Some of the boys deep in concentration.
Eight ‘tweens’ have completed a two-week videogame programming bootcamp at Cambridge Library that has left them all fizzing at the bung for more.
Joe Poultney is Waipā libraries’ “outreach man”.
The bootcamp – so-called because the man running it didn’t feel the word ‘workshop’ properly conveyed what he was trying to achieve – is the brainchild of Waipā District Libraries’ outreach man, Joe Poultney. His idea was to teach kids about coding to the point where they could design and create their own retro arcade space-shooter.
A few of the youngsters had some experience of coding at primary school, others had none.
“They have all surprised me,” he told The News on Friday, the programme’s final day. “It’s been interesting watching them collaborate over problems they’ve come up against. They’ve all helped each other … I get called in only if they can’t solve it themselves. That’s been great to see.”
A student testing out his game on the bootcamp’s last day.
The bootcamp is a first for Poultney, a self-confessed computer nerd who joined the council over a year ago, bringing with him a comprehensive knowhow on all things techno related.
Early on, he applied his skills to creating an erosion table for an eco-exhibition that demonstration how water erosion impacts differently sized sediment particles.
Theorising that libraries should be spaces where technology sits comfortably next to books for the spread of information, he then created programmes incorporating robotics and 3D printing.
He ran his first videogaming bootcamp at Te Awamutu Library early last month, with six participants; this is his first in Cambridge.
The kids are mostly at intermediate or early high-school level. They needed no prior programming experience; Poultney introduced them to coding in the Lua programming language and covered topics such as tables, functions and loops.
One of the bootcamp students working on his game.
By the end, they were able to make sprites and particle effects from scratch and make sound effects and chiptune music, ending up with games in the ‘shmup’ genre, a side-scrolling arcade game involving waves of enemy attacks.
Much to the delight of the boys involved, there were plenty of explosions, powerups, loads of enemies and multi-stage boss battles. They have all had great fun and learned heaps, almost by osmosis.
When The News popped over on Friday, they were playing and testing each other’s games. Poultney then uploaded the games to the internet with a view to making them available to library users through his Raspberry pi robots, portable robots that run off a USB stick.
The bootcamps between Te Awamutu and Cambridge libraries have consumed most of Poultney’s January, so while there is sure to be a re-run down the line, it likely won’t be until next year.
Some of the boys deep in concentration.
