Such a Fun engine that I teach it to teens

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

So,

I've been playing around with this engine for a good 4 months, and I love everything about it. I have a program called "Digital Brilliance Hour", that teaches teens how to develop games from scratch. I've used many different engines, including MUGEN. But I feel like I'm able to show every aspect of development in a cleaner way with OpenBOR. Having said that, this is our first semester using OpenBOR for our class, and the kids really loved it. Which brings me to my point.

They have created their first demo on the engine. They planned out the game, created characters from scratch, stages from scratch, and learned how to use other published modules to learn even more on how to use the engine. I'm super proud of them. The title of the game is called "Memory Loss", where the characters were involved in a bioweapon explosion that affects your memory, and they have to get their memory back.

I think this is great for the first try, and the games will continue to look better!
https://gamejolt.com/games/memory_loss/450872

Would love to get your thoughts on what you see so far, and the demo is releasing on nov 26. How would I be able to get to the announcements area?

 

[darknior]

WOAW excellent idea to use OpenBOR to learn programming to your kids ...
And the images are pretty cool, i will try it

But please correct the link, there is a problem with it for me, i have an error

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[Digital Brilliance Hour]

WOAW excellent idea to use OpenBOR to learn programming to your kids ...
And the images are pretty cool, i will try it

But please correct the link, there is a problem with it for me, i have an error

Forbidden
You do not have access to this page.

Thanks so much! Sorry about that, I updated the original post and here it is for good measure:
https://gamejolt.com/games/memory_loss/450872

 

[msmalik681]

I have a friend who teaches he also wanted to do this but i am not sure if he ever did it.  I will try the demo when I get the opportunity.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

I have a friend who teaches he also wanted to do this but i am not sure if he ever did it.  I will try the demo when I get the opportunity.

Yeah it was a rocky start, because the kids were so used to MUGEN. So it took a bit to  retrain their mind , but they did, they saw how beneficial it was. I also incorporate all the different tools like ASU, OpenBORStats, PalApply, Wav2Bor, ToolBatchRenamer, .etc

So they were able to see every aspect of building something from scratch. Also, because of what I learned, I plan on doing some simplified tutorials that go from start to finish, so it's easier for someone to come in, watch the videos and pick it up. Try not to get too technical, but bare minimum to be able to expand with the extra technical side.

Hope he follows through with that. Thanks for your words!

 

[DCurrent]

Rough around the edges, especially animation. But for a first start it's good work! I'm very proud to hear of this, and am looking forward to seeing what else your class does. If you have any questions, please speak up!

DC

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

Rough around the edges, especially animation. But for a first start it's good work! I'm very proud to hear of this, and am looking forward to seeing what else your class does. If you have any questions, please speak up!

DC

Yeah I would imagine so Yeah you'll see progression as the semesters go on. It's hard for me to ask questions in the middle of the program as everything is too fast paced for me to wait on answers. But after the release party next week, you'll see more questions to fill in those gaps. Also, when you're working with a bunch of kids trying to keep them focused, welll.. haha But now that they can see it's potential, they'll be more focused in the spring.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

so how are you teaching them the engine ? have you made games prior ? like what is the approach to teaching them ? more from a scripting side of things ? Im curious to know what is being taught and how.

As for the game... there is heaps of things that can be tweaked to improve. It would be cool for you to see some other games and pull them apart and see what scripts and features are being used and then use your programming skills to enhance, tweak or build your own scripts and features to really make a cool project.

Ill be playing this as soon as its ready

Yeah perhaps I should explain the program. So the kids have 11 weeks to build the game. It's very fast paced. I'm also learning this as I go as well, so the game isn't going to look top notch yet. I'm a full stack developer myself, but just hadn't worked on OpenBOR prior. I gave myself a month to kind of get familiar before the class started. The class ends next week, and I plan to take the experience I got from this first attempt to tweak my knowledge even better. So, I'm well aware that this game isn't going to look super polished yet. Plus, this will only be a demo anyway, as the teens plan on making it even better.

The goal of the program is to give underprivileged youth access to STEM with the basics of game development, agile development, and team building. So it's more about the processes and the experience more than it being a perfect game. As these youth have never done this before.

We went over creating assets from scratch, using assets from other modules, some scripting, and level design.

But what I would also love to hear is more specifics on what's considered rough around the edges and such. Doesn't have to be elaborate, but just some information that I can mull over when I get back to building my knowledge on the engine.

Hopefully this gives more insight.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

And nsw25  towards the end of the program, I was really starting to see how the scripting makes things even smoother, so we incorporated a bit of that, but not as much yet. I think the scripting part is what I love best about OpenBOR. So I definitely will be picking apart a lot of the more polished games to get even more insight. I even made list of games I plan on checking out haha

I just wanted to get past ending the semester first.

 

[O Ilusionista]

It's so cool to see the engine being used for this.
I believe the original and current developers would be very happy about that. I am part of the official team and I am happy about it I met a person who also used OpenBOR, here in Brazil, to teach game programming for young people.

I'm a full stack developer myself

That makes all the difference. A very common thing to happen is users who have no programming knowledge (which is not a problem) complain about simple things in the engine, but make no effort to learn and end up copying and pasting code from various sources, not knowing what the codes do, how they work.

As a programmer, you already know the result of this

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

so for me I like to see things that look less like the base engine as possible (as there has been way too many games made early on with engine and they all look relatively the same). so that means font changes, hit flash changes, life bar changes, aspect ratio changes etc at minimum.

There are some good plug and play type of scripts that some of use, such as using drawmtehod for tinting effects, scripts for random sounds, random speeds, velocity scripts instead of using move (as move can look jerky and also sometimes only work smoothly in one direction and other issues)

Oh yeah I get when it comes to games that are preferred. You'll probably see more of that from the teens who really have the passion for it. I'm going to incorporate more of that in the next session, so that the games can be even more seamless. Also, a lot of these teens plan on continuing development for their games after the program, so I'll be helping them learn the more advanced techniques. nsw25  definitely give me until our next semester(may 2020) release, and you'll definitely see major improvements! I'm a perfectionist as well, so I always take feedback as fuel.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

It's so cool to see the engine being used for this.
I believe the original and current developers would be very happy about that. I am part of the official team and I am happy about it I met a person who also used OpenBOR, here in Brazil, to teach game programming for young people.

I'm a full stack developer myself

That makes all the difference. A very common thing to happen is users who have no programming knowledge (which is not a problem) complain about simple things in the engine, but make no effort to learn and end up copying and pasting code from various sources, not knowing what the codes do, how they work.

As a programmer, you already know the result of this

Yessir! haha, yeah I've seen a lot of complaints about people wanting stuff done out of the box, but I actually appreciate the flexibility to be able to create your own features. I'm definitely going to be taking my down time to learn a lot of the tricks and trades to make these end products even more polished.

I appreciate your words, sir.

And I don't take comments personally, as I can be the same way if I had 10+ years with something, so it can be difficult to not want perfection in things when that's all you've done for a while. I just know that when teaching these kids(based on my 8+ years of experience working with youth), I may not always get perfection on the first try. I look more at the idea of the foundation sticking for them to eventually achieve perfection.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

Best thing about Openbor in my eyes is you don't have to be strictly someone who is technically sound, I personally am more visionary and creatively inclined than technical, though over time I've been able to utilise various features as well as know my strengths and weaknesses and know when to put my hand up for help and assistance. Some technical people hate the fact there are people here creating games that cant fully understand the scripts they use 100% ( myself understand how to modify scripts slightly but cant understand how to write one from scratch)... but that's the whole appeal of Openbor. I try and learn stuff as much as I can and have learnt quite a lot from tinkering, getting some answers on forums as well as dissecting other mods etc.

As a teacher Im sure you know different people have different learning styles so for me a classroom environment could be beneficial (as I like hands on and specific advice as I learn) Im sure your students will have a blast and learn a lot as well as spark there own creativity.

Also, how did you stumble across Openbor ?

MAN, exactly! I typically try to break the class into smaller teams, like Engineering, Design, Writing, QA, Executive Producer, .etc. Because I totally agree, people respond to game development in different ways. Although, I'm definitely more technical, I also appreciate the artistic side, so I'm one of those who have that blend of both tech and arts. We had a smaller class this time around due to some mixups,so I didn't get to break up to those teams. It's always great to see them see how their talents can play a role in the end product. I try to keep it fun for everyone, so hands on is key for them. You get too technical in the explanations, they start to lose interest haha. So it's definitely a balance.

Actually, I came across it from MUGEN. Also, when I had finally got to play SOR Remake, I then started hearing about OpenBOR and I had played a few games in it. But I didn't realize you could develop for it until later. Once i started looking into it, I saw how much more I could do with it than MUGEN. Because from what I could tell, scripting in MUGEN is nowhere near as extensive as OpenBOR. Then I saw where someone had even created a airplane shooter on OpenBOR, so I REALLY was intrigued. I definitely plan to get more advanced in it to be able to expand at the type of games.

This community is really good as well. Very responsive and I can tell you guys believe in what you're doing. That speaks volumes to me.

 

[maxman]

The concept looks good/nice. I think this is a good start for your students to look through the codes and learn from them. Even for scripting, it's gonna be a better way for them to learn from the basics of C programming tutorial or class if they have no knowledge of it.

Nice to see Tetsuo (which I used for my mod) in the game. ;D I hate my Dragon Duo demo mod (currently) so much, but since I released it, I always think about improving a lot of stuff such as learning scripts in order to make it better. Sadly I never have time to mod it, but just testing some things for learning. I'm still learning stuff as I go along.

I am hoping your students will succeed with much knowledge about OpenBOR.

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

The concept looks good/nice. I think this is a good start for your students to look through the codes and learn from them. Even for scripting, it's gonna be a better way for them to learn from the basics of C programming tutorial or class if they have no knowledge of it.

Nice to see Tetsuo (which I used for my mod) in the game. ;D I hate my Dragon Duo demo mod (currently) so much, but since I released it, I always think about improving a lot of stuff such as learning scripts in order to make it better. Sadly I never have time to mod it, but just testing some things for learning. I'm still learning stuff as I go along.

I am hoping your students will succeed with much knowledge about OpenBOR.

Appreciate that maxman  and I totally agree. Yeah when we looked through spriters resource, Testuo was one person who they really wanted to use haha

 

[ABK]

Great idea , i know its not easy to make a team and make game together but you did it, congratulations.
Maybe there are some musicians there or graphic artists that could work on some stuff theyre best at, also making your own sprites for a game is not that hard with today's tools,  im using different programs like gimp , spriter and jasc animation shop to make cutout animation with 3d meshes from sprites stylized to 2d art and some of them look fine and they could design their own stuff.
If you push it you can start making sprites in the morning and at the evening you have playable character with basic attacks and animations in game.
All my stuff is made like this
https://www.deviantart.com/bwwd/gallery
You can make sprites in different styles , up to designers wish or enhance existing sprites.

IMO its a good way to teach each person their role when working as a team for eg one guy makes graphics, other one makes jump animation ,other one makes walk etc.cause when eveyone has input on everything its often not going too well, its hard to materialize everyones wishes and still have a product thats unified.
Brainstorming can be fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHtH_SHhc6E

 

[Digital Brilliance Hour]

bWWd I thought I responded to this. And yeah this is definitely the goal! I'm definitely leading into that.