Coding for Girls: Design Your Own Adventure Game

When?

Monday August 19 - Friday August 23, 2024.

9:00am-12:00noon.

Who?

This camp is for girls and non-binary students aged 11-14 years.

Cost:

The camp fee is $295 (including taxes).

If the fee is a barrier to your participation, a limited number of bursaries are available for eligible families - please email camps@visst.ca to inquire.

Where?

The Vancouver School for Science and Technology (VISST): 1490 West Broadway, Vancouver.

Why should you attend?

• Exercise both the left and the right side of your brain by learning to code and designing your own fantasy world.

• Build something you can share with your friends and family.

• Try something you won’t find in school that combines coding and video game art.

• Earn a certificate of completion from the Vancouver Independent School for Science and Technology.

What will you learn?

Hello World!: We will start with an Introduction to coding using Inkscape and Godot. Students will start designing their own heroes. They will also program simple character movements.

A-mazing World!: With heroes to work with, students can now start crafting their own worlds for their heroes to explore. They will learn how to set up tilemaps and generate a custom maze for their heroes to navigate through.

Level Up Graphics: Students will spend more time on the graphical side of game design and level up their game’s aesthetics, starting with their heroes. They will transform their heroes from a simple circle to whatever vision they have for them.

Look Out!: Every adventure has hazards and hurdles to avoid and overcome. Students will come up with their own idea on what hazards to introduce into their game’s world.

Ka-ching!: Every adventure should have a purpose. Students will decide what the purpose of their game is and what rewards their heroes should get to move their adventure along.

Timers and Scores: How do we know how many points we have? How long do we have to escape our mazes? Students will learn how to set up global variables that can communicate information from one game element to another.

Lives and Game Over: What happens when we run into too many hazards? Typically the adventure ends. We will end the current adventure and start again from the beginning. Students will spend some time creating their own “game-over screens” to indicate the end of an adventure and to reload the player into a new game should they choose to restart.

Audio and Final Polishes: What’s a game without audio? Sound effects and background music will be added as finishing touches to really bring the adventure to life.

Play with Friends: Students will be able to export their games into playable formats that can be uploaded online.

Camp Instructor

Thanh Nguyen

Thanh is a multimedia artist with over a decade of experience in teaching creative technology and digital fabrication in the Metro Vancouver region.

Since graduating from the Art Institute of Vancouver with a degree in Game Art and Design, she has been teaching game design and programming, 3D modeling and animation. She has been developing specialize curriculums and teaching a creative technology courses, workshops and camps with

Byte Camp and MakerLabs, and is currently the Design and Technology Specialist with VISST.

Thanh is always looking for ways to provide accessible avenues of learning to students keen on learning about the digital arts.

www.linkedin.com/in/thanh-nguyen-a2775826

Additional Notes

• Students should bring their own laptops (and don’t forget your mouse and charger). If you want to borrow one from us, we have a limited number of devices available. Please email us to request one.

• Students should try to install and test the free “Godot” and “Inkscape” prior to the camp.

• Refund policy: Email us at least 1 week (7 days) prior to the start of the camp for a full refund.

Questions?

Please email camps@visst.ca