Monthly Archives: December 2015

Hour of Code @ Reston VA

By Shahed C on December 11, 2015
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On December 9, 2015, I had the opportunity to teach an Hour of Code session at South Lakes High School in Reston VA. Mr. Selwyn Lawrence was gracious enough to invite me to a classroom of students, ranging from Grades 9 through 12.

Hour of Code

Mr. Selwyn Lawrence on the left, with his students. I am seated in the middle.

We started with a mid-sized classroom of about 25 students, and also got some help from a colleague of Mr. Lawrence. The vice principal even stopped by to check on our class!

 

We followed the Star Wars tutorial from code.org:

Source: code.org

Source: code.org

Students were given the option to start with a beginner tutorial involving visually dragging and dropping blocks to learn programming concepts. An intermediate tutorial was also suggested, with the option of dragging JavaScript blocks or writing JavaScript code. Finally, some advanced material was suggested for more adventurous students to try at home, namely my Rollerball tutorial in Unity 5.

Thanks to Mr. Lawrence and South Lakes High School for making this happen, and I look forward to doing more in 2016!

Deploy Your Web Site or Web App on Azure

By Shahed C on December 4, 2015
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Are you building a web application? Learn how you can deploy it to Microsoft’s Azure cloud using Visual Studio, Git/GitHub or FTP!

Video: https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/CloudDevWithShahed/Deploy-Your-Web-Site-Web-App-on-Azure

Download PPTX: https://wakeupandcode.com/public_downloads/azure-web-deploy.pptx

SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/shahedC3000/deploy-your-web-site-or-web-app-on-azure

 

 

Unity Game Development at Gallaudet University

By Shahed C on
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Recently, I had the opportunity to teach game development at Gallaudet University with Unity 5 and C# as the programming language. From their website, “Gallaudet University is the world leader in liberal education and career development for deaf and hard of hearing students“.

gallaudet-logo

We started with a small classroom of about 10 people, including teachers and students. The faculty members graciously arranged 2 interpreters for the class, who did a great job in using ASL while I spoke.

Setting up...

Setting up…

We followed my Rollerball tutorial, which is a step-by-step version of Unity’s own Roll-a-ball video tutorial. You may view/download the material below.

As we wrapped up, I demonstrated how you can use Kinect to detect human bodies and provide new ways of interacting by NUI (Natural User Interface). I demonstrated a Unity sample using Kinect v2 and also used my Speech Bubbles for Kinect app within Visual Studio to take some pictures with some volunteers.

Posing for Speech Bubbles with Kinect!

Posing for Speech Bubbles with Kinect!

My tutorial is split up into 2 PowerPoint PPTX files.

 Part 1 of 2: Download PPTX or view slideshow below

 Download project files for Part 1

SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/shahedC3000/rollerball-1-of-2

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Level Zero: Construct 2 Book

By Shahed C on December 1, 2015
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Build Your First Mobile Game Today – No Coding Required.

levelzero-1

At some point, many of us have had an idea for a cool game. The technical expertise needed to build a game has often discouraged most. Level Zero is a tutorial e-book that solves this problem. It explains step by step how to use Scirra’s Construct 2 to set up backgrounds, sounds and characters, implement game mechanics and other nuts and bolts to building your first game. As the title says – without any coding.

For those who aren’t familiar, Scirra created Construct 2 with the non-programmer (or beginning programmer) in mind. Construct 2 uses a visual editor that allows you to create 2D games quickly by dragging and dropping components. It’s easy to pick up and intuitive to use.

Level 0 is based on the principle of learnings while doing. The reader can follow step-by-step instructions to build 5 simple mobile games. Along the way they’ll learn functions that they can implement to customize the games they’ve already built or build an entirely different games from scratch. The authors encourage the developers to publish their game to app stores to get valuable customer feedback and provide instructions on how to set up a developer account and publish one’s game.

levelzero-2

The tutorials are in the form of easy to follow step-by-step instructions for beginners and non-programmers.

So if you’ve been pondering a great game idea and haven’t gotten around to it because you lack the coding skills, now’s the time to get started. Construct 2 gives you an easy to pick up tool and Ankur Prasad’s and Allen Wu’s Level 0 tutorial will going quick and easy. The e-book is available for purchase on Amazon.com for $9.99. However, for a short while, you can download it for free on Scirra.com’s website.