Introduction

Begin by reviewing the children’s understanding of what they did last week. How they switch between editing and playing the games and how they make changes to programming for characters. 

Review the key programming concepts that were added to their game last lesson:

• Characters to move with the keys
• Characters to move independently
• Objects that can be collected by characters
• Adding a points system and win/lose systems

 

Ask the students:

• Can you describe the algorithms you wrote for each part?
• How do they work?
• Did you make any mistakes last week?
• How did you debug them?

Also briefly recap (or introduce them to) some of the settings they can adjust for their characters such as changing the speed, size and the height at which they hover (the latter two directly accessible from right-clicking the character).

Give them a few minutes to load their game from last week, check everything is working and refresh their memory of navigating Kodu and tweaking their settings.

 

World building tools

The next stage is to Introduce the world building tools one at a time and discuss the impact of changing their world on the game play. 

Below you can find video and text run-throughs of the main world building tools. All of them are also demonstrated in our Kodu tutorial videos.

 

 

The ground brush

The ground brush is the main tool for adding land. Click on the multi-coloured blocks above left of the brush tool to choose from many different colours and patterns. 

Left click to add land, right click to delete it, use the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard to change the size of the brush.

The blue shapes give you brush options of square and circular (my favourite) brushes, plus straight line tools for square and circular brushes and the magic brush, which works a bit like a fill tool and will let you change the colour/pattern of a section of land with one click, instead of having to paint over it. 

 

The up/down tool

The up/down tool does just that. Again there are different brushes to choose from giving you different shapes of brush and three circular brushes that have gradually softer edges. I find the softest of these usually works best. There is also a mottled brush and magic brush with will raise or lower an entire section of land.

Left click to raise, right click lower the land. Brush size is important with this one, a bigger brush often creates better, smoother and more gradual hills.  

 

Smooth

The smooth tool flattens or smooths bumps or hills. Sometimes when you create hills they come up in a very ‘blocky’ way, like steps; some characters (the ones with wheels) will get stuck on these steps unless you smooth out the hills with this tool.

 

Roughen

The roughen tool fires blocks up out of the ground at random heights to create ‘spiky bits’ on your land. This can be useful for creating obstacles or landmarks in your world.

 

Liquid

The liquid tool is great but needs to be used with care. There are a range of coloured liquid types to choose from (click on the coloured shapes above the main icon), and like the other tools left-click makes the liquid go up, right-click makes it go down. It will flood out into any land that is at the same height as the area you click on, so build valleys or raised areas to add water to localised areas. You will have to raise up a larger area of land with the up/down tool and then sink a section of it back down to create lakes etc.

 

Erase

Most objects can be removed by clicking on them and pressing the delete key, or right-clicking and choosing cut, however, the erase tool offers another quick and easy way to delete things from your world by simply painting over them with this tool - great for clearing out a large area.

 

 

Example worlds for a collecting game 

Here are a few example worlds made for this kind of collecting game: 

As you can see, it’s also nice to add other objects like trees, rocks or buildings. These can be incorporated into the game and do something or just be left as part of the scenery. Tip - Copy and paste trees with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for placing lots of them quickly in your world!

 

 

World settings

 

You can also change quite a few things in the world settings. 

In here you will find ‘glass walls’ - make characters able to fall of the edges of your world when turned off. 

 

 

You will also find sky colour and lighting which can really alter the mood and atmosphere of a world.

 

 

Scroll down a bit further to find a choice of how your game begins, adding a countdown is really good, and if your game needs some introducing or instructions of how to play this can be added at the start of the game with ‘Description with countdown’. You then add the description when you save the game. 

 

 

Finally, keep an eye on the barometer at the side of the screen.

 

 

This will start out greyed out but light up and fill up as you add things to your world. It gives you an idea of how well your computer is coping with the size and complexity of the world you are creating. Running 3D graphics takes up quite a bit of processing power on computers and the more complex and bigger the environment then the more your computer will struggle. So if this meter reaches orange and especially red, stop adding things to your world! You may also need to delete some parts or you may find your computer starts to lag and Kodu crashes. Remember to save as you go as well! Kodu is good at recovering work after a crash, but don’t risk it! 

 

Time to build

Demonstrate the tools and give the students a good amount of time to get used to them and build a great world for their collecting game. It’s worth reminding them that holding the spacebar down jumps back to the hand tool to allow movement and manipulation of the camera, this makes building the world much easier and faster than having to constantly flick between the two tools. 

Another tip is to zoom out at the beginning and paint the land from a bird's eye view looking down, this often makes it easier to plan out the shape of your world. Emphasise quality over quantity, the world doesn't need to be enormous to be fun to play, in fact if it's too big it can make the game boring as all the time is spent flying around and there isn't much action.

 

Bigger apples

Once they are happy with their world, it's a good idea to make the apples bigger, and spread them out around the world. There's no point having a great world to explore if all the apples are together in one place. Consider where to place them and that the computer controlled Kodu can reach them all. Try to keep them all in its line of sight and not to put them behind areas that will stop your opponent getting to them.

To make them bigger, right-click an apple and choose change size. Then use the slider to increase the size.

 

Before and after apples

 

 

Remind the students to save their work at the end of the lesson. You can create ‘versions’ or iterations of the game as you go by changing the V number in the top right of the save box.  

 

 

Plenary

Ask the students to swap seat with a class mate and play each other's games. Ask them to not just play it but test it! They should consider:

• Does all their code work?
• Can you win?
• Can you lose?
• Is it too easy or too hard?
• Can you get to all the apples?
• Can you get to all parts of the world?
• Is it fun?

After a few minutes ask them to stop playing and think about these questions, then feed back to their partner what they thought. If there is time they could make any minor changes that may be needed, but they will also have some more time in the next lesson to complete the game and make improvements.

Finish off by discussing the following questions with the class:

• How did you find creating your world?
• What do you think you did well? 
• Is there anything you still want to improve?
• What might you do differently if you did it all again?