Thoughts and summing up

An idea of the story is that the gamer is leaving his house to go shopping, and is abducted by aliens and sent to another planet. The gamer dresses up as an alien and tries to enter the alien driving school. If the driver obtains three keys, he can use the spaceship to return home.

After the gamer has an understanding of the story, they are placed on a canvas to roam around the alien area. The gamer is placed in a car and there are signs and road lines to direct them. If they are not completely familiar with the road signs and goes into a road they cannot enter, they bounce off to give them a better sense of how the signs, and roads are used together.

Once the gamer has reached one of three specific points on the map, a minigame will commense to give the gamer a better understanding of the rules of the road. If the gamer passes the mini game, he or she acquires a key, of some sort, that will aid in returning the gamer to his original home. Of course the gamer can replay the mini games as many times as he or she wants. A high score will also be recorded to give a sense of personal competition; this helps to engage the gamer in playing again, which helps the gamer master the skills taught in the mini game.

One obstacle involves teaching the signs and what they represent; this game is similar to the popular snake game. Instead of eating the food on the map, the gamer finds a sign and must answer what the sign represents in a multiple choice format. The gamer cannot go out of bounds, hit the obstacles, or run into itself( the snake ). The objective is to answer a certain number of questions correctly. If the gamer gets the question wrong, the screen is magnified to a certain extent. Once the gamer gets approximately 3 questions wrong, the screen is magnified to an extent that it is bigger than the size of the screen. When this happens, only a part of the map is shown and the gamer scrolls around to continue the game. This makes the game a little harder, and adds the effect that you are moving at a high speed( the gamer's car is clear, but the image gets blurrier the farther they are from the car ).

The second minigame entails the gamer to take a standardized sort of test in a fun way. This way, the gamer learns at his or her level of difficulty instead of answering super easy questions ( bores the gamer ) or very hard questions ( frustrates the gamer ). There will be approximately 3 levels ( easy, medium, hard ). If the gamer gets a questions right, they move up a difficulty ( unless they are at a hard difficulty ). If they get one wrong they move down. A tornado will appear and throw a cow, or some sort of object right on the screen and will ask a question. A comment was asked about whether or not it is a good idea to just ask a question without the gamer reading the driver's handbook first. It is true that if the gamer has read the manual, it would aid in their knowledge of the rules of the road. On the other hand, there are many things to take into account. The learner's driving test is not the best way to represent whether or not an individual is capable of obtaining a license. Even so, the minigame is based in a multiple choice format so that it does prepare for the test. The questions are uniquely made to aid the gamer to prepare for the test, or to better understand the rules of the road in Alberta. I did not read the manual before I took the learner's test and I passed it on my first try. I did, however, take a practice test online. Personally, I do learn from reading information from a book or text, but it is not the funnest thing to do. Also, When I read information, my mind always tells me "yes I understand. Ok i get this." when in reality, the reader does not understand everything associated with what they read. When I take a test and and get a question wrong, I benefit greatly; this way I can say "I do not understand this, I should find out." So yes, I do believe having a test ( especially a standardized test ) is immensely beneficial to informing the gamer about the rules of the road, whether or not they have any understanding of it.

The third minigame is a vision test. Vision is extremely important while driving; children run across the street, cars come from every direction, streetlights must be carefully watched, and weather makes it much harder to keep track of everything around you. This game helps to understand to watch out for many things, such as if you see a ball there is usually a child running after it. I am not sure on the basis of how to the game will be presented, but it will be 3D. An idea is to have the gamer moving within an array of buildings or blocks that goes in a set path. Children will cross roads or things will pop up at any time, and the gamer has to react by pressing the spacebar. Facts may also pop up to tell the gamer why the object was shown( stop if you see a ball or if a car stops beside you on a 2 lane road ).

Of course every individual has a different style of learning and not all types can be covered. Hopefully our game will have a huge success on focus groups, as anyone over 14 could potentially play the game, and learn lots while also having fun.

Progress

One obstacle of the game is nearly finished with a few glitches, and the base for the game where the player roams around the map is slowly falling into place. At this stage I am just implementing physics and trigonometry to make the car move like a car while also staying within the bounds of every road.

Flow Chart

1.Brainstorm all game formats( 2D, 3D, tile based, scroll based, turn based, action based )
2.Then think of what is the focus or focuses of the game
3.Match what formats fit with the focus
4.Brainstorm what could be included in the game
5.Start programming small parts of the ideas you brainstormed
6.As I program, I think of other ideas, as well as, how to focus further into the game and which formats are in the best interest of the game.
7.Start programming the very base of the game
8.Brainstorm ideas that will be used in the game and choose the best one
9.Program that function
10.repeat step 8 and 9 until you are done the game

I find it easier to brainstorm a little bit, then start programming every aspect until I fully know what I want. It is never a good idea to fully plan out the game as things change and it is also much more difficult and inefficient to program top down then bottom to top. It is easier to think small and program small.

Ideas and obstacles

To relate to a youth audience, it is important to make the game fun and interactive. This can happen by thinkign outside of the box and brainstorming new ideas.

Using a large bitmap is inefficient because of the high use of memory compared to using tiles; though we want the roads to stay the same so it is useless to use tiles. Instead of using a huge bitmap, we will use a fair size, and zoom in to provide a scrolling effect.

One huge obstacle would be forming an efficient collision detection algorithm. My first thought was to program every road with x and y limitations, but this is highly inefficient. Then I thought I could make every single coordinate into a list with the map being the linked list. This would be inefficient because of the high use of memory.

Another collision detection technique would be to use a colour that seperates every object and sides of the road. This would make it easy to determine when objects collide. This may be efficient, but it would not look that great. Another option is to have a bitmap for every other car on the road and possibly for every side of the road. Then we could check if two bitmaps are overlapping. The problem with this is that it is also very inefficient because of the time and memory it uses.

My best idea so far is to create a list of roads with limitations, and areas where they switch off to different roads. They will all be given a number such as route 101. The roads they switch to will be provided in the information in a file, so when the object enters a different road, you only need to search the other roads given in the selection. Cars may also need to be incorporated into what is on each road, along with streetlights and train tracks.

Another obstacle will be planning the map to work properly with lights, cars, and trains working as though the environment was a real life situation; This is one way to engage the gamers. This also provides a sense that the game is never the same when it is played.

Flash programming

Looking at games that others have made, I am starting to contemplate whether to use flash actionscript or allegro. Flash is easier to use and possesses the ability to animate objects and manipulate frames instantaneously. On the other hand, Allegro has more potential, but it forces the programmer to control every aspect of drawing, animating, colouring, and designing a program. Actionscript is more inefficient when it comes to the structure of interfacing the animation, mouse clicks, key presses, and frames; athough being able to interface these aspects of a program with only small bits of code is astonishing.

Signs on the road cont..

Having a scenario that shows cars following the rules of the road except for one exception; this could include a car going through a red light. The point would be for the viewer to find out the flaw in the situation that could put others at risk in the environment provided.

Allegro Graphics Program

Allegro is a language I think is pretty good. It lets you create buffers, blit sprites, draw lines and shapes, play movies and sounds, output text, and link frames together. The language to program the actual program accepts C++ syntax which is also a pro. The only downside is that every detail must be covered; in other words, you must program every aspect of what you are trying to accomplish.