Are you an educator? Contact us!

Joe

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  • Posts: 2478
Thanks, Rob.

And welcome, Tom! I just sent you an email. Feel free to respond wherever you're most comfortable.

colinleeke

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Hi. I am a secondary school teacher and ICT coordinator in Kent, England. In a month we are going to start a games unit as perscribed by our chosen exam board. I spent a good deal of time learning scratch and GameMaker 8 to help the pupils last year with the same unit. I am pleased to see elements from both those platforms and just hope I can get up to speed.

A couple more tutorials on simple game formats would be useful for educators to walk through to help make steps and processes more concrete.

Love what I have seen so far.

Rob

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  • Posts: 1268
Hi Colin,

Do you have a chance to check out our tutorial here by Abigayl? They should be very useful for any newcomers.

http://www.stencyl.com/help/viewArticle/105/
GOLDEN RULE #1 : SAVE YOUR GAMES FREQUENTLY
IOS/XCODE DEBUGGING
http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/xcode-ios-troubleshoot/
WATCH STENCYLWORKS VIDEO TUTORIAL BY SUNRISEKINGDOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDfRfjzr9j4&feature=channel_video_title

Jon

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  • Posts: 17524
I have a question - is there a connection between Scratch and Stencyl? I looked at Scratch when trying to locate a tool, there's a similar interface going on here.

We're not affiliated but obtained permission from the supervising professor to borrow and build upon the concept.

emf715

  • Posts: 46
Hi there,

I already emailed the education address, but figured I'd introduce myself here as well.

I teach 5th grade, and I've also released a bunch of iOS apps on the side. My students are an ambitious bunch of 10 and 11 year olds, so we've formed a game studio: Recess Studios (http://www.RecessStudios.com). We started off in Corona, but have moved to iStencyl.

Managing a 17-person design team of preteens is a lot like herding cats, but we're having a blast. By assigning the kids different jobs (Lead Artist, Gameplay Engineer, etc), most of them are able to focus on the aspects of game design that truly appeal to them.

I'm making a quick game from scratch this weekend to familiarize myself with iStencyl. Aside from a few minor glitches, it seems to be a quite powerful, intuitive, and easy-to-use tool.

Look out for our first game, Mummy Mambo, coming out sometime before June. It's an egyptian-themed platformer (we study Ancient Egypt; gotta love curricular connections!).

-Evan

Rob

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  • Posts: 1268
@Papasmurf. Welcome to stencyl. This sounds like a lot of fun - playing while learning. Please let us know of your progress and send out screenshot and progress status if you have any. I'll follow the website you send out.

I hope everyone in your class, while they have their own individual specialties, will have a chance to try everything in stencyl including coding, resource making and making levels. It's good to learn and know a little bit of everything.

Forgot to ask, how did you hear about us?

« Last Edit: January 22, 2012, 01:05:56 pm by Rob »
GOLDEN RULE #1 : SAVE YOUR GAMES FREQUENTLY
IOS/XCODE DEBUGGING
http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/xcode-ios-troubleshoot/
WATCH STENCYLWORKS VIDEO TUTORIAL BY SUNRISEKINGDOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDfRfjzr9j4&feature=channel_video_title

AlexVsCoding

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  • Posts: 186
Hello!

Over the summer period I have been offered the opportunity to start my own course teaching children from ages 7-17 how to design and build games at a US Summer Camp in New York State. I have found Stencylworks an incredibly useful tool over the past few months. Despite not being a proper teacher/lecturer, would it still be possible to have access to these resources for teaching?

Hope you can help and thanks regardless for a fantastic piece of software!

Cheers,

Alex Johansson

Rob

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  • Posts: 1268
Can you contact Joe who is our developer/education relation person about this matter? I think if you are teaching a class, you need some system admin to install sw properly on all your class machines.

Here is Joe's ontact.

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php?action=profile;area=summary;u=12

Also, here is a thread on installing sw on a school network:

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,6180.msg45487.html#msg45487
GOLDEN RULE #1 : SAVE YOUR GAMES FREQUENTLY
IOS/XCODE DEBUGGING
http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/xcode-ios-troubleshoot/
WATCH STENCYLWORKS VIDEO TUTORIAL BY SUNRISEKINGDOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDfRfjzr9j4&feature=channel_video_title

Joe

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  • Posts: 2478
Can you contact Joe who is our developer/education relation person about this matter? I think if you are teaching a class, you need some system admin to install sw properly on all your class machines.

Here is Joe's ontact.

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php?action=profile;area=summary;u=12

Also, here is a thread on installing sw on a school network:

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,6180.msg45487.html#msg45487

Thanks, Rob! Handling over PM and email.

TomEllard

  • Posts: 27
Well it's time for me to be a pain in the ass, because my Computing Services people are telling me I have to supply the version of Stencyl that's going on the system sometime next week. So I'm forced to ask if V2.0. is going to make that deadline.

I'm running the nightly builds and that seems OK to me. I guess it comes down to means of installation. If we install the 1.4 download and then overwrite that with a nightly build at the last moment, this is going to be as close as we can get, or should I wait for an installer?

I appreciate how helpful you guys have been, and it's not really your problem!

Joe

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Unfortunately, you won't be seeing an official installer for 2.0 before next week.

Also with 2.0, we're going to be offering an MSI installer to make it easier for schools to perform network installations, but that also won't be ready in time for next week.

SWATLLAMA

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Those network people are so picky. They think *everything* has a virus.

The great and so informed llama that I surely am suggests that you install 1.4 but overwrite it with that MSI thing Joe is talkin bout.
Hail The Llama
http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/lSWATLLAMA
"Play the games" ~ The Grand Llama

It's my life goal to rickroll as many people as possible

TomEllard

  • Posts: 27
Those network people are so picky. They think *everything* has a virus.

They *know* that academics are a virus!
I'm going to wing it. I'll see if the manager will let me go ahead with the install then overwrite. If there's a problem I absolve them of blame!

I understand where they are coming from. The other day I wondered why my laptop was running slow. I was smart enough to get up a console to see what was going on. But I hadn't been smart enough to know that just deleting some Adobe trial applications leaves their wretched Akmai updater trying to start an install every ten seconds, failing and trying again.

SWATLLAMA

  • Posts: 1059
You on Windoze? Prolly. Twould be worse on mac.
Go to run -> regedit, but be careful with regedit. It can destroy your whole computer if you do it wrong. Look for the "Key" for those adobe trials.

The people at my school think that doing a C++ tutorial or a javascript tutorial will give them a virus. o_O
Hail The Llama
http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/lSWATLLAMA
"Play the games" ~ The Grand Llama

It's my life goal to rickroll as many people as possible

TomEllard

  • Posts: 27
Hi there just checking in. Not saying much because term is on and I'm really busy!  :)

Week three of Game Design is on. We're running the Stencyl 2.0. betas. They store all their stuff in their home directory, bring it over to their lab machine to work on the tutorials, then put it away at the end of the class. Not elegant, but we didn't have time to get the software into the Standard Operating Environment.

Even the CompSci kids are OK with the software once I flash the ActionScript at them. (You wanna code? Code!) Everybody is using blocks.

Weeks 1 + 2 we went through a top down game with a very nimble bug versus a very fast fly. (Triangulation, balance of power, screen framing, re-using objects for levels etc.) Tonight it will be a pinball game, which I have to say has been a pest to set up (damn flippers just don't catch the ball) but it'll be OK for tonight (using regions, landscape, physics settings, attaching scene behaviours, designing from a PhotoShop template.)

You'll hear if there's any disasters!