Crossroads Village | Demo Available | "Best of Show" Award

After nearly five months in the making, Crossroads Village is at last available for download. Crossroads Village is a strategy game that was created to raise awareness and solicit donations for world hunger organizations. The player represents the United Nations World Food Programme and manages a village's recovery by providing food, infrastructure, and medical care. A donation feature allows players to enhance in-game play by contributing to real-world relief efforts. Information about Crossroads Village and the most recent downloadable version can be found at: http://gel.msu.edu/crossroadsvillage.

Crossroads Village was also named "Best of Show" in the serious games category at the DMAT Showcase 2008! This was a nice way to cap off the semester-long project that required twelve team members. As the leader of the design team, I am very pleased with what we were able to accomplish.

If you get a chance to play, I'd love to hear what you think about the game, so feel free to leave your comments.

The Projectile Motion Simulator

The Projectile Motion simulator is an interactive online tool that allows visitors to explore, experiment, and practice their skills in projectile motion.  It is available at http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/projectile-motion/projectile-motion.swf.

The Projectile Motion simulator is applicable in numerous scientific settings, especially within the realm of physics.  Related topics include velocity, angles, motion, mass, drag, air resistance, and altitude, either as sole effects themselves or as they work in tandem to affect motion.  The simulator may also be useful to creative math educators, who can apply it to their lessons on parabolas, angles, or trigonometry.  It could be incorporated into the curriculum as a lab or an out of school practice scenario.  Students could be provided with a particular setup and then asked to logically problem solve in order to hit the target.  Alternatively, students could be allowed to explore and discover the effects that the variables have on projectiles, then asked to reflect upon what they learned afterwards.

Strengths of the Projectile Motion simulator include visuals and customization.  It makes excellent use of graphics to provide feedback, engagement, and entertainment to users.  They can easily see where their object is pointed (the cannon), its course (the moving object and its residual parabola), and where it lands (some objects even have humorous “crash” states).  The simulator also benefits from being highly customizable.  All of the variables incorporated into the simulator are open and available for users to adjust.  Options exist for setting the angle, speed, mass, diameter, drag, altitude of objects.  Air resistance can also be added and users may choose from a number of different projectiles, such as baseballs, humans, or cars.  This allows for the experimentation with a large number of possible scenarios and makes the program versatile enough to fit into many educational situations.

Weaknesses of the Projectile Motion simulator include lacking instructions, feedback, challenge, and interactivity.  The simulator does not include directions within itself that let new users know how to operate it and some of its elements are less than obvious.  For example, there is no indication what the “measuring tool” (the grey square containing a yellow circle that has a yellow line extending from it) is intended for in the game.  Likewise, it is not obvious that the target can be repositioned, nor is it clear why the statue near the cannon exists.  These answers and similar ones could be easily addressed through a tutorial or documentation within the program.  Furthermore, playing it as a game lacks feedback.  Players are prompted when hitting the target, with the rudimentary message of “score.”  Their only other feedback are the implications that can be derived by watching an object’s flight path.  Users would be more engaged and informed if the feedback provided were more complete.  For instance, messages could be added to every shot indicating how well the player did and how close he or she was to hitting the target and a numeric score, accuracy percentage, number of attempts, etc, could be tracked.  Sounds could also be used to indicate positive and negative performance.  Similarly, increased challenge would also engage users more strongly.  As it currently plays, the repositionable target is a rather benign adversary.  Adding random environmental conditions and/or a live opponent (either human or a.i.), would greatly improve the engagement of users.  Take the old Qbasic Gorrilas game (a Flash remake is playable at http://www.rickyroad.com) as an example.  It is a fun game that is built upon the same principles as the simulator.  A final point of improvement would be incorporating more interactivity into the game.  Imagine instead of just hitting typing in variable values and clicking the “fire” button, that users would position the cannon itself and light the wick before seeing their object fire.  Consider further, a player who could move his or her cannon through a three dimensional space.  As can be seen, much could be done to transform the simulator into a more complete interactive learning experience.

Nonetheless, it remains an interesting and effective tool that can certainly be useful to educators wishing to incorporate interactivity into their lessons.

The Qbasic Gorrila game recreated in Flash.

Candy Demo v2.1

I have made a minor update to the second demo version of Candy. The levels and gameplay remained the same, but new introduction pages and instruction screens have been added. The wording is much more concise. Additionally, interactive samples have been added to the level introductions to replace the previously used text descriptions.

The Candy demo is available via my flash and html portfolios.

Introducing My Flash Portfolio

This week I unveiled a new version of my online portfolio. It was entirely created in Flash and features interactive menus and animations. My Flash-compatible games and videos have also been incorporated directly for easy viewing (no need to open a new window). Written files are still linked as PDFs. I will be modifying and adding to my Flash portfolio over time and consider it to be my primary web presence. Nonetheless, I am still maintaining my HTML portfolio to maximize compatibility for all users. URL: http://www.johnmquick.com

DMAT Showcase 2008

The DMAT Showcase takes place today from 4-7pm in MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences.  All of the top digital media projects from the 2007-2008 school year will be on display.  This event is open to the public.  Projects come from a number of categories, including games, 3D, interactive media, web design, and audio/video.  Come to see, discuss, and experience the best creations of the past two semesters.

For those of you who cannot attend in person, the DMAT Showcase is available year-round online.  The URL is:  http://dmat.msu.edu/showcase.

On an additional note, Crossroads Village, one of the game projects that I have worked on this Spring, has been nominated for an award.