It’s Up

Posted demo here:

Web Build

http://tinyurl.com/m2ru7zw

Time for testing and continuing question refinement.  Jesus christ these questions take forever to go over

Question Modes, Freebase Question Generator

Don’t pick math dude

Made two buttons that go after the title screen to choose Trivia Mode or Math Mode; basically it decides whether to give the Freebase generated trivia questions or the math questions I’ve been putting together all this time.

Well gee I wonder what it is

‘Finished’ the question generator in that it’ll function with some oversight.  At first, the idea was to use the MediaWiki API to get a list of random topics, then map those to freebase, then use the freebase API to get related words and the summary text.  Today I decided it would be best to just manually compile a list of topics that are available on Freebase by name, and generate the questions from the hand made list of topics.  I figured this way, I’d avoid including things I didn’t want to include; the number of articles on Freebase is far far higher than the number of topics I need for this game.  I think I want a few hundred, and I’ll probably stop there.  I just finished implementation so right now there’s only 24:

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Electron”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Derivative”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Sputnik”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“ISS”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Buckminsterfullerene”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Hadron”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Mount Everest”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Mount McKinley”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Mongolia”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Io”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Ares”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Archimedes”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Galapagos Islands”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Horseshoe Crab”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“London Heathrow Airport”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Pegasus”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Florence”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Kremlin”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Pyongyang”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Eiffel Tower”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Phobos”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Christopher Columbus”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Zinc”));

questions.add(ft.buildQuestion(“Zirconium”));

SPAECESHIP

2 Worker Questions

So I went to a practice SAT site and boy it was rough, embarrassingly enough

I had to stop and pull out notepad.exe on the second question and think for far too long than I’m willing to admit

It was the ‘A worker does job in X days, B and A together do it in Y days, how long does B take doing it alone?’ type questions.

After doing it I tried to make a generator for those type of questions where all values involved were integers.  I couldn’t find a pattern though, so I just generated a table of all the values where the equation worked and all values were ints.  All the values under 30, that is.

The equation was like, AB / (A+B) = x, where A is number of days for A, B is number of days for B, and x is number of days for both

………………………………..

Wow, I just realized that’s the average.  Man I feel dumb
Edit: I thought about it for again and realized that’s not the average at all.  What was I talking about??? Whatever math sucks

It’s been too long.  I got a 780 on math when I took it but now.. I might get less than 600 HEHEHE
I guess it’s a small preview for me of how older people typically become awful at math.  If you don’t use math for more than calculating tips for the waiter it really does go away.

Running into that got me a little more motivated on doing questions.  I think I’ll try to do a couple more SAT math type questions, and then call it quits and release for this one

Combating Laziness

I’ve got a terminal case of lazy

I know what I need to do and I write it down in my notebook every day but progress is just painful now.  I think it’s because what’s left, I don’t find interesting.  There’s finishing the end screen, which I made some progress today, maybe 50% of it, then doing the rest of the questions for generation.  I was thinking of putting questions from the periodic table, I don’t know what else…

You’re sliding down the ladder, the books, shelves, ladder all move up while you’re fluttering down.  It’s hard to tell without the animation and I’m not about to figure out motion blur

Don’t look down

I tried to make a lobby floor but I decided against it because, mainly, I didn’t want to model the doors which I couldn’t get to look quite right and I decided against increasing the scope of the project.  It didn’t seem so hard to do though

Trig Identities

It was a bit more involved than I had hoped; I think I might need a special math font or something for this…

I stored the names of the trig functions in an array, and store the identities as strings.  Any time the identity string names a trig function, I prefix the word with an ‘@’; so when making the wrong answers I just replace the correct trig function with a different function.  At first I thought I’d replace number values too, but I think I’ll just stick with this for now.  I planned on doing some common antiderivatives, derivatives, and finish with series sums stuff

But anyway, I hope you have this crap memorized I KNOW I DON’T

End Screen Options

Allowed restarting from 2 levels back, instead of having to start over every time from the end screen

Dialog box now fades in and out

Textbox and button styles are separate now, should make buttons more obvious soon

Fixed the touch vs mouse click movement bug; on android it was applying both on touch, making the player move super fast.  On android, touching is the same as mouse clicking it seems.  I should probably just use mouse handling all the time if that’s the case…

I should incorporate pre calc, calc I questions in the later floors tomorrow

Bugs I noticed:

• lamp doesnt drain after reaching a new floor until after first question
• Going to next floor gives way too much lamp strength

No pictures tonight

edit-

just fixed both, it’s cause of

main.LampCharge += Mathf.Min (main.LampCharge + 1, main.LampChargeMax);

it should just be

main.LampCharge = Mathf.Min (main.LampCharge + 1, main.LampChargeMax);

Title and end screen a bit prettier

Made the title screen a bit nicer looking, and the basic form of the end screen

Start and End

Still stuff to do:

• Wider range of questions
• Cut in art
• Fading lamp
• Maybe have an end screen art?
• Correct/Incorrect sound effects
• Next floor sound effect (Shuffling sound like in any rpg)

I don’t know, I don’t think I have much left to care about for this one.
MAYBE I can work on some space game… we’ll see

Question Generator Code

Made a simple generator for arithmetic questions in the format of a + b = ?

and the answers are just… within 30 of the real answer.  I’ll look into other question types later, I think it’s just aesthetics for now, and then I’ll go back to gameplay

Also started playing transister, oh man it’s beautiful.   Its appearance is very pleasing

Question Timer, Font Scaling

“You should be able to solve this”

I simplified things a bit; instead of having an independent timer for answering questions, having an open question just constantly drains the lamp by a slight amount.  That means the lamp strength goes down while taking time to read questions, and answering them incorrectly, while answering correctly strengthens the lamp

Tried to scale the fonts based on screen size (text was way too small on the phone) and it’s still not perfect, but at least the questions and answers are scaling properly.

Let’s start a list of things I need to do still.  I’ll add to it as I figure things  out, and mark the ones that I’ve done.

Targeted release deadline is June 30, I’ll be satisfied with any date before that.

•  An aesthetic title screen.  Vague but I’ll know when I have it
• Random questions and answers generated.  Right now I’ll settle for simple arithmetic
• Lamp and character dimming with lamp strength
• Aesthetic end screen.  Again I’ll know when I have it
• Sound effects for: answering correctly, answering incorrectly
• Proportions of GUI elements should remain reasonable on phone
• Cut in art

Wow, I think that’s it for now.  I thought the list would be longer but I’m sure I’ll think of more later

About to finish Corpse Party btw, depressing game.  At least when you constantly hit bad ends like me.  What is WRONG with Ayumi?  Worst character