Fortnite Creative in Class Update: Parent Permission Slip

It all started with the question I was anticipating, "Can we use Fortnite Creative for our final game?" I saw this as an opportunity to empower my students. My concern was with the fact that as a first person shooter, the stigma of Fortnite would come with some administrative resistance. I thought it best to have the students craft their argument in favor of using it and receive approval from our admin. They wrote a great persuasive letter and upon follow up discussions with our tech department and curriculum supervisor, students were granted approval pending parent permission. 

Their next step was to write the permission slip and have it signed so they could proceed.  Amazing how quickly students work when they are intrinsically motivated :) Below is the permission slip for anyone who would like to use it with their students. 

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Dear Parents/Guardians,

We are students in Mr. Isaacs period 4 game design class and we have received the task of creating our very own game for our final project. Mr. Isaacs said we could choose the tool of our choice like minecraft, unity, twine, super mario maker and almost anything we can think of.  A couple of students asked if we could used Fortnite Creative, a section of Fortnite that is dedicated to building your own world. Mr Isaacs sees the value of using Fortnite Creative as a tool to create our game but wanted us to get approval from the school first. We did and all that is needed now  is parent/guardian approval for students to be allowed to use Fortnite Creative in class.

There are many benefits of using Fortnite creative compared to other software like Minecraft. Fortnite creative saves your work to the cloud so you could access your work on any computer, video game console, or your even your phone, where on Minecraft your limited to only the computer your working on. In class students will only be working on a computer, but Fortnite allows students to work on their game at home, which will allow students final game to reach its full potential. Another advantage about Fortnite creative is that new things are added everyday and updates are released every week. This will allow Students to constantly update their game and improve it. Since Fortnite creative is apart of Fortnite, students friends would have easy access to test and play their game anywhere they want. Mr. Isaacs has been researching this and found a number of educators using Fortnite creative in their classrooms. They have had good experiences with it and the students haven't needed to use any of the guns or questionable aspects that would be considered inappropriate for school, but mainly focused on all the creative possibilities like obstacle courses and other challenges like races. Students can even create their own music note by note, which is a vital aspect for game design, One teacher named Mrs. Wright “used it as a student choice for the design and construction of a medieval castle” in her social studies class. Epic games, the creator of Fortnite also made Unreal Engine, a game creator for super high end games. They are trying to make Fortnite creative an easier to understand version of Unreal Engine (an entry point to using their more sophisticated tools), but for everyday people. Like Fortnite creative, every game design software has the possibility to input guns. This is not necessary and students will have to make sure their game is appropriate for school. Students will only use creative aspects of Fortnite creative and nothing violent, so anybody at any age can play it. 

We hope you understand that despite the stigma that fortnite has associated with it, we are asking you to let your children use Epic Games open ended tool as we would any other game design engine. Thank you for your consideration.

I, ______________________________________________________________ (Parent / Guardian Signature) allow my child, ________________________ use Fortnite creative in the classroom and understand that my child is taking responsibility to ensure that any content created is appropriate for school.

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Using functions in Minecraft (Education Edition and Bedrock)

I teach game design and development and I encourage my students to use command blocks and redstone to automate functions in their games. It's pretty much essential as automation in student created games is required for many game elements including automatically spawning mobs,  opening doors, creating check points, changing the game mode, cloning areas of their game to reset them, and so much more.

In Minecraft Education Edition, NPCs are pretty awesome as they help to drive / narrate the story but also have the ability to issue commands, and not just one command, but as many commands as you want them to execute. Command blocks are great as well, but one limiting factor is that you can only execute one command from each command block. You can use chain command blocks to execute a number of consecutive commands, but you cannot simply enter line after line of code in one command block (something I keep begging the minecraft team for :) ) . Well, now there's an answer...

You can create functions in a text file and call upon that function from a command block (or from the command line in the game.)

There are a number of steps to make this whole thing work as it essentially works within a behavior pack.

So, here goes...

Step 1:

Download a standard behavior pack. I suggest going to the Minecraft Add-Ons page  or you can just download the Vanilla Behavior pack here.

Add caption

Step 2:

Once you download the pack, you will want to extract the behavior pack. I suggest renaming the folder to something unique for you (rather than Vanilla Behavior Pack).

Step 3:

Place this folder in the com.mojang/behavior_packs folder.

The path to the com.mojang folder is as follows:

Minecraft for Windows 10

C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\

Apple iOS

Apps/com.mojang.minecraftpe/Documents/games/com.mojang/

Step 4:

Open the folder and edit the manifest.json file with notepad or a similar text editor

Original manifest.json file looks like this:

{
    "format_version": 1,
    "header": {
        "description": "Example vanilla behavior pack",
        "name": "Vanilla Behavior Pack",
        "uuid": "ee649bcf-256c-4013-9068-6a802b89d756",
        "version": [0, 0, 1]
    },
    "modules": [
        {
            "description": "Example vanilla behavior pack",
            "type": "data",
            "uuid": "fa6e90c8-c925-460f-8155-c8a60b753caa",
            "version": [0, 0, 1]
        }
    ],
    "dependencies": [
        {
            "uuid": "743f6949-53be-44b6-b326-398005028819",
            "version": [0, 0, 1]
        }
    ]
}

I'm sure this looks confusing. This is the manifest file that is bundled with the behavior pack. In order to use it for behavior packs, resource packs, or in this case functions, you need to make a few changes.

First off, you should change the description and name to something more relevant to you. You also need to include the version of minecraft and the minimum version. You need to change the uuid for the header and modules sections. You can use a uuid generator. There is also an open source UUID generator created by Alan Reed. If you are not using resource packs, you should delete the "dependencies" section or you will receive an error indicating that a dependency is missing - might not be a big deal, but let's do our best to get rid of any errors.

Here's what my updated manifest.json file looks like:

{
    "format_version": 1,
    "header": {
        "description": "functiontest",
        "name": "functiontest2",
        "uuid": "cc97a5a3-5bad-11e9-8647-d663bd873d93",
        "version": [1, 9, 3],
  "min_engine_version": [1, 9, 3]
    },
    "modules": [
        {
            "description": "functiontest",
            "type": "data",
            "uuid": "7ea17070-5bae-11e1-8647-d663bd873d93",
            "version": [1, 9, 3]
        }
    ]
}

I changed the description and name in the header and the description in the modules section. I changed both uuids using a uuid generator. As mentioned previously, you can also find an open source UUID generator here.

Step 5: 
Create the function folder and file. The folder must reside inside the behavior pack folder that you are working with and the file must have the extension .mcfunction. For example, you can create a folder called functions and a file called function_house.mcfunction. You can use a sub folder within the functions folder to keep organized if you will be  using multiple functions. If so, you can call upon them using the subfolder name / file name. You should edit this file in notepad or a similar text editor.

My test.mcfunction file looks like this:

Here's what the folder structure looks like:

Step 6: Package your behavior pack to add it to the game!

Now you need to compress or zip this folder back up so that you can use it with the game. Go to the directory for the behavior pack (in my example above it would be called functiontest2. Right click on the folder in windows explorer. Choose send to -> compressed .zip file. This will compress the folder. The resulting file (compressed file) will be something.zip (i.e. functiontest2.zip). Change the extension to .mcpack or .mcworld (i.e. rename it to functiontest2.mcpack or functiontest2.mcworld. I haven't played with the .mcworld but that's the extension for a minecraft (education edition or win10) world while .mcpack is the extension for a behavior pack.

Step 7:  Add the behavior pack to a minecraft world. 

You can actually double click (or open) the .mcpack file. This will import it into Minecraft Education Edition or Minecraft Windows 10 Edition so that you will easily find it when you are ready to add it to your world. You can create a new world and add the behavior pack.

Select the behavior pack and click on the + to add it to this world.

Step 8: Play your game and test your function!

You can enter the function command in the command line...

or you can add it in a command block ...

Either will result in executing the function from the .mcfunction file.

If you recall from above, the function was set to give the player a diamond sword, and diamond chestplate, build a class cube in the air (using the fill command) and summoning some mobs including an ender dragon.

Pretty cool, eh? Can you imagine all the incredible possibilities?  What are you waiting for? Create and execute a function to create an arena with a bunch of mobs and teleport the player into the arena with a sword and armor to defend the honor of the king!!!

Should we allow Fortnite Creative as a Game Design Engine in school?

Many of you have been following our journey regarding the use of Fortnite Creative mode in my 8th grade game design classes. Essentially it started with the student question, "Can we use Fortnite Creative to make our game". I am a huge proponent of student choice and student voice. The stigma around fortnite leads me to believe that it should be cleared with our administration. The more research I've done the more I see how Fortnite Creative mode is no different from any other design tool. It really comes down to how you use it and what elements you include. I encouraged the students who asked to write to our administration for approval. I believe their argument below is well developed. 

Dear *** ,


We are students in Mr. Isaacs period 4 game design class and we have received the task of creating our very own game for our final project. Mr. Isaacs said we could choose the tool of our choice like minecraft, unity, twine, super mario maker and almost anything we can think of. A couple of students asked if we could used Fortnite Creative, a section of Fortnite that is dedicated to building your own world. Mr Isaacs sees the value of using Fortnite Creative as a tool to create our game but wanted us to get approval from the school first. He suggests that students should get parent approval first in addition.

There are many benefits of using Fortnite creative compared to other software like Minecraft. Fortnite creative saves your work to the cloud so you could access your work on any computer, video game console, or your even your phone, where on Minecraft your limited to only the computer your working on. In class we will only be working on a computer, but Fortnite allows us to work on our game at home, which will allow our final game to reach its full potential. Another advantage about Fortnite creative is that new things are added everyday and updates are released every week. This will allow us to constantly update our game and improve it. Since Fortnite creative is apart of Fortnite, our friends would have easy access to test and play our game anywhere they want. Mr. Isaacs has been researching this and found a number of educators using Fortnite creative in their classrooms. They have had good experiences with it and the students haven't needed to use any of the guns or questionable aspects that would be considered inappropriate for school, but mainly focused on all the creative possibilities like obstacle courses and other challenges like races. You can even make your own music note by note, which is a vital aspect for game design, One teacher named Mrs. Wright “used it as a student choice for the design and construction of a medieval castle” in her social studies class. Epic games, the creator of Fortnite also made Unreal Engine, a game creator for super high end games. They are trying to make Fortnite creative an easier to understand version of Unreal Engine (an entry point to using their more sophisticated tools), but for everyday people. Like Fortnite creative, every game design software has the possibility to input guns. This is not necessary and we realize that we need to ensure that our game is appropriate for school. The idea for our game is to make a ultimate obstacle course that uses only creative aspects of Fortnite creative and nothing violent, so anybody at any age can play it.

We hope you understand that despite the stigma that fortnite has associated with it, we are asking to use Epic Games open ended tool as we would any other game design engine. Thank you for your consideration!


Sincerely,


*** and ***

Here are some photos that show the amazing potential of this tool

Here is an example of someone making music in Fortnite creative game engine

A race track that someone made with Fortnite creative game engine

A building someone created for their game using Fortnite Creative game engine