Team Fractionauts v2.0
Team Members and Contacts:
Nekocoder erycduhart010@gmail.com
Jothle12 jtl7264@g.rit.edu
Kyung kxc8603@g.rit.edu
PickledChicken cxl6359@g.rit.edu
The Project In Question
Fractionauts is an astronaut themed "quiz game" targeted around 4th grade students interested in learning how to perform basic arithmetic with fractions. Hosted by Chris Knepper on Github, it designed for use on the XO, a Python-centered mini-computer that has often been distributed for use in developing areas.
Several potential contributions have been brought up so far. The ones we are most likely to pursue are:
- Packaging-Suggested by Remy himself, packaging and submitting (or simply patching) the game to an XO is a good idea.
- Level Transition Animations - Simple movements of sprites, text fading, and "Correct Answer" text would help the overall experience of playing this game.
- Dynamically Generated Questions - Currently, the questions are all preset, meaning one could simply memorize the answers and their order instead of learning the subject matter. This is a high one on our list of to-do's.
- Interactive Tutorial Level - A simple "How to play" level with instructions for first time users, perhaps accessible in the "Instructions" section of the game.
- Slowness on XOPC - There seems to be a longer load time than we'd hope on XO's. Maybe we can find a way to speed up the process. This one is a little low on our current list of goals however.
- Remedy inability to exit “How to play” screen - There is an instructions area already written out within the game's code, but no button available to exit the area. Obviously, this is an important one to fix.
- Give Feedback and Hints to Players - This one is a quality of life improvement. Since the youth who may use this game are new to mathematics with fractions, we think that having the ability to ask for help from the machine would improve their experience.
- Introduce Subtraction Questions - The Fourth Grade Math Curriculum for New York and Massachusetts both mention subtraction of fractions being taught at that grade level, so when we looked at our game and saw that there was no directly subtraction-specific questions, we felt that perhaps this would be a good addition to the game.
- Level Timer - A way to "score" the player based on how they perform seems like it would help motivate players, and a "level bonus" timer would likely be a good way to facilitate this scoring.
The main contributors to this project so far use the handles Nolski, ChrisKnepper, ExplosiveHippo, Valeatory, Waterseas, and Emmix. Each one has their own copy of the main Github repository, each copy hosted using their main handle name (save for Emmix, which uses the Github name of jrs1498). It is currently assumed that our communications with them will be mainly through e-mail, IRC, and Github.
A full community architecture report on the project so far can be found here.
Outlook So Far
The Easy Parts, and How We Will Handle Them:
- Buttons to fix the "Instructions" screen - Buttons already exist within the code. Solving the problem will likely be as simple as copying code from one section of the project files to another.
- Tutorial Level - Once the exit from the instructions screen is added, it shouldn't be much harder to add another button that leads to a specific question with instructions around it.
- Contacting the Leaders - As said before, the people who originally made this project stopped several months ago. However, several of them are likely on our campus, so finding them and making frequent contact with the ones who hold the project won't be a challenge. The first step is just e-mailing and setting up the initial lines of communication. After that, frequent contact should follow fairly easily.
The Hard Parts, and How We Will Handle Them:
- Dynamically Generated Questions - Although the framework to make questions already exists, it is currently more oriented towards a "question pool" approach than spontaneously generated questions. Our first order of business with this is to find a way to quickly generate "answer parts" that will add up to a desired "final answer." After that, the challenge will be to attach the parts to our pool of images. If all else fails, we could do the "pick a random question from a hard-coded question pool" approach and preset answer parts.
- Level Transition Animations - Most of our group members currently aren't familiar with the Python coding language, so animation in that environment will be a large step for all of us. By studying how the rocket sprite has been put on the screen, however, the only knowledge that will need to be pulled from outside the current project is making a "timer."
- Introduce Subtraction Questions - The major reasons this will be difficult is that the assets currently available are currently oriented towards addition questions and the fact that how we approach subtraction questions will be heavily reliant on whether we use "fresh-made" or "pool-carried" questions. If we go the "pool-carried" route, the focus will mostly be on supplying art assets (siphons or differently sized tanks) and a scenario where REMOVING gas from a tank is logical. Meanwhile, if we go the "fresh-made" route, the art assets from before will likely be in use as our focus shifts towards making the "question" class flexible enough to make both addition and subtraction solutions available.
It hasn't been set as to what order or how many of our tasks will be tackled, but it likely will be something akin to the below:
*Note: The "/" means that these two items will likely be tackled in parallel.
- Fix the "Instructions" Screen
- Dynamically Generate Questions
- Level Transition Animations/Tutorial Level
- Introduce Subtraction Levels
- Feedback and Hints to Player
- Level Bonus Timer
- Packaging/Speeding up the Program
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