Plan - goldfirere/make-an-app GitHub Wiki

  • Camp meets 10-5 on Tue Aug 18 at FCCWT, including a break 12:30-1:15 for lunch. Water fight at the end.

  • The goal for the morning would be Crash Course 2 (space invaders) from the website. More confident students are welcome to embellish. Somewhere in here will be some lecturing about concepts in Stencyl. Q: Better to teach before or after Crash Course 2? A: Split it up! Do some teaching before and some after.

  • Students could bring a packed lunch or buy lunch from the store next to Alley's. We would provide a chaperone to go with anyone who wants to buy.

  • The afternoon would be open for students to build what they want to. I will provide a package of simple assets for students to work with. Or they could spend lunchtime -- but only lunchtime -- looking for assets. I will also provide some sample ideas for games.

  • Adults / Jake / other helpers (your sons?) would be on hand to help out. We will assign pairs for the morning, so that students stuck on a step immediately have someone to ask for help.

  • Stencyl seems so straightforward, I don't think much lecturing/teaching will be necessary. Perhaps in the afternoon, once students decide on a project (which they'll do during lunch), we can break into groups based on project affinity, and the groups (each led by a facilitator) can discuss general design.

  • I'll set up a Google Form for registration, to be capped at 20. (RAE: is there enough space in the room? It seemed close to full with 16 + space for instructors.)

  • Participants will get installation instructions to get them going. Stencyl is fairly straightforward to install. Students will be required to have Stencyl (and other bits -- Xcode, JDK for Android, ???) installed before class. We can be available Monday afternoon for installation help. (DFC: Have them complete Crash Course 1 at home. RAE: I think that will cause more trouble, in the form of lots of emailed questions and such, than it's worth.)

  • Age range: 11-18.

  • Suggested donation: $50 to FCCWT and $100 to MV Tech Fund.

  • Main web site will be through chaoticcoders.org.

  • Publicity: DFC: - I have a meeting with a school principal tomorrow, and will bring it up. I’d say: 1) MV Public Schools, and see if we can get any emails out through them, 2) friends network / little league mailing lists, etc. - now that we’ve got history, that will be easier, 3) newspapers / online sites - I can help with that, based on what we did last time, and the dad of one of the students of the boot camp helps run with Gazette - we can likely get him to do an article / blurb, 4) flyers - Alley’s, public libraries, etc. - I can help with that…

  • Advert flyer: Starting point is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nxfS12Jss5tNF4JRVrFgaZQ0Fxpg55_fhnEma_EzWgg/edit

  • Publishing in an app store is beyond the scope of the class. Should be possible to download onto Android. RAE is utterly unsure about iOS.

Questions:

  • DFC mentioned a legal waiver. RAE was assuming that typical homeowner's insurance liability coverage was enough, given that we're not making money here. But RAE is a little concerned about it.

  • What is needed for a fresh install? RAE has gobs of programming tools on all machines at his house, so there's no good way to test. DFC says he has some extra computers. Recruit an early registrant?

  • Will students be able to get their own program onto their own iOS device without a dev id? This is possible with Android.

  • DFC: Stencyl has some limitations… I have not studied the latest version, but historically it was not great on collaboration (hard to share code, other than exporting full game and putting it on another computer) - and then that didn’t always go seamlessly if different support code was not the same (Xcode, Java SDK, etc.).
    Also, it is not very easy to copy and paste code blocks between games, except via a saved Behavior perhaps… I’d have to noodle on that a bit - so if kids did Crash Course 2, they might not be able to copy / paste in boilerplate code or framework easily, except for starting with their old game file under a new name and using all the scaffolding that way…

    RAE: This is annoying. But my experience (now a few years out-of-date) is that students are content doing repetitive tasks if they think the result will be satisfying. (Much more so than adults are content with repetitive tasks!) It would be great if they can share code, but I don't think it's a deal-breaker. A really enterprising student can try to edit the XML/Haxe directly!