ShawneeDispatch.com

Shawnee — Jacob Steinle of Shawnee stared intently at the red Pac-Man-like character on his computer screen.

The character moved across the screen to the left as directed by Jacob, but after it hit an obstacle, it suddenly reappeared on the right-hand side of the screen.

"I told you not to do that," Jacob muttered, annoyed.

For four hours Monday, Jacob and 10 other boys, ages 7 to 12, sat glued to their seats, fully engrossed in the project before them: creating their first video game. They were participating in the first day of the week-long Video Game Design camp, offered through the Shawnee Parks and Recreation Department.

The class was provided through YouthTech, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that also provides camps for Web design, movie making, digital imaging and animation. All of the instructors are certified teachers who hold a master's degree or are working toward one.

Because the camp instructors are all educators, the camps have largely been run in the summer since the organization's founding in 2001. The organization has largely worked with the Blue Valley and Olathe school districts thus far, but it has started to work with local technology firms to provide computers and offer the camps elsewhere in the area.

This week's camp is the first offered in Shawnee, with Shawnee firm Perceptive Software providing laptops for campers to use.

Kevin Suhr, Youthtech's executive director, taught the class with assistant Heather Gruber.

"I know it's going to be hard, but you're going to have to build video games, test them and work out the bugs," Suhr said jokingly, as though it would be hard to talk the boys into such a task. "One of the main things you're going to have to do is play games, so I hope you're prepared for that."

The campers learned about gaming lingo, like sprites, which include all images in a game; rooms, or game levels; and objects, sprite characters or obstacles that have been programmed to do something. They spent a good portion of their first class getting comfortable with the control panels of the GameMaker software and the process of inserting sounds and images into their games, learning just how complicated making a game could be.

"If some of you are a little bit frustrated, don't worry, it takes some time," Suhr told the campers. "You can't start building games right off the bat."

Mike Turner of Shawnee was one who got a little frustrated, as he couldn't get his game to work properly, and was among those who tended to talk through his problems aloud.

"Wait," he said, staring at the screen. "I can't do this yet because I haven't made them (sprites) objects yet."

Suhr said the introductory level classes focus on making the older style 2D games, though YouthTech's advanced classes ventured into the 3d games found on the Xbox and Playstation gaming systems. Like the Shawnee camp, he said classes for the young campers often tended to be at least 80 percent boys, but strangely enough, the classes YouthTech teaches for adults are usually flipped and have 80 percent women.

In their first day alone, the campers built three simple games. One was to simply create a room for a character to walk around and bounce off walls. The second was a point-and-click game, in which a character moved around of its own volition, and the player had to click the character to keep it from running into a wall, receiving 10 points per click.

Finally, the campers moved on to creating their own a maze game and began to create multiple levels. Using work paper, they mapped out each level before creating it.

"Can we do monsters that chase after you?" Drew Lecuru of Shawnee asked.

"We'll do monsters tomorrow," Gruber promised.

Campers will use the rest of the week to add more to their maze games, learning about giving their character lives and health levels and adding the aforementioned monsters. They'll also create a shooter game, such as Asteroids.

Suhr said the YouthTech camps fill a big void in today's technological world, in addition to giving children a head start in familiarizing themselves with technology.

"We're getting the kids who fall between the cracks, the ones who aren't into theater or athletics and don't have a means of enrichment during the summer," he said.

Spaces are still available in two YouthTech classes planned for next week at the Civic Centre. Web Design, for ages 7-12, will be offered from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through July 19 and will teach children how to create their own Web site. 3D Game Design, for ages 12 and up who have taken the Video Game Design course, will run 1-5 p.m. Monday through July 19 and offers an interactive look at the world of 3D Game Design.

To learn more or register for either class, contact the Civic Centre at (913) 631-5200.

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