We’re bringing you a whole new game design experience, with our Arcade Gamer course featuring the Microsoft Kitronix ARCADE Gamepad - a fully featured programmable gamepad for use with the MakeCode Arcade block editor.
Arcade gaming gave birth to the whole gaming industry. The first recognisable arcade games emerged in the 1930s with early pinball machines, which developed into the increasingly advanced electronic games of the 1960s. During the 70’s came some of the most famous arcade games, like Pacman and Space Invader. Games continued to advance, until the computer was invented and became commercially available, when arcades lost popularity and the modern gaming industry as we know it was born.
We are providing Tech Camp campers with a taste of this exciting early gaming world with our Arcade Gamer course. We will send you a Microsoft Kitronix ARCADE Gamepad,on which you can create retro arcade games to run in the browser. It consists of drag and drop blocks that snap together to form programs. You can also write code for ARCADE in Javascript (there is even a Python editor coming soon!). You’ll learn techniques of Sprite (graphics) and sound generation, level design, physics systems and more as you build multiple games over the week.
The Kitronix gamepad features:
We’ll send you your own Kitronix Gamepad, so you can create your own Pacman game, mazes, platformers and more. That way, you can make your perfect game, and build it even more as you desire!
Read more about our Arcade Game course here, and book now - places are limited!
You may not be able to come to us, but we can come to you: with our online courses, featuring our best projects, with our best tutors, and a super fun learning structure!
We wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on the fun and learning which takes place at Tech Camp, so we have devised a way to bring all the elements of camp to you - the learning, the creating, and the socialising!
Myself and Tom have spent the week down at Forres Sandle Manor school in the New Forest, running a 'Rockets and Robotics' programme for 14 children. At the end of each year, the school have a 'project week' where all the children choose from a wide range of activities to do for the week, such as cycling, needlecraft, sports and even trips abroad.
We spent today at IBM Hursley, one of IBM's biggest sites in the UK, helping them test out some educational games they were working on. They wanted a bunch of kids to help them with their testing and we were happy to oblige now that the big summer events are all over.
I spent the day today at Brightworks in San Francisco. For those not familiar with this crazy school or the crazy man behind it, Gever Tulley is responsible for Tinkering School and for inspiring children at his camps over the other side of the Atlantic. If there's one thing worth watching of his, it's "Five dangerous things you should let your kids do."
As part of our visit to IBM for the Raspberry Pi day we had a tour of IBM's museum. During the tour we were shown some of IBM's typewriters and after a long (but concise) explanation of the development of the typewriter, one of the kids asked what did these 'typewriter' things do? It never struck the rest of us adults that most of the children would never have seen one of these before.
Can't wait for the next holidays for more Tech Camps? Join our tutors for weekly hands-on tech workshops in your own home every Saturday and Sunday!
First day of the Abu Dhabi Science Festival and workshops have just opened. We're down at the Corniche (the beach) along with many other workshops both inside and outside (primarily in air conditioned tents as it's so hot out here).
Drones have come a long way since they were used purely for military use and are now one of the most popular ways to capture unique and often breath-taking pictures. Bizarrely, they’ve also been used to deliver pizzas and by farmers, for aerial views of their crops.
Not a football fan? Ever wondered whether you could design something which would show up even the most talented sportsperson in the world? Well, take a look at this video where professional Drone Racing League (DRL) pilot, Dunkan, heads to France to take on 5 top OCG Nice football players with his Racer3 drone.
It's difficult to learn coding without access to a computer. We take it for granted in the west, but the affordability of a modern laptop makes it difficult in many places of the world. We recently had an opportunity to support REACT, a charity that was founded in the UK but supports young people in Ghana to access education.