Creating Platformer Games
This week I’ve been having a blast making platformers with my grade 4 students on scratch.mit.edu. It’s so satisfying to make a game play exactly how you want it to play. The students really feel accomplished when they are finished. I was enjoying my students’ feeling of pride and satisfaction and then I realized something. I was jealous. I wanted to feel that way about the programming I am doing. So it got me thinking, could I get some Object Oriented Programming practice in my making a simple platformer?
Creating a video game is obviously a huge undertaking, so I have my sights set on some pretty humble goals. Can I make a platformer? Specifically, can I make a candy platformer using images as the sprites?
The next obvious question was about language. Should it be Python, JavaScript, or Java? Python is what I feel most comfortable with, so that would be a convenient place to start. But I have been making a lot of progress with JavaScript lately and it would be good to reinforce that. If I used Java I would finally feel more confident in my Java skills.
After a quick search I was able to find a few tutorials that looked appealing. I’m going to take a look at all the tutorials below and make my decision then.
Python and Pygame Platform Game Part 1 — Introduction and Setup — YouTube
Create a Platformer Game with JavaScript — Full Tutorial — YouTube
A New Beginning — Episode #01 — Java Game Development Tutorial — YouTube
I did come across more Tetris tutorials, which may mean it is a better choice.
Python and Pygame Tutorial — Build Tetris! Full GameDev Course — YouTube
Code Tetris: JavaScript Tutorial for Beginners — YouTube
Tetris Made Using Java (2-Day Project) — YouTube
Some helpful lectures to watch in my free time, which is a totally real time that I have
Pong (with Lua) — CS50’s Intro to Game Development — YouTube
It’s amazing how many cool creative projects you can come up with when you are feeling stuck in your coursework!
