Coderdojo part deux

09 Dec 2014

A big thanks to all the children, parents and mentors who made our second CoderDojo in Bradford another enjoyable and successful experience.

This week we focused on Kodu, a coding resource from Microsoft available to download freely from here
Children making games
Children making more games
During the session we looked at the basic coding necessary to control our Kodu and fly it around our small world. We then added some coins to collect and some mines to avoid. We programmed the Kodu to add points for the coins to reach a set target to win the game.
The mines were programmed to destroy our Kodu on impact. The children then altered the speed of the Kodu and added various objects such as trees and rocks to make the game more complex and engaging. Some of the children mastered the ability to add hills, valleys and textures to create very interesting and challenging worlds
Children and parents making games
We then created a more advanced version of the game whereby the coins randomly spawned around the world and self destructed after about 10 seconds. We programmed the mines to also randomly spawn and added code to make them wander around the world to make the game even more challenging.
Children and parents creating together
Some of the children took the game to the next level and programmed various objects to shoot at the Kodu and follow it around the world to try and destroy it. We shared some of our games with each other and many of the children helped others to create the code they required.
The handouts we used can be found in our downloads area here
The next Dojo will be on Saturday 17th January. Details and registration are available on our CoderDojo page here