2025–2026
Falcon Coding Camp
An immersive week-long game development experience for middle school students, focusing on creativity, logic, and computer science fundamentals.
Mission & Platform
Students learned core programming concepts by building their own platformer games. using Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. This block-based environment bridged the gap between visual design and logic implementation, covering sprites, physics engines, and win/loss states.
Curriculum Progression
Day 1: Introduction & Player Mechanics
Setup of the MakeCode environment. Creating the player sprite, mapping controls to movement (X/Y velocity), and understanding the coordinate system.
Day 2: World Building & Gravity
Implementing gravity simulation (`ay`), designing tilemaps (walls, ground), and fixing camera tracking to follow the player.
Day 3: Game Logic & Enemies
Spawning enemies with simplified AI (patrol behavior). Adding 'overlap' events to handle collision detection (taking damage or defeating enemies).
Day 4: Advanced Features
Adding special abilities like a 'Dash' or 'Double Jump'. Implementing variables to track score and player lives.
Day 5: Final Showcase
Students polished their games with multiple levels and presented their final projects to the class.
Student Instructors
Leo Lu
leo.lu2@students.rsd.edu
Alvin Liu
alvin.liu@students.rsd.edu
Emma Yuan
emma.yuan@students.rsd.edu
Sophia Chen
sophia.chen@students.rsd.eduSpecial Thanks
A huge thank you to Mr. Ogden for being an incredible club advisor! We are deeply grateful for the time you took out of your summer break, for opening up your classroom for the camp, and for all the support you give our Coding Club.