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Posts tagged ‘Java’

26
May

Space Battle Arena v1.0.1

Screenshot

King of the Bubble

Just over 3 years ago Space Battle Arena was born.  What started as a crazy idea being built on-the-fly has turned into a whole platform for a series of Programming Games.  It has come a long way over the past year especially, and we are proud to be in a state where we can publish stable builds.

Space Battle Arena has its own website now (available here).  It is the main resource for all materials related to Space Battle including the latest client and server builds, client java docs, student and teacher resources, as well as information about developing for Space Battle.

The project has also now been open sourced on GitHub and will continue to be updated.  If you run into any issues or have suggestions, please file Issues for Space Battle there.  Note: that the main development cycle for Space Battle is between April – June.

In the meantime v1.1 a.k.a. the “Discovery Quest” update is already in the works for ‘Season 4’ at Issaquah High School this year.  For the most up-to-date news, follow us on Twitter @MikewareXGR.

11
Jun

Space Battle 2014 Final Tournament

Space Battle 2014 was a success.  More details will follow on this post in the near future.

Be on the lookout for updated classroom materials in the coming month at http://battlearena.mikeware.com/.

And if you’re coming to PAX Dev, be sure to check out our talk this year: You Have Died of Dysentery: Games in Education Are Still Alive.

11
Sep

Space Battle Arena Materials

You may have seen our ‘Ships in Space‘ videos before.  We’re happy to finally release the materials for Space Battle Arena v0.9.Space Battle Arena

Space Battle Arena is a ‘Programming Game‘ where students must write code (in Java) to control a space ship to accomplish specified tasks.  We have performed this project and its challenge two years running now with great success.  Students have been enthusiastic, excited, and engaged with learning to control a ship in a physical environment and comparing strategies against their fellow students in a fun competition.

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21
Apr

‘Pellet-Man’ in GridWorld Materials

As mentioned previously, we recreated a classic arcade game in the Advanced Placement Computer Science case study GridWorld.

GridWorld involves programming ‘Actors’ within a grid system. This was a natural fit for ‘Pellet-Man’ and is a good exercise for students to work on something exciting and challenging while reinforcing their new knowledge of inheritance and practice using the system found on their AP exam.

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7
Mar

‘Pellet-Man’ in GridWorld

pelletmangridworldscreenshot
GridWorld is the Advanced Placement Computer Science case study acting as a project culminating the knowledge students learn over the course of a school year before taking the AP exam.

In this year’s class, we’re providing a ‘Pellet-Man’ framework to aid student’s learning about inheritance in computer science. If you are an educator and this is of interest to you in your class, please contact us for more information.