I hope to see you all back on the 7th of March.

Enjoy the break

Martha

Python Games – Week 11:More Ping Pong

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Declan Fox

Ronan’s game

In the Python Games group today we continued working on our ping pong games. We will spend another session on them.

There won’t be any Python Games session next Saturday the 31st of January but we will be back the following Saturday the 07th of February.

Alaidhs game

Week 2 – 2015 Scratch Beginneers

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Martha Fahy

Hi everyone,

This week we took a look at the open source graphics program called Paint.net

It’s a very useful piece of software for editing and working with photos and clip art. Over the next couple of weeks we will use it to clean up our photos of our 3D playdoh models or Lego figures.

Here are the PDF version of the notes: CDA-S4-Challenge09-LearnAboutPainting.pdf

See you all next week

Python Games – Week 10: Ping Pong game

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Declan Fox

As we have covered most of the concepts required to make games using Pygame I won’t be doing any more slideshows instead we will spend all of our time writing games from now on. Today we started to make a very simple Ping Pong game and we will spend another session or two finishing it.

Anybody who has missed a few sessions is always welcome back, but now would be a great time to return as we will be explaining everything from the beginning again.

Oculus Rift!

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Michael Madden

It’s great that CoderDojo Athenry can sometimes give young people (and parents) the opportunity to learn about and experience leading edge technologies, such as the 3D printer that Cathal Egan demonstrated at CoderDojo Athenry a couple of months ago.

In January 2015, we have another such opportunity, to try out the Oculus Rift. This is a virtual reality headset that combines 3D graphics with movement tracking, to give you the sense of being fully inside a computer generated world. Wearing it, you can look around everywhere, even over your shoulder, to see the world in 3 dimensions in all directions, and you can even move around it.

The Oculus Rift DK2 (Developer Kit 2) is an early stage technology, only available to software developers rather than the general public, but the ideas are likely to have a big impact in the future in areas such as games, entertainment, and education.

Even though we keep the demos to 2 minutes per person, it will take 3 or 4 weeks for all groups to get to try the Oculus out, because we have so many members in CoderDojo Athenry, and it also takes some time to get it set up.

Thanks a million to Ruaidhri in the Minecraft Modders group who owns it!