Videogame Programming Bootcamp - Cambridge

Level up over the school holidays with the Videogame Programming Bootcamp!

In just two weeks you can go from zero programming experience to having created your own retro arcade space-shooter. By the end of this course you will be able to:

• code in the Lua programming language
• make sprites and particle effects from scratch
• make sound effects and chiptune music
• share your own games with friends and family

You won't just be following a tutorial step by step, you will be learning how to work with code to solve problems, simplify your design process and create the games you want to make.

This course has been planned with beginner programmers in mind, but will bring you up to speed rapidly so you can get on with game development!

What you will create

The ultimate goal of the project is that you will complete your game! The genre we will be making is a "shmup" - a side scrolling arcade game where waves of enemies attack. The player has to dodge and weave through the enemy assault while shooting the enemies down. After enough waves of foes have been beaten, the endgame boss-fight begins! Expect to see:

• Cool explosions
• Powerups
• Lots of enemies
• Multi-stage boss battles

The default theme of this course will be space (player spaceship versus aliens) but you could do anything: underwater fish warriors, defending a castle from evil wizards, or fighter-planes firing candy-canes. You determine the look and feel of your game; each participant's game will be unique. You will be picking up the skills as we go, but the feel, balance and theme of the game will be for you to tweak and tune as your game develops.

What to bring

You will need to bring a packed lunch, as well as an afternoon snack if you would like one.

It would be good to bring some headphones as 8 people all making music and sound effects at once can be quite overwhelming! The computers have headphone jacks and Bluetooth.

Feel free to bring a notebook or similar if you are someone who finds notetaking helpful.

You won't need to bring a computer or laptop as we have a suite of them handy.

Course structure

This course will run for 2 weeks, Monday to Friday, starting on Monday 19th of January and running through to Friday the 30th of January.
Due to the Summer Reading Programme finale party, there will be no session on Friday 23rd.

We will start each day at 10.30 am wrap up at 4.00 pm. We will be taking a half-hour lunch break at 12.00 and an afternoon tea break at 2.30, so again: bring a packed lunch and some snacks!

Based on this we will be doing between 4 and 5 hours of work on projects, which means we can go at a steady pace, break things by accident then fix them as we go - such is the authentic programming experience!

For those who want an idea of the routine in advance, below is the daily timetable that we will be roughly tracking: