Jades Alpha-Blast (2014)
THIS ARTICLE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
Jade's Alpha-Blast is the second of two released projects created by PB'n Games. Created for kids aged 1-6, the player is shown a letter of the English alphabet, and tasked with finding the matching character on the PC or on-screen keyboard.
Accompanied by spoken English, the goal was to teach young children the alphabet, in the standard QWERTY keyboard layout.
Tech -
String matching- I created a simple string-matching sequence that was expandable to support full sentences.
Scoring system- Though disabled in the final release, a scoring system for the game was developed. It produced a final score based on # of answers, right/wrong ratio, avg. time-to-answer, and answers/total time.
Onscreen Keyboard- A custom onscreen keyboard was created for Alpha-blast. Not much more than a collection of uiButtons across the bottom ~1/3rd of the screen. It provided visual feedback as a universal alternative to wrangling multiple software keyboards.
Design -
The core game displayed a randomized character onscreen, and waited for player input before comparing strings and generating a positive or negative result. Player feedback was provided in the context of a rocketship that would have a slight speed-boost or momentary failure depending on the players performance.
artist-code.
rocket science.
Prototypes-
Controls
Keyboard:
A-Z
Esc.- Pause/Menu
Enter- Confirm
-These are the Webplayer builds only. Final game was published on Webplayer, iOS, Android, OSX and Window
- Initial proof-of-concept
- art implementation
- gui implementation
release candidate 001 (feb2014)
- score system
- endgame implementation
- tuning