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Math Board Games & Hands-on
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Math Games: Hands-on
I am a primary school teacher and i started using unity a year ago, and it gives me the opportunity to bring lots of fun in the classroom by creating games. It's clear kids loves "educational" games or games so it 's very easy to bring any topics and bring lots interesting activities to learn.
I want to participate in this challenge to get more connection with the designer community and keep learning, see what other designer , programmer do.
After one year of designing games, i learned a lot and i think now it 's even better when apps develop creativity or brings more interactive features. This game is to have fun with math hands -on where kids can experiment learning.
my first objective: i want learn all about the touch interactivity( make an efficient use of swipe, rotate, one finger tap, double fingers....), and learn the new SVG importer to get better graphics.
so far i build up three activities, i tested the app in my classroom with students, then i improved the app. This is my way to improve apps. So i see if the game is really educational, if its works well, if they understand, if they learn etc...
what do you think ?
7th november
after a test with students , it was too slow to drag and drop pictures for older kids so i am came up with this improvement. Small kids can do pictures, older kids use fast button pressing.
8th november
Trying out SVG importer for a hands -on on money . Less pixel on corners...
11 th november : overview of testing process.
i like the prototype, easy scripting, run smoothly on tablet, easy to produce levels and i can easily add features on the go. So i can focus on creating interesting hands on.
4 years old : (Test with my 4 years old son). I observe this kind of behavior : they create drawing or organize icons on the grid . As design elements , small kids are gonna create lots of elements on the board. so i am changing instantiate, destroy to pooling elements to optimize the process.
8 years old: kids who don't have any strategy in math will organize icons with colors or randomly. After asking them to think, they will organize icons to show a more advanced strategy, demonstrate their strategy with the visual representation on the tablet, so i think it 's powerful.
--------Credits--------
Unity asset store i use for this project :
- Game Framework Extra/FlipWebs Apps : Mark Hewitt. My model for programming since the beginning.
- Ricimi : Cartoon Gui Pack- , my model for graphic design.
- Fingers- Touch gesture for Unity, Jeff Johnson.
- other graphics : vecteezy.com, svgrepo.com, publicdomainvectors.com.
12 th november
Adding core function/ interface :
- recycling icon : erase one element at the time by drag and drop in the bin ( despawn OnTriggerEnter2d)
- eraser : erase all the board ( despawn all objects back to pooling)
- drawing icon : abilities to draw directly on board for future hands-on game.
kids love to draw , i am excited to find hands-on/ game with this nice tool.
14 th November :
I define my goal to develop/ design each game Level. I will try to respect theses guidelines when designing the level:
- each game level should allow the end-user to create multiples games possibilities, with some level of creativity, use of imagination trough Gameplay.
- for example, with the money board a teacher could use the app with a catalogue with toys and kids get the money to pay. Another teacher could ask the challenge : get 10 possibilities to make 1 euro with centimes. The end-user creates the game based on whatever he /she wants to do.
- for example, a kid could play math with the hundreds, tens, ones block, or use the blocks like Lego to make fancy drawing ( see below a house, trees, roads). It allows some levels of creativity trough gameplay.
November 16 th
I worked on the framework/ UI animations :
" HomeScene"
- tutorial ; game rules
-credits
-languages
"levelScene"
- 12 levels for now as estimation.
I finished the drawing tools ( trail Renderer) , organize folders, optimize graphics. So i estimate it should be a game at around 28 MO to 35 Mo size as it is a mobile game. It is very responsive as now.
I checked it scales correctly for mobile devices from 800/400 to 2960/1440.
As I look at the other project on the challenge , i am very interested to try more animation in this project....
17/11
The game manual to explain a little bit the different tools : it is a pop pup GameObject, with animation in-out, a shining effect on icons, and a scroll view rectangle.
18/11
Trying out animation-2d with a cat :).
I am trying out bones, geometry, weights to animate directly in unity and it works great. It's very easy to use and start up with the documentation.
19 th 2d IK trying inverse kinematics to get smooth animation.
Thinking of code to trigger different cat animations. kids like to click on everything. Cat animation should change every time you touch the cat.
21/11
Jelly Kat is dancing on the floor. lol
22/11
After a fun break into the world of animation , i got back to level design and i am adding "multiplayer board game" Gameplay . i will try to keep developing the idea to allow multiples games on a board...
24/11
"Adding dices to the board games". The cat and mouse board game is simple. the game rule is to give a start up to players. Then players are invited to make their own games rules and invent other games rules. kids are very inventive and they can come up with very good ideas.
Example game :
The cat needs to eat the mouse to win. The mouse needs to touch the white circle to win. Each player roll the dice turn by turn and move their player until end of the game.
26/11
Fixing game levels issues with scripts . Big Thanks To Jeff Johnson : "touch fingers" , who helped me out a lot on this one. I have been amazed since the beginning of this nice community of developers in Unity, helping out the beginner developer and being very human.
- back on track , all features are working perfectly so i can finish rebuild levels from prototype and make different levels now, as i want to show the apps to others teachers, students and get more feed backs, focus only on making interesting hands-on.
28 /11 Hundreds/ tens /ones Hands-on games.
2/12
board game counting to 20 trailer : additions subtractions .
2/12 math Board games geometry & fractions trailer .
little problem with SVG importer, i get lines appearing on sides. ( import in 4 k resolution). i don't know yet if it is a bug or just a tweak to do.
3/12 the clock Hands -on.
4/12
Last generation 3 D modeling app for kids with candies lol
- a little bit of headache with layering but it could be promising and fun creative game. Trying out svg UI images script from component windows. my bad , i tought it didn't exist yet svg for UI .
5/12 " Everyone can easily learn modeling , create 3 d objects and use their natural creativity to create beautiful design " . kids can also quickly prototype the environment by using the drawing tools :).
6/12 collectible cards , cards games .
I am working on a collectible cards games. Collectible card games are popular among kids. you have a deck of cards , that pools new cards from a prefab, with an "empty" sprite Renderer. then, when you get a card on the deck, the script get a unique card from the folder "ressources". I have a card template then the different sprites are loading on the prefab. it is very optimized way as ( some bites for sprites) . i still have minor errors, details to correct but it 's simple and working pretty well.
On this board games, i use classifications of geometric shapes , because you can have multiples games ( convex, rounded sides, straight sides, quadrilateral etc....) .
demo video jeu de cartes
9/12 December
I made 2 scripts for cards to switch between cards games
- 1 who will make random cards from deck : randomCard = Random.Range(0, 25);
- one script to get a card from an array in a specific List order. i found that the random cards script feel a little bit buggy because it can give you twice the same cards directly.
- I made a persistent counter with playerprefs so it remember the card to play and it works with the pooling system. below is the simple script :
trailer convex , no convex cards game , with the script card pooling in order :
9/12 conclusion
I really enjoyed this game jam. it keeps me motivate and this is really working for me . Thanks to unity to make the game engine free to use for tiny developer like me .
I will keep developing this game as it is very open concept and easy to bring new things. I try to get connected to education Technology coordinators to push the project forward.
Other conclusion : before this game , i was developing quiz games. This is very closed games and it is perceived in education as very low educational games because this is just questions and answers. It doesn't help any kids playing this kind of games because they will not understand better multiplications with repeated calculations. So the solution i tried with this game is to bring more open gaming , and playing is about to understand the math concept or use it in a fun way.
it takes me a while to understand this so i want to share it. Open games concept are really better in education. it teaches the strategy. Closed games show how to get an answer but it never shows the strategy to understand. This is the problem of most educational games to be solved by programmers.
Finally , i really enjoyed reading your projects in the game Jam and get inspired by lots of projects. Lots of things to try out...Good luck to all of your project.
Bonus Documentation 14/12.
I made some new progress by replacing most of png images i was using with svg image script. I got really smaller game size and it is more flexible. By simply moving to svg , i reduced allocated memory from 15 to 12 mb and so on,as i migrate from png... With svg image, you get a clear picture with a 27 kb( some pixel). With png the image is unclear at 27 kb. As i keep doing, i am keeping tracks of the profiler to see as far down on memory i can go.
I finished a deck of card script , that changes images, text from a prefab easily so i can make lots of different deck of cards.
Below, this is a multiplayer board game with a deck of cards. Players have to move first the game token on the answer to win.
Next step, i am working on a single script that will manage all the different deck of cards in the different games...
...other levels i made: Chinese puzzle Tangram.
