Me being involved in schooling students (between 5th and 10th grade) on computers, I was very fascinated, when I saw the posts of JimDad, who used (together with his colleague Matthew) NWN1(EE) in a computer course! For the last few years, I was already allowed to do a regular introduction into (low level) programming course, where the (10th grade - ) students used - amongst others - LOGO, simple Python and the tool “Game Maker (Lite)”. But now seeing one of my favourite real life time eater being used in school, gave me the kick to try to use NWN1 in the 10th grade computer course.
Well, you all know, that NWN holds a lot of possibilities, which makes it a good candidate to give students some basic insight on game design:
area design
story telling
creating conversations
balancing
…
and last, but not least, the possibility to add your own content to the game.
So at some point, I contacted JimDad about their project. As you might already have seen from JimDad’s post: He’s very helpful and shares a lot.
So, after studying JimDad’s and Matthew’s course aims, clarifying licenses agreements with Beamdog (via Niv) and overcoming obstacles with the hardware at our school (again with the support of Niv), I decided to also give it a try. The OK of the for this from the responsible authority was granted and kickoff will be this upcoming Monday (Sep. 7th 2020).
So many thanks for Niv and JimDad for their big support so far!
I’ll try to send out reports with my experiences on an irregular base. I really hope, that Corona will surpass us all = not only “my” course, of course!
Well, first period and rabbit holes are showing up… I designed a simple demo to show them on a computer board basic mechanics (cam view, walking, pick things up and equip, area trans, …) and while showing, it happened: The NWN-day ended and night begun! Though the room is not totally bright, it turned out, that the beamer lamp has gotten pretty week - at least too week for a night scene with that amount of natural room light (there is nothing to cover the window)! Well, it’s no big deal to do a quick adjustment with the toolset, but I already knew, that the PC for the board is not capable to run the toolset! (Interesting enough: The game works! Yes, drivers are up to date, but they’re old… This phenomena was riddling Niv, too.) So I was not able to do this quick adjustment and the kids saw dark schemes in a dark landscape!
But I think, they kind of still caught the basics.
Meant to say that to you but didn’t realise you had started. Same problem here. Matthew’s room has awful blackout so light streams in. At times I had to tell the class what was happening as they couldn’t tell so I quickly learned to deal in close ups where possible.
Good to see you started though. We’re still in a state of flux.
A quick march down to management to demand the correct tools for the job I reckon…
Thanks for your input, people! Thing is, that I know, how to do those settings for a longer day/always bright, but I totally forgot to set them! It slipped my mind, that the beamer might be to week for a darker setting. The board is just fine, when showing eg. office applications, but then: They normally have a good contrast = dark characters on a bright background.
Well, next period, they get their own little demo adventure I made up for them (nothing big) and they’ll be sitting in front of the monitors and all will be fine - regarding the view on the scenes…
Well, since @jimdad55 summed up quiet a bit regarding his project, I thought, I should chime in, too. As some might have guessed, “my” project (and similar classtypes) was completely dumped in December 2020 and we weren’t able to continue with it during the 2nd half of the year. Sad, because they just understood area basics in the toolset (connecting, designing). Sorry, but I totally missed to do a post on this.
Well, I was allowed to sign up for a 2nd try after the summer break. So I’ll report, when things are moving again.
