The X (box) Files!

We're winding down the 2015 UVa Saturday 3D class, so this week, I covered how to use Kodu in  Xbox 360. As it turns out, unfortunately, a Kodu project that you create on a PC cannot be exported and opened in the Xbox environment, even if you save it to the class wiki. But, as we resorted to doing for a PC that wouldn't save a project during class, you can always take a screen shot of your code (hold down the "alt" key + "prtscrn" key on your PC keyboard), open up a word processing document, like Word or Open Office, then R click "paste" (or "ctrl" key + V key) and there you go, you'll see a "picture" of your code editor with all the programming lines of code you used so you can replicate your animation.

Also, to put you in touch with experts, I'm including these links:

https://www.yammer.com/microsoftteachers/

Watch building a game using Xbox in action

By the way, notice how in the "say" bubbles, the characters in the demos use the icon for characters and objects, instead of the names? To do this, you have to use the exact same name of the character/object in your "say" text that Kodu uses, and in front of the name, type < and at the end of the name, type >. You will instantly see the text change to the icon picture if you used the name Kodu uses to name something. For example, in my game "Lots of Love", I at first typed the word "hearts" in my description and tried using <hearts>. But, this did not give me the heart icon! This is because even though my game involves "hearts", I had to type in the word spelled "heart" and when I did this, <heart> gave me the "heart" icon. A sharp class member then suggested that a way around this to be most accurate in how you describe your game, is to use instead <heart>s to get the heart icon with an "s" at the end to refer to it's plural state. Perfect workaround ,,,


In past UVa summer sessions, the classes and I came up with questions to post to Kodu and found the Microsoft Kodu developers will respond, pretty quickly, so I highly recommend checking it out and using it ;)