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Video Game Programming for Teens
New on Outschool
In this course, students will get an introduction to computer programming through the lens of video game development, capping off the course by making a game of their own design.
Class experience
US Grade 9 - 12
Beginner Level
This course will serve as an introduction to computer programming for beginners. Students will be putting their new knowledge to use each week by working on a simple game project. We start simple with text-based guessing games and gradually move on to more complex graphical games by the end of the course. Over time, as students' skills grow, assignments become more open-ended and introduce more room for creativity. The course will end with each student producing their own original game...
8 lessons//8 Weeks
Week 1Lesson 1Core conceptsTopics Covered: - What is programming? - What is a programming language? - Command line interface - Finding help Weekly Challenge: Install the lua interpreter on your system and use it to run a lua program.Week 2Lesson 2Learning Lua Part I - ExpressionsTopics Covered: - Data types - Operators - Variables - Reading user input Weekly Challenge: Make an arithmetic-based guessing gameWeek 3Lesson 3Learning Lua Part II - Control FlowTopics Covered: - Conditionals - Loops - Functions Weekly Challenge: Make a text-based choose-your-own-adventure gameWeek 4Lesson 4Learning Lua Part III - Data StructuresTopics Covered: - Review previous challenge - Arrays - Tables Weekly Challenge: Refactor the choose-your-own-adventure game to use data structures and expand it with additional featuresWeek 5Lesson 5Introduction to Video GamesTopics Covered: - How do video games work? - Getting started with Love2d - Load and display images Weekly Challenge: Port your game to Love2d, implementing visuals and/or sound.Week 6Lesson 6Movement and Animation in 2DTopics Covered: - What is animation? - Motion - Hitboxes Weekly Challenge: Decide what type of game project would be of interest as a final project, and start work on that.Week 7Lesson 7Final Project Part I - Solving ProblemsTopics Covered: - Students will bring their own topics for this week based on their experience thus far with their final project Weekly Challenge: Finish final project by next weekWeek 8Lesson 8Final Project Part II - Show offTopics Covered: - Taking a look at students' games as a fun sendoff for the course Ongoing Challenge: Continue to learn and make games after the course is done
Students will learn the basics of programming and gain some familiarity with the Lua language. Students will also learn how to tackle the kinds of problems that organically emerge when working on a large software project.
Over 7 years experience as a software developer
Homework Offered
Each meeting will end by offering students a challenge to complete before the next session. Depending on how efficient the class us, they may have time to start during the lesson or may have to work on their challenges as homework.1 - 2 hours per week outside of class
Assessments Offered
Grades Offered
Learners should have basic computer literacy — the ability to install and use applications, manage files and folders, search for information on the web, etc.
A computer running a modern operating system such as Window, MacOS, or Linux. The software students will need include a text editor (Visual Studio Code is recommended), a copy of the Lua interpreter, and the Love2D game engine.
The applications students will be using (Lua Interpreter, Love2D, & VS Code) all run locally on the user's computer without any need to log into an account or send any data over the network. These applications are professional development tools from widely trusted publishers and are safe to run on any computer. The recommended online reference sources (lua.org and love2d.org) are both publicly available on the web and do not require an account or any personal information from the user.
As reference material for the tools we are using, the documentation on lua.org and love2d.org will be extremely useful.
Hello, My name is Callan, and I am a software developer and amateur artist. For the time being I am new to Outschool, but my hope is to share both of these passions — computer programming and art — with the young people on this platform. I have...
Group Class
$19
weekly or $150 for 8 classes1x per week, 8 weeks
60 min
Live video meetings
Ages: 13-18
2-10 learners per class
