Learning from our Users

I am currently working on a game with a team of developers I met at this years Global Game Jam.

Our game in the jam was called "To Earth" and in Colombia we got recognition from the sponsors of the event as the best overall game of the jam, here is a link if you want to read more about it:

GGJ game site: http://globalgamejam.org/2014/games/earth



Since the day we finished the our 48 hour jam the team was very confident in the idea that we had. Therefore we all decided to dedicate any extra hours we could have to developing this game fully. Our end goal is to place the game in the Android Market.


We are currently on a testing phase. during the jam, we were able to test out the levels, and that little testing proved to go a long way. This is why we have separated 6 different levels and we want to test out the difficulty and how easy it is to understand.

If you want to help us out, just play the game below, and at the end just click on the little save button and e-mail us that file.

you can e-mail it to me to: danbahamon@gmail.com or you can contact us on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/ToEarthGame


Thank you very much for your time and support!


Click here to play

for any of you developers wondering what the file is, it is simply an xml file that has the time stamps, the amount of tries and sequences the user tried. this will help us determine if the user is taking too long to solve, and if they are, we can take a look at what sequences they are trying, because it is likely that if they are trying a sequence too many times that the clue is not clear enough.

here are some screenshots of what the file looks like and how we visualize it in excel.

Learning Game #2: Playtest

I have developed a prototype for the game, and hopefully you (the game dev community) can help me out with a little play testing.

The game rules are very simple. In this prototype you need to make sequences of 6 circles. in order to make a sequence you click on a circle, and while you are holding the left button down you are able to move around adjacent circles and color them.

Only sequences of 6 circles are allowed, so if you do sequences with longer or shorter amounts the computer automatically will erase what you did. The goal of this level is to get 9 sequences of 6 circles.

Here is the game, please share your thoughts and ideas, let me know if you are able to get to 9 groups, also let me know if you feel it is too hard or too easy. Thank you in advanced.
(email:danbahamon@gmail.com) or twitter @danbahamon

Learning Game #2: Artificial Intelligence (A*)

Today I want to share some AI programming that I am doing for the Math game.

The Game: I will not go over the game description at this moment, but the goal is to build groups of colors out of a board. For example the game shows a multiplication 5x7 then the goal is to make 5 groups of 7 by coloring the circles.

The Challenge:

The board in the back needs to be randomly generated. so that it can dynamically create levels for players to play without already knowing the answer.

Road Block #1:

I need to make sure to come up with a good way to remove circles, I could run into trouble if I randomly remove them....

Solution #1:
Instead of randomly removing blocks I will do a labyrinth solve approach..

Think of what you do to quickly solve a labyrinth. You start from the end and go backwards towards the start

With this line of thought, I want to create a complete path, that uses as many circles as the multiplication (5*7) = 35. Once I have that I will remove any of the items that are not being used

Problem #2:
For the creation of the path I used A* algorithm, the only issue with this was that the computer was having a meltdown trying to figure out all the possible paths. My algorithm would stop when a path of length 35 was found. The only issue was that the computer exit out of the game before reaching that. it would crash after creating 4 million different paths.

Solution # 2:
This one was a brain teaser. I knew that I was doing the right algorithm, but it was just too expensive, I couldn't cut corners because my path had no directions, no rules, the goal was to get a path that covered 35 blocks. But for every path I was getting around 3 new paths, here is just a small chart to demonstrate how chaotic this is:

As you can see, just 16 blocks in, I would have over 4 million paths! There is no way I could get to 35

In order to mitigate with this one, you will be surprised but my solution was extremely weird. I just decided that I would only allow for 20 paths to be created, that way after 700 paths I would already reach a solution. 700 paths are created in almost no time. 

Problem #3:

Solutions where working but I guessed the solutions where just boring, I was getting big blocks all the time

As you can see, this is boring.... not quite what I had in mind with the design sketches.

Solution # 3:

In order to solve this one I was able to come up with a nice solution, instead of building a path of the exact length (5*7)=35 I decided to create an extra one for each group = 5 groups of 8 = 40. then I would remove every 8th circle...

Check out the resulting file, click on the screen to just randomly create new paths....

Learning Game: Art Duels Thoughts

It was a very exciting experience to have the game show in school. Overall the experience was really positive. A good way to measure success is by seeing if kids smile, laugh, tease each other, and if they want to win.

Here is the game



My Thoughts:

Positive:
1) Kids really liked the visual questions. Having questions that require attention more than knowledge helped all students get involved and motivated them to participate.
2) Painting reinforcement. Using the same painting but asking different questions helped students form different connections to the painting.
3) Student Interaction: I found out that asking them questions about what they thought of the game ended up giving me great feedback, they were really helpful.


Negative:
1) Points took too long to show up
2) Students didn't use helpers (they just guessed the answer in 5-10 seconds)
3) No incentive to win made them not really care about competition. Students from all teams would answer the questions.

Learning Game: Art Duels Complete

Today I finished Art Duels, the final game had a twist from what was originally planned, I was able to meet up with the art teacher and some students and we decided to move from a pong game to a trivia game. Here is a screenshot of what the game looks like:

The game is a multiple choice trivia, with 3 tools to help students answer the question (look in books, look in cell phone, more time). Each tool will reduce the amount of points the students will get if they answer correctly.

During Arts week we will have a 30 minute window to play the game. The game will have 4 teams and 8 questions for each team.

I will follow up this post with my thoughts on the experience.

Learning Game: Art Duels (Part || Assets)

This post will concentrate on breaking down the Assets part of the game:

First lets Highlight our current list of important elements:
Assets: Stylish, Story line, Congratulate, Motivate, Challenge


Now a look at each element on the list:

Stylish: I am thinking about something like a boxing match publicity, facing off two boxers but in our case, two painters:

I really want to think of something cool for the HUD, something that makes it seem like a sports channel is showcasing the battle:

For the story line I think that the theme is perfect for telling the story with a timeline:

To congratulate the player I really want to have messages like Candy Crush has:

Finally in order to challenge the player I want to add a little personality to the players by adding a little smack talk before the duel, something very similar to Street Fighter:

Obviously sound will be playing on all of these cases, later on I will take a look at sounds.

If you have any more references to the type of art I am talking about please feel free to share them so that I can take a look at them.

for an overview of the project take a look at this post

Learning Game: Art Duels (part I:Introduction)

Art Duels is the name of the first game developed under this blog. I will incorporate all the details noticed from all the previous posts.

Here is a quick summary of all the Thoughts taken from the previous posts:

Assets: Stylish, Story line, Congratulate, Motivate, Challenge

Interactivity: Simple, Variety, Visualize Controls, Intuitive

Education: Focus Student, Repetition, Doing, Solve a problem

Engine: Unique, Time-Based difficulty

Deadline: February 28,2014

Goal: To teach kids about famous painters (their style, their time period, location)

Project Overview:

This game is going to be part of a workshop. Students will be drawing with styles of their favorite painter (ex:Monet, Manet, Picasso, Botero...) and after they are done painting I will place their art inside of a previously build game so that they will end up with a video game created by them. 

The Game: 

A very similar game to the very popular Pong. The goal here is to have a simple, casual and fun game that kids can share and compete with their friends.

here is a screenshot of Pong for anyone that is not familiar with the game:

Feel free to share your thoughts, any advice is very well welcomed. 

Learning about Educational Games

Educational games are the future of education, there is much to learn about them, but if one thing is certain, is that they have the power to change the way we view education. Here is a list of some of the key goals educational games have:
 1) Engage students and increase their desire to learn.
2) Entertain kids and allow them to explore their knowledge.
 3) Test kids with new and improved methods.
4) Adapt quickly to a fast changing world.
5) Connect the students using social media elements.
6) Become powerful tools that teachers can use to manage their classrooms.

As you can see, it is a very complex goal, this is why I decided to make this blog. I know that each element is crucial to creating a successful goal and the only way to achieve success is to work together and explore all kinds of possibilities.