My Student's are making a Video Game. Pt 1

Last semester, I dabbled in RPG Maker VX Ace with my computer class.  I had them help out with elements of a game that I produced.  I've decided to pull out all of the stops and give them complete creative control of the building process.

RPG Maker VX Ace has a wonderful mapping utility.

The plan is to have them handle all of the writing and design elements of the game while I do the grunt work over the course of the next semester.  So far, I've had them begin the writing of the story and even write up a budget for our "game studio."  These fulfill the requirements of my class to review MS Word and Excel.

The blank map is used to select random shapes for continents.

Next, I am doing some work with GIMP to teach image manipulating.  The first thing we've done is made world maps.  Each student starts with a "blank" map.  They then select chunks to be the continents and add details to separate the biomes and climates.  These designs can then be translated into RPG Maker VX Ace.

Here's something I cooked up in GIMP.