Week 1

May 3rd-9th
This week, we were welcomed into Professor Gooch's graphics lab and introduced to several of the graduate students who we would be sharing the space with. Some of the projects the graduate students are currently involved with include restoring color, tracing objects in video, single-interaction photograph relighting, and procedural non-photorealistic rendering approaches to create aesthetically interesting effects (generating illusions).
We proceeded to set up our desks and the machines we will be working on. Our mentor then made sure we had the keys to access the necessary labs in the Computer Science Department.

We met with Professor Gooch several time at the beginning of the week to discuss meeting schedules, a general time-line for our project, our goals, etc. Because we both have experience with the process of game design from taking CSC 212 with Amy, we were also able to begin discussing the steps involved in creating a Game Design Document for our project.

The rest of the first week was devoted to background research. We play tested several online games, as well as reviewed several journal entries and articles centered around gaming. After playing each game, we proceeded into game analysis: What makes a game appealing? Entertaining? Are users engaged - cognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally? What is the best method to present educational information? What approach makes information easiest to understand? How do we prevent educational concepts from being overshadowed by the game mechanics? We also reviewed several articles which discussed how to successfully create an entertaining game, and the use of computer games as an educational tool. We posted our reviews on a blog so that we were able to examine and discuss each others entries.

Furthermore, we downloaded different types of game software like Game Maker, RPG Maker, and OHRRPGCE (Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Creation Engine), so that we will be able to determine which piece of software will best fit our project. We both have experience using Game Maker, so we are aware of it's capabilities. However, there is a possibility RPG Maker or OHRRPGCE have some components that would be more helpful when implementing our game . We would like to explore the strengths and weaknesses of these other pieces of software, so we choose the right one to successfully execute the project.

Fun Brain (Everything Unlocked, Grade 8)

Link: http://www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/MathBrain.html?Password=IMP6
This link has beaten all of the games at a grade 8 level (the most difficult)

Since Elyse is reviewing each specific game, I'm just going to give a general review/ranking

• Bumble Numbers -- The second one was pretty hard. There are 3 rounds, only 3 lives, and the fireflys are pure evil, I'm sure
• Puzzler -- It was sometimes difficult to get the pieces onto the part of the puzzle you were thinking off, but I thought that this was a really novel game. We could almost do something like it for big O if we wanted!
• Mummy Hunt (1/2/3) -- I liked this game. I think the time limit was a little short, especially for my higher difficulty. The last one was really difficult because it gives you 3 wheels to spin instead of just the one. I think they could have removed answers that were already taken (I sometimes ran out of time with one problem left, which means I solved it, but I couldn't find the unused pieces fast enough). The game seemed to give easier questions the more often you died, which I think was a good thing for one of their really strongly time-based games.
• Ball Hogs -- I liked this game. Reaction time + Math.
• Hillbilly Pig Toss -- A goofy idea for a game. Does allow a little trial and error. Very amusing. Forces you to think about the effect height has on distance and distance has on height when tossing things
• Moon Rocks -- 3 levels. Fewer lives/more rocks each time. Probably teaches more about matching than math, but the hardest level does force you to consider a strategy about shooting the rocks
• Night Swimmers -- It was alright. Controlling the game was easy. The higher level provided some difficulty by getting the screen a little too full sometimes (it was difficult to avoid obstacles)
• Inkster -- Difficult to control the octopus. I found that the correct answer was always in the upper righthand corner. I think there were better games than this
• Revealer -- Typical word problems. I came across the same questions in both levels. You might not (you can end the game early if you guess the picture) but I think they could have come up with a couple more puzzles
• Math Basketball/Soccer -- Really the same game. I didn't like either of them. Gives you unlimited time to work out problems (and at the higher levels, you need it)

Trade Ruler

Link: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/economics/trade/index.html

The idea for this game is to choose an island with an amount of labour and an amount of capital, and then to choose a trade partner with the same stats. You set up your cell phone and jean production and then offer trades to the other island in an attempt to raise the welfare of your people.

Good:
I liked choosing (and designing) a character, even though that made no difference to the game.
It was interesting to see how your population reacted to the trade deals you made with the neighboring islands.

Needs Work:
I think it would have been neat to be able to change your major trade partner. There were four islands to choose from, so this should have been possible.

The Ear Pages

Link: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/ear/index.html

A series of pages you can explore through to learn about the ear and hearing. You collect (inner ears?) these snail looking things, which gives you a "redo" chance in the quizzes, which have three different levels.


Good:
A timer on the intro. You know how much longer it's going to be!
Skippable intro.


Needs work:
Good for someone who is really motivated. I found it had very little direction, so I got bored with it easily.

Math Arcade

I know this has some very elementary information, however i think a couple of the idea's couple be very useful.
This game consists of several games within a game. I thought this was a great idea to keep the player engaged, because they were striving towards more than one goal here - if they are succeed in playing the game (know the material) than they move forward on the board (a kind of reward).
Donna, we had also talked about possibly being able to pick a your character at the beginning of the game (* or &)....In this game is allows you to pick your own piece to move along the board. Here, there is no real meaning to the item you chose to represent yourself - but for our game, your choice of character would really play a large roll in the game-play.

Letting the player choose their skill level is also something we could think about later on....

All these games a fairly short, but might provide us with some good ideas for certain parts of our game, or ways to gain points, etc...

The first game Bumble Numbers:
This idea would work very well with our concepts we are trying to get across - addresses and their content. There was a nice balance between the importance of the material and the game (even though it was pretty simple and less challenging compared to what we are looking to do)., The goal was to retrieve and integer from a cloud, and to drop it onto the correct mathematical equation. We might want to think about doing something similar, maybe for one section of the game you may need to be able to determine the address of a certain variable to pass to a certain level (given only a section of code - including the declaration and assignment of a pointer to that variable).
Round 2:
This was much more challenging, but the same idea.....One thing that is quite engaging about these games is the artwork. The characters are very 'cute' - cartoon-like , and there is always a new characters come the next game.
One thing I noticed is that the obstacles do not fly around randomly, and they don't follow you around, but they fly on a set path. We might want to think about executing some obstacles, in later level, that follow the users character (to increase the difficulty).

Moon Rocks:
There is no need to know the material for this game, so it is not too relevant. It is simply matching up the numbers.

Pig Toss:
This game is also quite i also quite irrelevant to the material at hand (math). It consists of getting a pig at the right height and distance so a character catches it on the other side.

Math Basketball:
This game requires the player to know the material, however it does not offer any other challenges. The bumble Number game at least offered some object to try and avoid.

Inkster:
I enjoyed this game, just like the first one. It's about the same idea: matching the integer answer to the mathematic equation. However, in this game, there is a choice of answers to one single equation. This was a little more difficult to control because there was a slight delay of when you hit the key and the character moved. I would probably be best to avoid any kind of unnecessary kinks like that so it won't add to the players frustration discourage them form playing.
Also, we both found that the correct answers we not necessarily randomly placed. The correct answers seemed to always be in the same spot.

Mummy hunt:
This game was - i believe - the game that was probably impossible to pass without knowing the material. The idea I liked the most about this was the "To be continued". This adds mystery and motivates the player keep playing and pass the next levels to figure out what is in the pyramid. If we could add an element like this to our game, I think i would push the player to move forward instead to giving up.
Note: One observation made was that the questions given become easier to easier to solve if the game notice you getting worse. I'm not sure if we are able to incorperate that kind of AI into out game, but it is worth thinking about.


Revealer:
This game was not as engaging and entertaining as the previous ones. It required you to know all material, however was just a simple question and answer session. I don't think it is completely out of the question to put a couple of formal code questions in our game, maybe we could think about just placing them at points in the game where the player needs to over come a large hurdle to move up in the game (maybe to complete a level?)

Puzzler:
This game consisted of sticking numerical value in accending order. This could be something to consider when we thing of physical locations of memory blocks ( sticking the correct value into consecutive physical memory locations). The content of the memory spaces to choose from could be in different forms (short pieces of code, which assigning the correct value to a variable).

Peace Doves

Link: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/index.html

The concept of this game is that you're leading a force of "peace doves", each of which is able to disarm one state that contains nuclear weapons. Each dove has a couple clues to which state they belong to, and you have two tries to get them to the right place. 8 doves, 8 states, and I believe 12 places they could go to.

Good:
Multiple tries for each dove.
Links to further reading after the game.

Needs work:
I had no clue what most of the clues meant! They were all about treaties, and sometimes the second clue would list names (which is how I got some of them). I think it would have been a good idea to add more information like the number of weapons in comparison to the other states.
You were also unable to skip any of the text. That was okay in some places -- you needed to read it, but the opening text and some of the animations just got so boring I wanted to be able to skip it somehow

Lord of the Flies

Link: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/literature/golding/index.html

This game tests your knowledge of the novel "Lord of the Flies". You have a mini-game at three separate parts of the novel: the boys as a unified group on the beach, the pig's head on a stick, and the final hunt for Ralph.

The first part asks questions about 5 of the main characters: Roger, Jack, Ralph, Piggy, and Simon. You need to match images with each character, which was difficult because I don't remember the book that well. Some were obvious (the conch for Ralph, glasses for Piggy, Pig's head for Simon), some were difficult, and some of the images I couldn't even make out what they were. This one could easily become a guess-and-check sort of game, which is what I ended up reverting to.

The second part has catagories that you are supposed to fit images to, which is supposed to represent the symbolism in the novel. The catagories range from "Law and Order" to "Evil and Chaos" to "Hope and Rescue". I think it was good that there were more items than categories. When you got one wrong, it would give you a clue, and when you matched the right one, you'd get all three of the clues. I had some trouble here, mostly because it didn't register the broken conch as "Chaos". That's totally Chaos. These people obviously didn't have Mrs. Brown's very in-depth view on the novel.

The third part asked general questions about the purpose of the book like "Was it a real story or just an adventure novel". There are three questions, I don't know what happens if you get any wrong because I got them all right.


Good:
The island changed as you moved through the game. At one point the images of the boys split, and then before the last mini-game, the entire island is lit on fire.
I liked the style of the second mini-game. I think it gave good hints, and was a neat way of testing the understanding of symbolism.


Needs work:
The first two games could easily be solved by guessing.
There didn't seem to be a score, so there was no penalty for getting things wrong.
Symbolism is a tricky thing to test, especially if you add extra items. I still have a problem with the broken conch not being "Chaos"

Heating Plastics

Link: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/plastics/index.html

I like the little animation at the beginning that explains the plastic making process. The concept of the game is also really amusing (making plastic ducks) which would probably keep kids playing with it.

The little plastic duck introduces you to how plastics are made. You get a random assortment of 6 plastic items and you have to determine whether you can melt them or not. When you select an item, it gives a brief description of the item, the polymer bonds and a couple facts on how we use that sort of plastic. Once you determine whether it can melt, your cursor turns into a flame and you get to try to melt the plastic. If you're right, you get a catalyst. After all 6 items, you make a duck, the size of which is determined by the number of catalysts you were awarded.



Good:
The duck is funny, often adding jokes in with the text
Able to skip the intro
I like trying to melt things on your own. It adds another sort of amusing interaction



Needs work:
I stopped reading the descriptions after I realized that when the polymers looked like "cold spaghetti" it was meltable, and when they were "cross-linked" it wasn't. I think it was a good concept, but this easy trick made me stop working at it. I would generally say a trick like this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it made the game too trivial.

Invar & Steel Alloys

A link to the game can be found here: http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/steel/index.html

This was fun! First the "chef" would give you a couple items you were going to make -- like "cutlery", "surgical needles" or "toasters". He's give a couple properties the metal in this object needed to have like "corrosion resistance" or "flexible".

Then you'd have to pick a recipe for the metal choices range from stainless steel to armor-plate steel to high strength steel. Each recipe gives you a little information, the name, ingredients, and some applications. Next you have to actually make the alloy -- this is just remember the ingredients from the previous screen. Finally you need to drag the items you're making with the alloy onto the screen.

This was a cute little game.

Good:
Made reading about each material essential -- the information was immediately applied but you had to remember it. Multiple iterations would probably get people to start memorizing the basic metals in alloys and the various uses for each alloy.
Had important dialogue, but also allowed skipping dialogue (if you were faster than the speaker)

Needs work:
I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I would change about this game. Nothing really stuck out as "bad"

Game Software

Here's a list of various types of software we've either used or heard about for later reference.

Game Maker (we both used it in CSC212 -- Downloaded to our lab machine)
RPG Maker (Referenced in the Game2Learn article. Downloaded a free trial to our lab machine -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG_Maker_XP)
OHRRPGCE (One of my friends uses it to make games. Swears by it. Downloaded to our lab machine -- http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/index.php/Main_Page.html)

Game2Learn: Improving the motivation of CS1 students

I liked this article. I feel it is exploring the same sort of concepts that we are planning on doing.

The examples they give for their "Saving Sera" game are neat. I think we would want to plan to do something along those lines (Using gamemaker, or learning about this RPGmaker, which might be more what we're looking for)....things like "correctly reorganizing a while loop statement of a confused old fisherman's mind; correcting a nested for loop placing eggs; and visually piecing together a quicksort algorithm. When the player makes a mistake, the character must fight a script bug, which asks the users various computer science questions..." (page 2)

Neat ideas.

I think the most important information I pulled out of this is that feedback (and clear goals) are very important in the game. Without them, some students seemed to question the seriousness of learning through games. It seems that they also help keep students motivated to play (and learn).

Ayiti - The Cost of Life

These are my initial thoughts on the game "Ayiti - The Cost of Life" (http://www.ampgames.com/frame/YXlpdGkubmV3emNyZXcub3JnL2F5aXRpdW5pY2VmLw==/n/.html). I wrote them right after playing the game to help us figure out what made a good educational game and what issues we could strive to avoid.



"The game was really good. I think it was the most balanced in terms of information and fun. It follows a family for 4 years through the four different seasons (dry, rainy, hurricane, and one other I can't remember off of the top of my head). Each season have five choices of where to send the family members. To make money, you can make them work (the jobs depend on their education and the season) or go tend the family farm. To spend money you can send them to school or to the hospital, if they are ill. And in the middle is letting them rest at home, which doesn't affect your money but does affect their health.

Each family member has health, happiness, and education. If they lose all their health, they die, and if both parents die, you lose. The goal of the game is to maximize their educational certificates and not -- you know -- let them die.

It's interesting because once you start a season, there are a variety of things that can happen. You can send people to the hospital (in the middle of the season) or home if they get sick, and they can get kicked out of school if you run out of money. If you don't make enough money each month, your living conditions can worsen and you have a better chance of getting sick. If you have surplus money you can go buy stuff at the store (like school uniforms, bicycle, or indoor plumbing) that improves their living conditions. I really like the interplay of factors and consequences.

At the end of each year you get a mini year-in-review, and then at the end of the game you get to see what job people most did and their prospects for the future.

I also love the little sound effects when you move them between the various places on the map."

Oil God

These are my initial thoughts on the game "Oil God" (http://www.addictinggames.com/thearcadewireoilgod.html). I wrote them right after playing the game to help us figure out what made a good educational game and what issues we could strive to avoid.


"This one has potential -- my concern is that it's going to be too much of a game and not enough information. I wish they had more explicit stats fo government/economy types. That's my current feeling about the game."

"I think this one is leaning towards the very game-y, at the cost of some of the information -- then again, with the oil situation being so variable, maybe that's a little more ok. Just some teaching, and more getting people thinking about it?"

"I don't think this style would work very well for what we are trying to do. It's too situational -- you don't really come away with concrete facts"

"Oh...I do really like that it has music."

Darfur is Dying

These are my initial thoughts on the game "Darfur is Dying" (http://www.darfurisdying.com/). I wrote them right after playing the game to help us figure out what made a good educational game and what issues we could strive to avoid.



"Good information around camp, but...well...I found the most information came when you lost the game, not when you did something good. I suppose that makes sense, if you're thinking about it in the way of people suffering, but it almost made me want to lose to find out the fates of the various people when caught by the militant group in the Sudan. Narratively it made sense -- they don't have a terrible fate if they aren't caught, but those were the most touching pieces of information since those were *my* characters that were lost. The water (mini?) game itself was easy, so you rarely got even that."

"It's almost totally unclear what to do in camp, except move water to fields (or buildings, if they need repair)."

"You don't need to hide every time a truck comes. In fact, boys can pretty well avoid trucks completely! All you need to do is send the little kids out. Maybe that raises threat or something? I think it was a better mini-game when I thought I needed to find a hiding place every time I saw a truck coming."

Stuff from the old google document

Our brainstorming outline when we thought we were writing another proposal with the game project, keeping it for reference

Purpose: To provide another resource to help Computer Science students understand the concept of pointers
Target Audience: 1st/2nd Year Computer Science students

• Our goal is to provide simple (2D) games that allow students to build the intuition and understanding of pointers as used in high level languages like C/C++
  
• Additional Questions we would like to answer: Explain the purpose of pointers, how they work, why are they used, as well as how to use them correctly. What are the side effects of using them incorrectly? Syntax (& and * are characters in the game?)
• Methods used:
• People learn in different ways
  
• Sometimes difficult concepts need more than one teaching method to "click"
• Learning from practice, to help understand the theory
• One method mentioned: people who understand assembly and indirect addressing, understand the abstract idea of pointers in higher level languages better
  
• Possible to learn concepts while doing other activities
  • Games can teach a variety of things
    • Logical Analysis
    • Math (Phoenix Quest, E-GEMS, 1994)
    • Social Issues (from "Digital Games Target Social Change", Keri Schreiner)
      • Darfur is Dying (http://www.darfurisdying.com/)
      • Peacemaker (http://www.peacemakergame.com)
      • Oil God (http://www.addictinggames.com/thearcadewireoilgod.html)
      • Ayiti - The Cost of Life (http://www.ampgames.com/frame/YXlpdGkubmV3emNyZXcub3JnL2F5aXRpdW5pY2VmLw==/n/.html)
• Design a game to explain how pointers work to give alternate methods to teach pointers
• Do a case study
• Use Control Group
• same test, no game
• Traditional methods of teaching and test after?
  
• Test again 2 or so weeks later?
  
• Use Group with Game
  
• Test before
• Play game
• Test after
• Test again 2 or so weeks later (retention?)
  
• Background research to be done
• Math/CS educational games (http://csunplugged.com/index.php/get-unplugged.html)
  
• The educational games above
• Analysis (all questions should have "and why?" added to them):
  
• What makes this a good game?
• What would make this a better game?
• How effective are these games at presenting their issues?
• Does the concept get lost in the gameplay?
  Were the users engaged (Cognitively , motivationally, and behaviourally engaged (stratagies, did they need to think to succeed?)
• Teaching Status Quo: Look at really good slides by Prof. Jack Tumblin's slides:
  
• http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/110/notes/18.ppt
• http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/110/notes/19.ppt
• http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/110/notes/20.ppt
• Teaching methods that have failed. Why?
• other alternative methods used introducing new concepts
• Furthermore, games used to introduce new concepts to different levels of education (to understand how to slowly but successfully integrate all key aspects of our subject)
• Any existing games which incorperate pointers
• Based on the educational level of the student, we assume that they are familiar with
• the C language
• Memory of a computer (that it exists)
• The game will introduce the sytax used to reference and dereference pointers
  
• Evaluate game play:
  
• (Reference for Elyse and Donna: see http://webhome.csc.uvic.ca/~agooch/talks/MSGames/Hadwin%20&%20Irvine%20Microsoft%20presentation-1.ppt
• In the furture?
• Further elaborate on pointers (functions, void pointers, etc)
• additional key concepts