Tools and Resources
There are a number of digital tools we will make use of this semester, even just to carry out the business of working together. You are not expected to know these already, and there will be as much help and support as is needed, but you are expected to embrace the use of new tools. It is not as simple as plugging into Learn, but there are many other advantages.
Learning Goal 2 – Learn new tools and ways of working. Adapt to new environments.
Learning Goal 2a – Pick up Markdown, a blogging engine, or some other form of internet-aware independent publication skills and tools. i.e Be able to put your work on the internet in a place/fashion you retain ownership of.
You will also need to pick up tools and practices relevant to your prototypes, things like game engines, Photoshop, etc. I do not have a list of things you need to learn. Each project will require its own tools. But I will train and support you in at least ARIS, so that everyone has something they can use on their own.
Learning Goal 3 – Pick up at least one design tool for the creation of local games. Develop basic proficiency of its use. i.e. see through a simple design to a playable state.
What We need for Class
Course Homepage – This is our syllabus. Any official, relatively static information about the course will be here and waiting whenever you need it. It will eventually house links to and summaries of your own work.
Slack – We will use Slack in lieu of email as a way to stay in touch and up to date between classes. Most businesses and clubs seem to use Slack these days, and it is waaaaay better than email.
Google Drive – This is the easiest place to share resources, plans, and writing where we care more about the help we can get from others than we do the format. Our schedule, for instance, will mutate based on what we actually do, and the “working” copy will be a spreadsheet in this shared folder.
Website/Blogging Platforms – Instead of just thinking about the work you do in this course as things you produce for me, consider the value they may have to you. The simplest way to make this concrete, and to maybe develop some other skills and experiences, is to share these ideas with the world on your own terms. Whether you use a hosted blogging service like Tumblr or Blogger, or you buy and host your own domain (it’s way easier than it sounds—this course homepage is on a domain I run), it’s an important step in digital citizenship to realize that your work is yours. If you only plug it into Learn, FB, etc., you lose most of the ownership over it. I aspire to help you see the importance of this, make room to discuss relevant issues, provide technical support, etc. within the bounds of this class. It might even be a more important thing to spend time learning than any of our content.
HackMD – To make things look fancy in ARIS, or to have a standard format that can be combined and imported other places, Word Docs (or Google docs, etc.) are no help. They are of the past. The lingua franca of the world is the web, HTML. But HTML is for machines to read, not for humans to write. Markdown is a compromise. It makes it possible to write in a way that is not hell for humans to read and write but which is machine-translatable to (and can be combined with) HTML. HackMD is an environment to write Markdown and preview the results. It also gives us most of the collaboration features we love about Google docs. You may want to use HackMD for your game scripts, and I will assign it (or some other way of producing Markdown) for the Design Showcase so that I can put them on the course webpage easily.
ARIS
You do not have tot use ARIS this semester, but it may be especially useful. I will spend some time teaching it to you, I know it very well and have been on the design team since 2009, and I think it is a great tool that fits a magic place between ease of use and power.
Here are some links to help you get started with ARIS:
- ARIS Project Homepage
- ARIS Editor – there are tutorials there too
- ARIS Manual – I can always use a ton of help writing this. Hint, hint
- Field Day Courses
- My Tutorials at the Local Games Lab ABQ Blog – Many of these are ARIS tips.
Most importantly, ARIS is more than a piece of software. It’s a collection of people around the world interested in combining mobile, augmented reality, storytelling, and games. Read and use the ARIS author forums at:
Other Game Design Tools
There are many other kits that make game creation a possibility for non-programmers. Some I know, others I don’t. Some are free, others not. Please feel free to help make this list and fill in details. If you can produce tutorials etc. for these tools, it may be easier for others (in this class and in the world) in the future (Hint, hint). We will especially want to know about what software the authoring tool runs on, what platforms you can develop for (and at what prices), how easy it is to find and play games made with the software, and what kinds of games it is easiest to author with that tool.
Learning Goal 3a – Contribute to the user communities of game design tools. Post designs, documentation, tutorials, etc. publicly, either on your own site or in forums, etc. for the tool itself.
Here are some kits I know about:
Taleblazer – also kinda like ARIS. Probably easier to make simulation type content. Uses the block-style programming language like Scratch. Cross platform: Android and iOS. I would be especially interested for someone to learn this tool and make tutorials for others.
Twine 2. Like ARIS but without the places. This is a web-format choose-your-own adventure engine. The editor makes it easy to do branching stories, and you can start with plain text. HTML and Javascript make infinite customization possible (images, variables, mini games, etc.) and deployment simple.
App Inventor – Blocks-based, visual app development environment for Android. Free.
GameSalad – Make desktop and iOS games with the free version which runs in OS X and Windows, Windows and Android for $$. Looks mostly geared to platformers, but fairly generic. Good documentation but look at modding an existing template to get up and running.
Game Maker – Another one that comes up a lot. Looks a little similar to GameSalad.
RPG Maker VX Ace – Primarily geared towards classic RPGs: menu based combat, isometric view of a map with buildings and characters on it. Costs money but sometimes is cheap on Steam.
Scratch – Not really a game maker, more of a “learn to program visually” tool, but used to make games.
FreshAir – Kinda like ARIS. Quizzes and item interactions are easy to author. Web-based authoring tool. Cross platform. Costs money to have others play your game.
MS Excel, or google spreadsheets – on the back end, many games are little more than spreadsheets where math happens. You can create interactive systems with cells and equations using Excel, leaving the visual design out for the moment. There are even people who use Excel as an actual game engine, putting in graphics and everything (just google it). You can even use interactive google gadgets to create game elements easily from spreadsheet cells.
Google sites – Using hyperlinks, you can turn a website like this one into a rudimentary game engine somewhat like choose your own adventure stories.
Modding tools in commercial games – Many games come with their own modding tools. These can sometimes be used to create games very far from the one you begin with. My first educational game was a mod of Civ. 3.
What else?
