Description:

What does it take to make a game? Art, music, storytelling, programming? All these things and more. Whether you are interested in game art, game design or coding, Unity is the place where it all comes together. Unity is a professional game development environment that has been used to create AAA games like Hearthstone and Kerbal Space Program and can also be used to create fun learning games, like ball rolling and pickup games. Unity games can be compiled for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android or Web GL, all from the same project file.

Students will learn their way around the Unity development environment. They will learn to incorporate audio and art assets from the internet, as well as any original audio or art students have created. The class will use Unity's non-coding features to create action and will also do some scripting in C#. Students will create their own game, either chosen from Unity's catalog of beginner game tutorials or designed from scratch, and learn to deploy on the platform of their choice.

First semester will focus on 3D game design and will cover concepts like manipulating game objects in 3D space, working with 3D models, and using first- and third- person perspective. Students will learn techniques to create games like action, adventure, strategy and sandbox games. Even if you are most interested in 2D games, a good foundation in 3D game development will make learning Unity's 2D features even easier.

This course is for teens who are interested in either the artistic/graphic design aspect or programming aspect of video game development. Students should bring a laptop and charger to class each week. A gaming laptop with enhanced graphics card is preferred. No prior coding experience is expected.

Topics in this Series: Video Game Designer: 3D (Semester 1) and Video Game Designer: 2D (Semester 2) Students continuing from first semester receive priority pre-registration for second semester.

Workload: Students should expect to spend 1-2 hours per week outside of class.

Assignments: Will be given in class and noted in the weekly e-mails.

Assessments: Will not be given.

What to Bring: A laptop and charger to class each week.

Credit: Homeschool families may wish to count this course as a component (partial) credit in Career Exploration, Technology, or Applied Computer Science for purposes of a high school transcript.