Lesson video

Hi, I'm Rebecca, your computing teacher for the Programming Part 6 unit.

For this lesson, you're going to need your Replit account, which you should have already set up with your parent or carer's permission.

Now you should also have a pen and paper handy to answer any questions that I give you in this lesson.

And it's good idea to try your best to remove as many distractions as you possibly can so that you can really focus in this lesson.

Once you've got all of that ready, we can begin.

In this lesson you will write success criteria for a challenging project.

That challenging project is going to be to make a Battle Boats game, and you're going to start off by playing it, just using pen and paper initially.

So here's what it's all about.

Battle Boats is a turn-based strategy-based game where players eliminate their opponent's fleet of boats by firing at a location on a grid in attempt to sink them.

The first player to sink all their opponent's battle boats is declared the winner.

Each player has two eight-by-eight grids.

One grid is used for their own battle boats, and the other is used to record any hits or misses placed on their opponent's.

At the beginning of the game, players decide where they wish to place their fleet of five battle boats, and they must keep these hidden from the other player.

During game play, players take it in turns to fire at a location on their opponent's board.

They do this by stating the coordinates for their target.

And if a player hits their opponent's boat, then this is recorded on the target tracker as a hit.

If they miss, then this is recorded as a miss.

The game ends when a player's fleet of boats has been suck.

The winner is a player with boats remaining at the end of the game.

It is up to you to decide who goes first.

And you could perhaps do that with a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

So play Battle Boats to gain an understanding of how the game works.

So ask someone in your household to play Battle Boats with you.

If they are not available, then work through the game rules yourself and pretend that you have an opponent.

You can print the next two slides.

So when you go to the worksheet, you'll see that there are two slides there for you to print to use for your player boards.

And if you are unable to print, then create your own boards using pen and paper.

So these are the boards.

So this would be Player 1 board.

You use this board to track the hits and misses that you have made towards your opponent.

So mark a hit with a H and a miss with an M.

And then you use the fleet grid board to display your fleet at its coordinates.

And you have five boats, each boat takes one square.

And mark your boats with a B.

So also you've got a Player 2 board as well, which you can print off or you can copy.

So what I want you to do is now you've got an idea of how to play.

You can also, all of that is also on the worksheet.

I was just reading that through to help you if you needed to, but you can read that again as well.

But I want you to use that worksheet to play Battle Boats.

So pause the video while you have a go at that.

Okay, now the next thing that I'd like you to do on your worksheet is a very detailed scenario for the Battle Boats challenge that you're going to start.

Now, I want you to read the Battle Boats scenario to familiarise yourself with the task ahead.

And you can find this scenario in the Scenario: Battle Boats section.

Try not to get too overwhelmed with it.

Remember, we can decompose this so we can make it, put it into smaller, manageable chunks.

And also just because you're reading the scenario doesn't mean you're now starting to code it.

You're just looking at it and familiarising yourself with it.

So pause the video while you do that.

What we're going to do now then is start thinking about success criteria.

Before you begin a large project, it can be helpful to write down the success criteria.

Success criteria is a list of things that your project will need to do in order for it to be a success.

The list can then be used to help you develop the programme.

It can also be used to complete final testing of your programme.

The Battle Boats scenario is broken down into seven key tasks with a further four set as explorer tasks, so those are optional.

Success criteria is used to decompose these steps further.

So here is the first task just to give you an example.

In order to use this to create success criteria, it can be helpful to highlight any key points, and you can do this in a few moments as well.

So there's that first task.

And then I could go through with a highlighter or I could write those key things down using my pen and paper, and I could highlight those key points.

You can then use these key points to write a list of success criteria.

So those key points now that have been highlighted, I've put into a bulleted list.

Each task will require varying levels of decomposition.

So here is task two.

On your scenario document, highlight any key points that you think might be useful for the success criteria.

So those are the things that I've picked out that might be useful.

You might not have highlighted exactly the same points as me, but the process is important because it helps you to really get to know what you have been asked to do.

And here is example success criteria for task two.

You can see that success criteria is now breaking the problem down further into more manageable steps.

So what I want you to do, use that where I've just helped you.

We've given you some ideas to get you started for that task one and task two.

So you can use that to get you going, and then you need to think about it for those other tasks.

So using the scenario Battle Boats documentation and what you've just seen, write your own success criteria for the project and remember to break the problem down.

So pause the video while you do that.

Brilliant.

So now this is where we start using something called generalisation, where you start thinking, well, what other programmes have I done in the past that might help me with what I am doing now? And what I want you to do is to open the noughts and crosses game using the link there.

And what I want you to do is look at the code, play the game, and see if you can spot any similarities between this and the Battle Boats game.

And this is really similar to the one that you created in Programming Part 5, Lesson 10.

So you have done this before, and you've seen something very similar before.

So pause while you have a go at that.

So here are some of the similarities that you could have picked up.

So it uses a fixed grid, just like the Battle Boats does.

It uses functions and procedures.

I would imagine you're definitely going to need some functions and procedures in this.

Items on the grid are accessed and modified.

There are two players, just like with the Battle Boats game.

And the grid is displayed neatly for the user.

So the way it appears on the screen is quite neat too.

So you've now been introduced to this new challenging project.

You've got your success criteria, and you've seen a similar game that you could possibly use to help you with your Battle Boats game.

And if you'd like to, you can please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

And I'll see you again.

See you for next lesson where we will start to design the code.