Parent Teacher Magazine Union County Public Schools Sept/Oct 2016 | Page 15

Summer camp turns video game vision into reality Above: Dylan Hatley, at right, a rising eighth grader at Piedmont Middle School, and his teammate, Richard Skpowski, a rising ninth grader at Weddington High, work on a storyboard for the video game they are designing during a July summer camp. Right: CATA’s summer campers Kira Polchow and Nick Koehler, both rising ninth graders at Marvin Ridge High School, work on their drawings of the NPCs (non player characters) that will star in their video game. “There is so much more to the game than just powering it on and going through the experience. Somebody had to think out that entire experience ahead of time.” Summer camp instructor Scott Bryan, at left, discusses video Kira Polchow, a rising ninth game strategies with Bryson Prince, a rising ninth grader at grader at Marvin Ridge CATA. High, decided to take the Dylan Hatley, a rising eighth grader camp hoping to improve her at Piedmont Middle School, is designing drawing skills in creating characters for video software that will save the world – at least in games and animation. The programing was the video game he’s creating. another thing that made the camp appealing. Dylan and about 17 other UCPS students “Learning how to program stuff is really from middle schools across the county spent interesting to me, especially when it comes the week (July 25-July 28) in a summer camp to games because people really love games,” at Central Academy of Technology and Arts, Kira said. “I hope to walk away with the learning software development and game confidence to build stuff, like the games, and design. share what I’ve done. One day, I want to “I like video games a lot,” Dylan said. “I work for an animation company. I hope to play them a lot. I’ve seen Microsoft making work with computers and technology.” games and I wanted to try it, too. My game Bryan said students didn’t need to have will be an adventure where you start off knowledge of any particular software when with nothing. You have to survive the night, they entered the classroom. They used a free find different NPCs (non player characters) ‘game engine’ called Unity, which is software to interact with, and finally find someone to specifically designed to create and develop save the world.” video games. Instructor Scott Bryan’s goal was Unity gives students an environment in for students to walk away with a basic which they can load objects, set up rules, and understanding of what it takes to design and interact with those objects, he said. create a video game, to be able to plan that Bryan said in game development, usually a game effectively, and to have the ability to team of developers works out the details by use the tools at their disposal in order to making sketches, refining those sketches and make their game vision a reality. making the needed changes. “The purpose of the camp is for students “They put all these things together before to learn the thought process that goes into they even start to create the game,” he said. the games that they are playing,” Bryan said. “Once they start making the game, they have to collaborate with each other to create a shared vision of what the final game is going to look like. “ For this reason, Bryan thought it important students work in two-man teams in order to experience that collaboration. After Kira’s teammate, Nick Koehler (also a rising ninth grader at Marvin Ridge High School), finished sketching his character that he planned to use in the game, he continued with the storyboard that outlined the game’s activities. “I’m here because I thought software development would be interesting,” Nick said. “I hope to understand how games are made.” Dylan’s teammate, Richard Skpowski (a rising ninth grader at Weddington High), hopes to take some of the game design knowledge with him to the workforce. “I like to play video games and wanted to learn more about designing them,” Richard said. “I think this class will help me because I want to get a job video game designing.” Career and Technical Education director Robert Filter said summer camps are offered to whet middle school students’ appetite for the courses taught during the school year. “We try to provide an introduction to the academies to rising eighth and ninth graders,” he said. “It gives the students an insight into the programs so when they see their registration card the following year, they will be familiar with and look for that class.” The four-day camps, taught from 9 am to 3 pm, cost $40. --This article was provided by the Union County Public Schools Communications Office. Parent Teacher News • Sept/Oct 2016 • 13