Kinect Games, xGames and TouchDevelop

The main reason for this blog entry is to have a single place for teachers to grab the best of my resources. I’m doing a stand at the Scottish Learning Festival next week, where I will be promoting the CPD training my college (West College Scotland) can provide in coding using tools like Kodu, TouchDevelop and Scratch. However I will also be demonstrating my educational games as well and I will be directing teachers to this blog if they are interested, so again a single place to get everything will be beneficial. My games were just shortlisted for the SQA Star Awards in the category of Innovation and I will find out in November if they win first place.

Kinect Games and xGames in action

Downloads

xGames
Click here to download xGames v2.2 installer which will run on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (135MB). You require 2 to 4 wireless XBOX360 controllers which you connect to your PC with a USB wireless receiver.

Kinect Games v4.1
If you are using the Kinect for Windows sensor with your Windows7/8 PC then click here to download the Kinect for Windows runtime v1.7 (110mb) and then install it.

If you are using the XBOX 360 Kinect sensor with your Windows7/8 PC for evaluation purposes then click here to download the full Kinect SDK v1.7 (222mb) and then install it.

Finally click here to download Kinect Games v4.1 installer (160MB) and install it.

Alternatively click here to download Kinect Games v4.1 all in one installer (383MB) which includes the SDK and install it.

If you have any problems either of the installers then click here to download the XNA4 runtime installer (6.72MB) and try installing it first before running the installers.
TouchDevelop

TouchInvaders created using TouchDevelop

Click here to download my games development curriculum for teaching coding using Microsoft’s free HTML5 browser based free development platform TouchDevelop.

Click here to visit my YouTube channel for my free tutorials on creating games using TouchDevelop. These videos tie in directly with my games dev curriculum. Keep on eye on this channel as I plan to add a PacMan tutorial soon.

Click here to download the free official TouchDevelop book from Microsoft.

Click here to visit the TouchDevelop challenge blog, which contains more tutorials for teaching coding as well as a forum for students to share their games and blog about their experiences.

Click here to visit Ray Chambers blog and have a look at his scheme of work for teaching coding using TouchDevelop.