Pitch me a Snake

I've spent a very happy day in the labs marking student work. Normally I hate marking. Exam scripts send me into a cold sweat. But this was much more fun. Rather than dead trees I was looking at live code. Each of our students in the first year was given 15 minutes to pitch their Snake game. And there have been some super ones. We are going to open up the "wherewouldyouthink hall of fame" and put some of these programs up there for download. Great stuff.

Next semester we are going to take the snake game and move it onto an XBOX. And I reckon we will be the first people in the world to do this in an undergraduate course at first year level.

Comments

[Alfred Thompson]

The first? Maybe. One of the first to be sure. But I will tell you that the Gaming, Simulation and Robotics program ( http://www.dwc.edu/academics/cs/programs/cs_programs_content.shtml ) and Daniel Webster College has their students doing some impressive things early on. They were recently awarded a grant from Microsoft Research to exmpand their use of XNA and Xbox 360. But ahead ofthem in some ways is New Hampshire Technical College with their Animation and Graphic Game Programming ( http://www.nhti.edu/academics/academicprograms/degaggp.html ) curriculum. They have a lab with 16 Xbox 360s in it already and being used this semester.
I've met the heads of both programs so let me know if you'd like an email introduction. Perhaps your students can compete. :-)

[Rob]

Kewl. I should check my facts before doing to much reckoning....

If any students from the states fancy a competition there is always this....

http://www.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/UTBot/Default.aspx