December, 2011

IF — 1 Comment
30
Dec 11

Lil Red About to Head Out into the Big Wide World

An hour here and an hour there, I have been adding to my first IF title ‘Lil Red.’ Its proving a steep and very enjoyable learning curve, made even more challenging by the fact that it’s the holidays and I don’t feel I can pester Quest developer @alexwarren. I feel a little embarrassed each time I send an email outlining each subsequent road block. There is one very clear classroom benefit of the non-linear nature of IF and that is, there is always plenty of writing and coding that one can be getting on with, around that road block. This non-linear learning should transfer effectively to the classroom.

Sir, I can get A to open B? Can you help?

Yes, I am just helping Fiona, move onto your next room description and I be over to ask you a few questions.

So what have I learnt so far? As I share with @vaughany writing all useful, game purposeful answers as well as responding to all possible player answers, all takes time and more importantly lateral thinking. Its not just how ‘you,’ would interact with the game but how the player may interact with the game. A second skill I am developing is my awareness of ‘game continuity’ and by that I mean ensuring that narrative, room and object descriptions and game scenarios complement one another. For example, if Red is going to wear a ‘red hoodie’ then the player needs to be given a reason to wear a hoodie and not a t-shirt. Hence ‘don’t you know its winter outside.’ This in turn will impact on what might be purchased from Greggs the Bakers and also gives Red a reason to take the bus to Grandma’s house.

The second encouraging writing observation is that IF really promotes effective planning, however that game planning is very easily adapted or extended. For example, originally I had introduced Red as waking in her room, with an introductory puzzle to show / teach players how to use verbs and interact with the game, with Red exiting the apartment onto High Street 1st East. Red’s apartment was easily extended to a more realistic two, then three, then four room apartment with one room and two room puzzles, creating a mini game, within the game. What Tim Hamilton described as a ‘section of game play’ that ends with Red exiting onto the High Street 1st East, part one of six ‘High Street’ rooms, the second section of the game. I started writing the game with approximately 80% of the game planned, the game is now approximately 115% of its intended size and I anticipate it will grow further still. Clearly planning IF is a skill that itself needs to be developed.

Progress so far has been relatively successful, constructing the basic game map, adding room and object descriptions has been straightforward. Using workflowy has made recording and reviewing the narrative more efficient and I would certainly recommend it (plus having a spell checker and the ability share the file is useful). You can view ‘Lil Red’s’  progress here. I am now starting to code the game interactions with moderate success. I still need to develop my understanding and use of ‘expressions,’ definitely on the agenda for my next conversation with Alex.

Teaching IF

Quest is easy to get started with, you can write / code very simple games, very quickly, however I would not advocate diving in at the writing and coding deep end. The second point of caution is that writing and coding IF is not a simple extension creative writing. For starters there are multiply middles and ends and not every reader/player will follow the same path and non-linear style requires a unique style of thinking and planning skills, and that’s all part of attraction if IF. Not forgetting you have to accommodate players possible wrong answers. Given these reflections here are my initial considerations for teaching IF

Reading and experiencing game play is important for appreciating game structures and interactions however, significantly and understandably, most IF games were not written with teaching in mind. The games I have experienced are typically ten and twenty hours long. I would therefore recommend either playing a game section or we, the teaching community, need create some mini games. There is definite value in “completing a game” and only playing a section restricts that experience. One alternative strategy is to play the game as a team. All students playing and sharing achievements, this promotes a very social experience and certainly brings the group together.

Planning a game is important and complex. The plan itself needs deep consideration, however the quality of the plan (certainly in my first experience) is only realised as you construct the game. Hence Quests flexibility can be both a blessing and a curse. It allows you to easily adapt and extend when and wherever you like, but also allows the game to easily spiral out of control.

Approximately one minute of game play equates to one hour of planning, writing and coding. Even a fifteen, twenty minute game is a considerable undertaking or unit of work.

Delivery Model x2

Given that the most powerful learning and reward experience is planning and creating a game, I plan introduce IF through seven steps, twice over. The first cycle to experience IF and more importantly to construct and share a game and the second cycle, to really dig deep into IF culture and develop a coding interest.

  • Step 1 Play IF
  • Step 2 Plan and draft (visual) game floor plan (keep naming conventions simple)
  • Step 3 Write a very basic game script outline including verbs, rooms, objects, basic interactions and puzzles (again keep naming conventions simple)
  • Step 4 Construct the game floor plan in Quest – providing a scaffold upon which you can write the room and object descriptions
  • Step 5 Start to add the room descriptions / game narrative (game continuity is more achievable given you have a broad overview on the completed game) It is important that student learn to tell their story and also consider how the player ‘may’ interact with their game.
  • Step 6 Code the game interactions and puzzles. There are plenty of mini lessons here, basically teaching as much or as little of Quest as is required to fulfil the plan.
  • Step 7 Share and peer review and debug games.

Back to Lil Red, back to Quest, one coding challenge at a time. Bring on ‘expressions’ and creating an rewards variable or some kind.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

IF / Teaching — No Comments
24
Dec 11

Lil Red

It’s been a while coming, but I have finally started on my first IF game in earnest. In my defense, it was hugely worthwhile playing a range of IF titles from start to finish to establish some IF etiquette, experience the scope of IF and to gather a few simple puzzle ideas (even if I probably wont be able to code them to that level). I played and tested the BETA version of Quests first iOS release Bump, now available on both Android and iOS (and web) plus a few games on the FREE iOS Frotz player, Zork and Anchorhead. With the students at school we dipped into www.textadventures.co.uk and played ‘As Darkness Falls’ and ‘Zombie Attack,’ so I think I am as ready as I am ever going to be to start writing. A second motivation for writing a game is that the titles we played in class were rather challenging, perhaps too difficult to engage Year 7 / 8 players and reluctant readers. So my first game was aimed at that Year 6 through Year 8 age range.

With the input from a small group of my students at Hamble College, we conceived a game idea, loosely themed on Little Red Riding Hood, with a good dose of Shrek, Hoodwinked and some real life family relationships. The game was collaboratively mapped out in Google Drawings, a diagram in constant flux (still in constant flux) and the storyline was being written in Google Docs. Very quickly the document became unworkable and the tree-like framework of Quest just not replicable. Today I have moved the game file to a shared Dropbox folder and I am reviewing Workflowy as an alternative.

Now, as for Lil Red, it was supposed to be a small scale game, but I have learnt that it does not take much for an IF game to grow. Just brining about our basic ideas and structure created twenty eight rooms and three hours of Questing, albeit some spaces are split into parts, eg the subway is split into two east and west sections for story telling realism. I have taken heed of the advice of Bump author Tim Hamilton, and constructed the game into parts with mini achievements as a gatekeeper to their progress. I have discussed with Alex how to create a HINT system (work in progress) to support these players and a scoring system to inform ‘badging’ or achievements (again, a work in progress). So in the meantime it is on with the game narrative and basic interactions and simple puzzles.

That is where I am right now. I think its time I add IF to my categories.

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Popularity: 51% [?]

IF / Teaching — 2 Comments
22
Dec 11

To Think Like a Programmer

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with Alex Warren, developer of Interactive Fiction platform Quest, talking through game design and learning code my first feature game. It was a fascinating mixture of discussion, demonstration and questioning and as a result I am even more convinced than ever that ‘Computer Science’ or programming / coding, or Interactive Fiction deserves a place in our National Curriculum.

As a starting point, Alex and I were discussing where IF (designing and coding) might contribute to the curriculum, after all, IF is neither solely Computing nor English. IF is in fact a rather curious hybrid of both, with the contribution of these two subjects swaying rather unpredictably depending on where you are in the construction process, your ability to code your design and the subsequent experience and feedback of the player. Defining the literacy contribution of IF to the curriculum was fairly straight forward. Defining the coding contribution to the contribution was anything but, and this is where the debate began.

From a non-coders point of view, I rather naively positioned that coding required logic, math and analytical skills, and that students that sought creative and artistic fulfilment would seek out other opportunities. Alex articulately disagreed. In his view, coding is so much more than logistic, mathematical problem solving. It is ‘how’ you solve the problem, which solution you select (of which there may be numerous) and how that solution impacts on the remaining aims / problems of the project. Code itself can artistic, a single solution can be artistic, but combining many solutions effectively is an art form.

Alex then went onto demonstrated and apply this theory to the rest of our meeting as we worked on ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ – our first game. Almost every game task, Alex could offer at least two or three solutions. For example, combining the ‘coca-cola and Mentos’ to make the Big Bad Wolf explode, (I know, it’s a fantastic sanitised solution to getting rid of the Wolf) and creating a virtual ‘piggy bank’ were simple but Alex would highlight the benefits and drawbacks of code variation, frequently referencing how the code might impact on any previous and future solutions were had planned.

Once ‘we’ had selected our preferred design, the coding process itself was more logical and even with Quests structured interface, creating recognised game mechanics such as ‘life’ was still quite challenging and thought provoking. I will certainly be borrowing Alex’s mantra of ‘What are the steps we need to follow’ and I must remember to ‘destroy’ objects once the value of that object has been assimilated. As we took on more challenging tasks and moved further into coding our game design, the importance of forward planning began to pay dividend and this is a relatively small and simple game. I am certainly not a natural coder, nor am I a gifted writer but I am thoroughly enjoying the combining these skills and its certainly demanding.

Alex was a fantastic tutor and I do hope he gets to share his expertise with a wider group of interested teachers. I might even try to hold an IF workshop in the New Year, if I can rustle up enough interest. Meanwhile, back at the kitchen table, Alex jotted down a handful of quick fixes to the 5.1 BETA we were using and one of two possible feature requests. One area I hope to contribute to and see develop is the QUEST code library, short, code recipes to help game writers code more accurately and efficiently, starting with the ‘virtual piggy bank.’

Popularity: 62% [?]

ICT — No Comments
21
Dec 11

ICT Expert Review Panel

Dr Tom Crick is Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at CMU, he is also Leader of @CASWales and I am sure, has one or two other computer science veins of interest as well. What is really refreshing and most engaging, is that Dr Crick (can I go with Tom from here on in, or do I persist with formality) is curating conversation across education phases whilst working himself at the endstop of computer science education himself.

Having reported on the Expert panel report on the National Curriculum review we started a brief Twitter exchange which I intended to contribute to the dialogue only to be beaten to the punch by Nick Jackson (@largerama), an online colleague whom I hold in high esteem. Not only is her a ‘proper’ ICT teacher he is suscinct in his opinion, matter of fact even, he holds action over words. If you are an ICT teacher, NQT to AST, curriculum observer, please do contribute your thoughts, here is my two cents.

As we discussed Tom, and somewhat similar to Nicks points of a tick box ‘fudge job’ I am unsure how the panel review recommendations will mature into policy. Somewhat underwhelmed by tone, encouraged by the comment. ICT is outdated, technology enhanced learning is still, quite similar just good learning. ICT could be replaces with another term, when it should quietly simple be removed. ICT / technology enhanced learning IS learning, or tools for learning or part of the teaching methodologies at hand. Use ICT / technology where it enhances learning, this is not a curriculum audit or overview, its a teaching overview. Not forgetting that technology IS NOT a pre-requisitie for outstanding teaching and learning. In 2014 – ICT will be a skill not Subject – its barely a subject now. The best ICT teachers currently are those that teach young people, not content, seeking out inspiring learning opportunities (see Nick above) repackaged as ICT. In 2014 lets hope all teachers repackage ICT within their teaching. With that lofty aspiration, just that, an aspiration, there needs to be a digital outlet as well as computing, that is most certainly NOT ICT, and not ‘tick box fudged’ cross curricular audit exercise and at the forefront of digital learning. Digital learning that is rigorous, creative and challenging; animation, graphic design, audio engineering, video and after effective, modelling, CAD, that compliments programming. Now this might surprise you, but I also feel there is an employment benefit to being able to use Office software effectively. It is just that it is not part of a digital curriculum, but an employment curriculum. The commentary is encouraging, however this insistence with the term ICT is almost as annoying as educations insistence with the term 21st century learners. Both are 10 years out of date and offer little defintion.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Digital Learning / Games Based Learning — No Comments
12
Dec 11

Platform Wars

I spent most of the weekend reflecting on three conversations, with three respected educationalists to write a post’ Education. Games.’ Some of your will have read the post and thought there is merit here, whilst others will have read the post and discarded the use of ‘games’ as a rigorous learning experience.

Let me share with you ‘Platform Wars.‘ a live, web-based simulation, where participants play the role of senior management of a video game hardware platform producer such as Sega, Nintendo, or Microsoft. Built around a companion case study describing the launch of Sony’s PS3, participants learn about the dynamics of competition in multi-sided markets. In such markets success depends not only on a product’s price and features, but on how many people own it (a direct network externality) and on the number of games and applications available – that is, the size of the installed base of complementary products (an indirect network externality). Platform markets are increasingly common in settings besides video games, including computers, the Internet and e-commerce, mobile telecommunications, and many others.

This simulation falls into the ‘game as the teacher’ category and IMHO appears to be a first class learning resource, along with the additional resources posted to support the simulator. If its good enough for MIT….

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Popularity: 6% [?]

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