Meet Delia! She’s paired up with instructor Rebecca as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Like most of us, Delia’s very attached to her phone. She carries it with her and uses it to take pictures, keep in touch with her loved ones, and play games. Lately, however, she’s been using her phone to play games she built herself.
Apps come in all shapes and sizes. Delia’s learning how to use the web-based MIT application App Inventor to design and code gaming apps, like Tic Tac Toe. Her latest project is Pixie Pictionary, inspired by one of Delia’s own character designs. Delia loves Tinkerbell and creating characters, so she customized a scene featuring a Tinkerbell-like pixie at home with her husband, twin babies, and animal friends. “The Bell Family” is the app’s welcome screen, inviting gamers to enjoy Pixie Pictionary.
In earlier lessons, Delia used App Inventor’s interface to design the visual elements of her game. A canvas provides a drawing surface and buttons let gamers choose what color brush to use. Today, Delia added the code that made the buttons and canvas functional:
Button click events change the paint pot’s color to the color of the selected button, canvas “dragged” events use X and Y coordinates to draw a line on the screen, and tapping the Clear button calls a method (tech speak for a section of code that performs a particular task and can be used over and over again) to erase the canvas. Check out the video! Delia tested all her buttons to make sure the code worked properly. Next up, brush sizes!
Look out for Delia’s app in the Google Play store. Once she finalizes all its features, she’ll be publishing it for everyone to use! Thanks for sharing, Delia, and keep coding projects like these. We all love apps and could always use more of them on our own phones!
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