During the second semester in Computer Science Principles, junior Reid Ellis and the class’s other students have to pick what project they will be working on to use the skills they learned first semester. This decision was an easy one for Ellis to make. He decided to design and program a video game where the character travels through the layers of hell as described in the poem “Inferno” by Dante Alighieri.
(By Jules Shumaker)
Ellis has worked throughout the semester programming the video game using a game engine called Geode. However, Ellis isn’t working alone. He is being aided by other students at CTEC to work on visuals for the game.
“I contacted [artists in graphic design classes] and came up with a design brief,” Ellis said. “Senior Alannah Hart and senior Jules Shumaker are working on the animations, the characters, and the background.”
Hart was interested when Ellis asked for help, knowing it could help majorly in the future and look good on their resume.
“He walked into our [Workplace Design] class at CTEC and asked if anyone wanted to help him with his game and I said sure, since it is what I wanted to do in the future,” Hart said.
This project has required a lot of work from Ellis to finish, including learning many new skills and a whole new programming language.
“It’s a learning curve; I need to keep figuring out more,” Ellis said. “The [app has its] own programming language that you have to learn. I’ve never done video game programming and there’s so much to learn with it. I’ve really just programmed the physics so far.”
Ellis is excited to finish the project and share it with other students.
“My overall plan with the game is to put it on a computer and have that work on the CTEC game arcade, so kids will be able to play it at CTEC,” Ellis said.
