simple learning game creation

exile · Post by **exile** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 1:35 pm

Would appreciate advice for a non-commercial educational game I'd like to create for 10-year-old learners of English as a foreign language. I've started producing short animations using scanned children's drawings imported in layers to Anime Studio. That part works fine (but it is image- and not vector-based). The characters complete an action or two, and a simple sentence appears (ex. Mr. Cool Pig does cartwheels ... I would like to give the players around 5 seconds to choose the correct sentence tag [here: doesn't he?] from four possibilities, good old multiple guess). So what I need is a simple interactive software that stops the animation and gives the user time to click on the answer and get feedback (maybe in the form of another very short animation with the same character), two different ones are enough - one for the right answer and one for the three wrong ones. Once that task is solved, the users should be able to take a breath and click their way into the next task.

I tried using Motion Artist 1.3, it could import anme files in Version 10 format, but the animation was a disaster in HTML 5 format, probably because the AS file was not vector-based. Instead of a cartwheel there was just a crude rotation. There is plenty of game-creating software on the web, some of it free, but I would like something simple if possible.

The image-based approach is important because the kids will see their own drawings come to life.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 1:58 pm

I had a look at Adventure Game Studiio a while back. It's free, and there are plenty of You Tube tutorials. It's a simple scripting interface with plenty of interactivity. Won't cost anything to try it, anyway!

exile · Post by **exile** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:50 pm

Thanks for that tip. I checked it out watched some tutorials. It would be possible to use, but animation sequences would have to be loaded as single frames with a weird format, the right half of the frame is magenta-colored and otherwise blank. A huge amount of work, with a loss of quality compared to an AS file.

I've found a solution that seems to work for this project, should have realized it before, but I never liked Power Point presentations. Using Open Office Impress (for the first time in my life), the freebie presentation program, it's possible to program a simple quiz of this kind. Instead of progressing from one "slide" to the next, it can be set to progress manually through hyperlinks. Slides can be a combination of text, still images and videos.

The audio on this youtube tutorial is so horrible that I only understood about 50%, but the steps are shown clearly. It's a bare bones type of quiz, but it showed what I needed to know to get started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzPCi-mUBlg

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:57 pm

Nice bit of lateral thinking! Had to mute the audio; couldn't listen to it without gritting my teeth. Be interested to see where you go with this.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:58 pm

I'm not sure if you can disable the default PowerPoint actions for next / previous slide (etc)... IOW if you're on the question slide with (say) 4 action buttons and then hit (e.g.) page down you'll go to the next slide. But if you can figure out how to disable (or work with) this inbuilt navigation you're on to a winner.

exile · Post by **exile** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 11:31 pm

hayasidist wrote:I'm not sure if you can disable the default PowerPoint actions for next / previous slide (etc)... IOW if you're on the question slide with (say) 4 action buttons and then hit (e.g.) page down you'll go to the next slide. But if you can figure out how to disable (or work with) this inbuilt navigation you're on to a winner.

At least with Open Office Impress, the Power Point equivalent, it seems to work. You can go into presentation settings and activate "manual slide change" and deactivate "slide change with click on the background". Then you have a non-linear sequence. But the animation effects are hampered through this, you can get around this by putting text in your AS video. At least that appears at the exact moment you want. One nice feature is that the video stays visible on the last frame when it ends. I haven't figured out how the user can replay the video, probably by reloading the page. Once you have a link, it's hard to change it for some reason. But my prototype works now, and includes a quick "disaster" animation for the wrong answers and the same character happily waving if the user gets the answer right. The video clips start on their own by default, which is right for this project.

Exporting to the web doesn't seem to work, and conversion to PPT format resulted in a change of hyperlink color which I didn't like but couldn't change yet. Groan. But it's coming along, hopefully. Conversion to sxi (Open Office XML Format) was good, but probably not compatible with other programs.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 11:04 am

If Motion Artist had some extra functionality and interactivity it could be good for something like this. That would give the software some purpose, at least -- at the moment it's like a half-formed solution looking for a problem.

exile · Post by **exile** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 3:30 pm

jahnocli wrote:If Motion Artist had some extra functionality and interactivity it could be good for something like this. That would give the software some purpose, at least -- at the moment it's like a half-formed solution looking for a problem.

So that's the problem. I thought I was just too dumb to figure out how to use it. I don't get how to pause in one window, and let options appear to the user that really lead to different windows. It's supposed to be possible, but isn't very straightforward.

Just to have tried all options before digging into the heavy duty work of the quiz project, I tried using my glorious web page editor Magix Website Designer. It doesn't leave the last image of the video clips in place, which would be desirable, but the real Achilles' heel is that the address of every link appears in the lower frame of the internet browser when the mouse is over the link. So the quiz participant can see which of the four possible answers is connected to a different link and therefore has to be the right one. With two more pages it would be possible to give all four links a neutral name, but it would bloat things up - four pages per task. Couldn't find a way to deactivate that link visibility. The kids won't be graded on the game, but it ruins the fun if they can figure out the answers in such a way. (Edit: There is code on the web to suppress or substitute what is visible in the status bar, but anyone who uses it might be suspected of running a malicious website - so I guess the dream of browser-based universal compatibility is over.)

Is what I'm trying to do so weird that suitable tools haven't been invented yet?

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 4:58 pm

This would be really easy in Flash. There, I've said it and I feel better...

exile · Post by **exile** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 5:02 pm

jahnocli wrote:This would be really easy in Flash. There, I've said it and I feel better...

Including the image-based animations?

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 5:06 pm

Especially the image-based animations. I know this because I have written a training course in Flash featuring all kinds of multiple-choice scenarios and animation. But Flash may not be the optimum choice for you, depending on what platform you want to export this stuff to...

exile · Post by **exile** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 7:10 pm

Edit: There might be problems with the power point files. The online option with hand-carved web pages is compatible for everybody, but the loading times for the videos are fun-killers.

http://singadream.com/Tag_Game.htm

Thanks for your interest and ideas. To illustrate what I'm trying to do, I just put the prototype online as a zip folder with the external files and the power point exported from Open Office. Hope it's now viewable after you download and unzip it.

http://singadream.com/4forumfriends.htm

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 11:02 pm

Steve,
I'll take a look at it tomorrow - John

Bossco · Post by **Bossco** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 3:43 am

I'd recommend having a look at Construct 2.

There's a free version and it exports to HTML5.

Have a look at this thread where Víctor Paredes (Selgin) has exported some animations in image format and got them moving around in Construct 2 a short while after trying out the program...
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23795

Direct link to his test...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/544 ... index.html

Use arrow keys to move, crouch, and jump, and CTRL key to attack.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 12:52 pm

take another look at MA (1.3)

You can assign actions to "text boxes" (or other items) in the same way as PPT; and you can import video, images or AS files. I don't have time right now to try it out, but I think all the elements are there...

IMO, the MA UI is not intuitive, but if you think in terms of "scenes" instead of slides then the action boxes can link to (non-linear) scenes. Chapter 11 of the manual talks about interactivity.

EDIT: yes, you can import Video. but you can't export it to HTML5. same goes for a number of AS features... If you can live with those limitations, MA will do it. If not...

simple learning game creation

simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation

Re: simple learning game creation