SideWinder added this page on June 6, 2023

I'm going to cover more details about the Space Wars Unplugged Activity that I showed you in the book.

Unplugged Activity: SpaceWars Battle

This Unplugged Activity helps reinforce the lessons we learned in the SpaceWars section. You'll get a chance to review and practice key events and how they work with spaceships.

Requirements

You'll need a group of 4 people: Two Players and Two Ships.

Each Player needs 5 Lives. These can be cards that they hold (total 10 cards). To make it sillier, dress the Players like you'd imagine cool videogame champions would dress in the 1980s (try watching Wizard, Pixels, Tron (Flynn's Arcade), The Last Starfighter, or Stranger Things (Palace Arcade)).

Each Ship will need a blind fold (total two blindfolds) and a Nerf gun (total two Nerf guns with bullets). To make it a little sillier, have the students create cardboard spaceships for them to ride around in (include an open bottom, so that they can walk around while holding the cardboard ship around them, or attach the ship to them, using tape, rope, or string).

If you have more than four people, the other students are Asteroids. Each Asteroid also needs a blindfold (they don't need Nerf guns). To make it a little sillier, dress these students like asteroids.

Instructions

You need at least four people.

Two people will be the Players and two people will be the Ships. Assign one person to be Player 1, one person to be Nocturn (the ship controlled by Player 1), one person to be Player 2, and one person to be Monarch (the ship controlled by Player 2).

Have Player 1 and Player 2 stand on opposite sides of the room. Have Nocturn stand near Player 1 and Monach stand near Player 2. Blindfold Nocturn and Monarch, and make sure the two Ships are not pointed toward each other.

Player 1 controls Nocturn by sending the ship commands. Player 2 controls Monarch by sending that ship commands. Use the following commands:

1. Hum a low pitch to rotate clockwise.
2. Hum a high pitch to move forward.
3. Clap your hands (Player 1 for Nocturn) or stomp your feet (Player 2 for Monarch) for the ship to fire its projectile (shoot the Nerf gun forward). (The commands to clap and stomp are different, to lessen the confusion. But there will still be some confusion with which player is giving the commands, which is part of the game.) The Ships should fire straight ahead, because the Ships are blindfolded. The Players are controlling the Ships.

If a Ship hits another Ship with a projectile, then that Player loses one of the cards (lives). Make sure the Ship has another projectile ready to go.

You can reset the Ships after each time a Ship is hit (to make the game last longer) or whenever both Ships run out of projectiles (such as if you give them four Nerf bullets to use). To reset the Ships, move them back to their starting positions (not facing each other again), and make sure they have their Nerf bullets.

To start the game, count down from three. The last person to run out of lives, wins!

More Players

If you have more than four players, have the additional students play as the Asteroids. Place a blindfold on each Asteroid and then move them around the room to random locations.

When the game starts, the Asteroids are to slowly move around the room. If they run into an Asteroid, a Ship, or a wall, then they are to change directions and slowly continue moving in a different direction.

If a Ship hits an asteroid, then that Player loses a life. If you have more than two Asteroids, the Players should start out with more lives, such as 10 Lives each (10 cards each).

If you have a large enough room and over 12 players, you can four Players and four Ships playing at the same time (then you'd need 40 cards for the four Players, 4 Nerf guns with 16 bullets for the four Ships, and 8 Blindfolds for the 4 Ships and 4 Asteroids).

When a Player wins, play again and reassign the roles so that the players can try out the different parts.

Make sure you have a blast playing your SpaceWars Unplugged Activity!

Improve the Activity

Got ideas or suggestions of how we can improve this Unplugged Activity? Please submit them through the Issues tab, as an Idea.

Next Steps

Next, you can take on the two extra challenges to add to your SpaceWars program and learn more! When you're done, you can move on to Level 5, the Creeper Chase!

Take the Challenges!

1. Challenge 1: In this challenge, you are going to write more code on the SpaceWars.py file!

2. Challenge 2: In this challenge, you are going to write code that will allow two players to play the SpaceWars game together!

More Level 4 Resources

In addition to this page and the instructions for our Level 4 challenges, we also have a Help Page, Online Articles, a Learning Quiz, and a Rewards article:

• Level 4: Help - This page helps you complete the instructions in the book, in case you get stuck.

• Level 4: Online Articles - I made you a list of different web pages I found, which will help you learn more about creating the SpaceWars program.

• Level 4: Learning Quiz - I wrote some questions in case you want to quiz yourself about what you learned. Or you can teach others and quiz them!

• Level 4: Rewards - If you completed the SpaceWars project that we talked about, then I set up this page to act as a reward. You can see some illustrations of me and learn more about who I am! You'll also find the **WHAT **Award digital download, to show off your accomplishment!

Level 5

After you're completely done with Level 4 (did you do the challenges?), then it's time to move on to Level 5! While you read through Level 5 in your book, you can check out the resources from WHO, as they teach you how to build the Creeper Chase program:

• Level 5: Creeper Chase - All Online Resources

I hope you had fun learning about SpaceWars!

-- Side Winder