Links

Creation of this game would not be possible without below listed pages that I have used as my primary resources and tutorials. To any flash enthusiast I would want to recommend Isometric pages links explaining in-depth functionality as well as mathematics behind iso-movement

AI

http://www.ai-forum.org/topic.asp?forum_id=1&topic_id=15227

 

Isometric engines

http://www.pixelhivedesign.com/tutorials/Flash+Painting+Program/

http://www.kabomb.net/blog/category/dev/actionscript/as3

http://www.foundation-flash.com/tutorials/as3swishmovement/

http://www.ffilmation.org/website/2008/03/10/welcome-to-the-ffilmation-engine-website/

http://fayed-design.com/SalmaHassaballa/tutorials/MakingBoat.htm

http://zegarkus.com/2007/11/30/isometric-game-engines/

http://www.flashadvisor.com/movie/display/129.html

http://www.sephiroth.it/phpBB/showthread.php?t=3993

 

Design for Learning

Research

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/11_16/ks3geography/swf/ecosystems/buildforest.shtml

 

 

Timer tutorials:

http://blog.0tutor.com/default.aspx?cat=flash

http://blip.tv/file/796263

http://flashgameu.com/

 

 

Sea ranks

http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConGallery.57/Ranksin-Nelsons-navy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman

http://www.vvaa.org.au/images/rank.gif - images for it

 

project niche finding - find your own way http://www.smithfam.com/news/nov00o.html

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/other_resources/video/Video832 - good one video games for education

http://www.experiential-learning-games.com/ - screenshots

http://www.worldofmi.com/thegames/monkey3/index.php - monkey island

http://www.kidsgeo.com/ - kids game great resource

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0770092.html

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Games/GeographyGames/Geospy

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/geogame/

 

Character justification

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/papers/4matonweb.html left right brain

http://www.indiana.edu/~reading/ieo/bibs/left.html

http://thewelldrainedmind.blogspot.com/2008/01/learning-avenues.html

http://www.hslda.org/strugglinglearner/sn_checklists.asp

http://homeworktips.about.com/library/brainquiz/bl_leftrightbrain_quiz.htm

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6117726917684965691

 

 

http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/approach/collab.asp

http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/09/gamers_generation_have_differe.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html

http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/tows_2002/tows_past_20020327_b.jhtml

http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/kafai.html

http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/

http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch4.html

http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/anno-ad-series

 

Geography Resources

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/11_16/ks3geography/swf/farming/climateact01.shtml

http://games.crossmap.com/category/educational.htm

http://www.levitated.net/daily/levSpineConstruction.html

 

http://www.info.e-dziecko.eu/index.php?option=com_linkdirectory&task=viewcat&catid=13&Itemid=70

http://www.zyraffa.pl/edukacja/show_game.php?name=rabbit1

EOH - Manual

Introduction

Welcome young explorer, congratulation, I am proud to announce that you have been promoted to your first Sea Rank: Sailor. To your disposition is this small ship as well as loyal crew. If you would like to be promoted and become an Admiral of an enormous Galleon ship, you must explore Islands, expand your knowledge and collect as many items as possible. Sounds exciting? Well don’t be too hasty, it will be difficult and dangerous expedition. To prove your worth you must collect mysterious artefacts that are hidden on each and every island. Return it to me and I will reward you with new Sea Rank. Sounds simple? Well one more thing, to prove your courage, I will ask you one question about this artefact's... answer it and promotion is yours! Remember Sea is no place for cowards.

Sincerely,
General


Exploration

As your quest begins, steer your ship, by clicking left mouse button, to any of the island. When ship docks near island, you must initiate exploration, as only small boat can swim through the coral reef. (Image left) Don’t worry you will not be on your own, you can always rely on someone from your loyal crew to join you. Select character and then point at the docked island and your quest will begin.

Crew:

Writer - If you feel strong in writing and crosswords, select your official royal writer to join you on quest. While he is writing short journal you will need to complete the task. Knowledge of yours will expand immaculately and General’s question will be far simpler to answer.
Cartographer –Perhaps you feel better with puzzles and logical games. If the answer is yes, carographer should assist you on your quest. Tasks will not be difficult but General... well he might be tough to convince.
Ratboy – Oh our clumsy Ratboy, oh well he is not exactly intellectual type, hover he is good runner and always loyal to your cause. He does not draw or write, therefore before selecting him mind fact that you are there to learn and after exploration quest you must convince General. Trust me it will be difficult if you won’t keep your eyes open and tried to memorize facts.

Islands

There are six mysterious islands on these unknown seas surrounding our port. Each one of them must be explored in order to complete the game and obtain highest possible Sea Rank. You have only one chance to complete Island’s quest but don’t worry most of them has no time limitation and allow you to try again. What you are waiting for selects your crew member and begins your quest.
User Interface

Explorers of the Horizon (BETA 6) User interface explained.

Ship Movement

In order to sail with ship, select destination on the stage and press Left mouse button. Be careful wind occasionally can be really strong. To motivate crew press left mouse button few times and perhaps in some shorter distance to bring your ship back on track.

Task Interaction

After you have selected your exploration companion, task information screen will be displayed. Keep your eyes on the bottom of the screen, that where your quest as well as navigation will be explained.

Captain’s Quiz

When the timer located on top right corner reaches number zero. You ship will sail back to the royal dock and you will have an appointment with a Captain. If you think you are not ready to answer question or you didn’t have chance yet to complete any of the tasks, simply press cross in top right corner and your appointment will be postponed. On the bottom right corner convince meter is located. By answering correct needle will be moved towards Convince word and trust me you will want to keep it that way otherwise Captain will get angry and decrease your rank.


GOOD LUCK YOUNG EXPLORER!

EOH analysis

This post will explain in-depth few quest / event that user can explore during the game play as well as it will compare it to initial design document.

According to initial design document of the Explorers of the Horizon game should cover seven main aspects from Geography KS3.

1. Plate tectonics

• Volcanic Eruptions

2. Geomorphologic processes

• Rock types

• Coastlines

• River landforms

• Flooding

• Preventing from Flooding and natural disasters.

3. Weather and climate Rainfalls

4. Ecosystem

5. Environmental issues

6. Resources

7. Using geographical skills

• Maps

• Graphs

• Compass

• Barometer

Mainly due to the time limitation, certain design decisions had to be made, mainly restricting, or rather narrow some of above listed aspects. As the game is created in a certain way that by just simply adding new island and one new item to array whole game play should be immediately affected and it will include new object in game. Regarding that at this time just five main aspects has been adapted for a game play with plan to update and expand covered aspects. In Build 6 of EOH user can learn about Tectonic Plates, Rock types / minerals, the hydrological cycles, Weather & Climate (British Isle focus), Map skills: use of compass. At this point worth of highlighting is fact that each and every aspect is represented in form of the island. Another important feature is to allow user to choose from three different characters, that will affects game play entirely.

In next section of this post I would like to present original ideas for the mini-events and compare them with final tasks in game to show how the ideas evolved and were adapted to the game play.

Main limitation to the final game was to "cut off" the painters activity as some of the Cartographer events cover creative thinking and use of colours.

1. Rock Types

This event was originally planned to be located at the cave background scenario. To ensure that the knowledge and terminology, used in this event, will be 100% acquired, reading of subject in Geography: Classbook KS3 by Adam Arnell, was essential. Quite inspiring was section of activities encouraging kids to visit cave and learn more about the minerals. In my personal opinion this was successfully adapted to the game play creating both challenging and interesting events.

Writer activity: Offering very little functionality event, appears to be cope with expectations. After deep and comprehensive introduction to minerals and rocks type, in this event user would be asked to complete A-B-C-D quiz.

Result: After speculation this Writer event was replaced by insert word tasks, where from words listed below, user is asked to insert correct word in the provided field and correct the sentence. (Above)

Painter: Draw outlines of the provided minerals or rocks. Result: Removed from the game

Cartographer: Connect pictures with correct description. This event more and less remained in same shape and logic.

Result: As planned, task included in the game play. (Above)

Ratboy: As my personal favorite I was going through many ideas how to make game as much exciting for kids as not to drawn attention kids away from fact that it should be a task from which one they should learn about three main types of rocks.(BALANCE) From many ideas, like DIG-DUG style of game where user would dig through the ground with Ratboy character and search for certain type of minerals. Another idea was to make it more dexterity focus game, user would avoid falling rocks and attempt to grab / collect correct one that would be currently missing from inventory. Each and every of these "sub" ideas has been accommodated in Ratboy Rocks Collector design.

Dig Dug, Publisher(s) Atari, Inc, Release date 1982

Result: Initially the game was chosen to be a side scrolling title similar in interaction to Super Mario Bros. This game was one of the largest and the most time consuming. Application count about 1500 lines of code nevertheless that was my first ever attempt to code an artificial intelligence and must say it is a big success. Aim of the game is to collect three stones that after volcanic eruption have been thrown in different place on the map. After user collects items, they must be placed in certain order on the special barrels. This game also has a special stage where user faces a final in coconut battle but not to spoiled I will advice everyone to play it and face the King Crab in final battle for lava artifact.

2. Tectonic Plates

Tectonic Plates event is only one that everything went exactly according to plan. All events written five months ago have been transferred to digital form without any significant limitation.

Writer: On the simplified word map user is asked to input names of cities in to text fields. There is no time limit to this event therefore there is a small apprehension / hesitation as the user cannot switch off or terminate this event. If user will not be able to complete this event application has to be manually restarted in order to restart the game.

Cartographer: Relatively easy task to complete puzzle. By dragging and dropping objects on the stage, user will understand location and size of the tectonic plates.

Ratboy: In this event user is asked to "surf" on the tectonic plates map to the "safe plate" before the earthquake begins. Look and feel of this mini-game, which is young boy surfing above sandy surface with drawn shapes of tectonic plates, was inspired by Robin Esrock that together with few friends started a new trend called SANDBOARDING. (Picture below)

As mention above there is fifteen different events that for obvious reason will not be described in this section. I would like to encourage again everyone to test this game and discover personal favorite event. From poll vote that I have conduct among EOH beta testers, Crab Racer (Ratboy) and Rock Collector (Ratboy) seems to be vote out best events by boys, where girls prefer spinning Crabs(Cartographer) and Hydrological Crossword(Writer) that rely more on logic and current knowledge. Files are still available at http://eoh.exofire.net/swf/userExplorerBeta6.zip or http://rapidshare.de/files/39552587/userExplorerBeta6.zip.html (when page is displayed you must press free on the bottom of the page and it will initiate download) as well as at http://eoh.exofire.net/ (please excuse lack of frame or some flashy css that should surround game as it is still in beta test not a official release :) ) Thank you... In next post proposal of EOH online manual

Web presentation

Explorers of the Horizon

Brief.
Hello Everyone. Since February 2008 I have been working on new learning experience for kids. Project codename: EXPLORERS OF THE HORIZON. Since then my game went through many changes and I had to limited some of the undesirable functionality that would be considerably time consuming and would not enhance learning experience in any significant way. At this point Explorers of the Horizon is in beta testing stage and at present time build / version name is BETA6(Release candidate) As there are still some database functionality missing, nevertheless the gameplay has now been finalized and it is being tested by kids and my friends and family. To quickly refresh memory about this project, Explorers of the Horizon is a flash based game designated for kids in age group between 11 and 14 years old. Main purpose of the game is fact that by explorations and fun gaming experience, kids gets to know certain aspects of geography KS3. Following screenshots well shortly recap some aspects of game play and in-game stages. Currently help section or tutorials, for new users, has not yet been completed therefore element of exploration starts from very begging of the game.

Technical Specs:
Created in Flash CS3 AS3 - Whole game, that contains fifteen mini games plus main game play and Captain quiz section. Whole project counts around 7000 line of optimized AS3 code (what roughly makes around 20,000 words written :) Utterly unexpected, nonetheless I very much enjoy this projects as it looks great and first feedbacks about the game play are positive.

Major defects to fix:
Performance!

Expected time to release / publish: Summer 2008

Screenshots

1. Main gameplay – East Sea stage. Begging of the game. The user is asked to sail with the ship to any of the island in order to initiate exploration. On graphical user interface user can track current Sea rank, Remaining time to the next Captain quiz, as well as items that have been acquired.


2. As mentioned above crucial stage of the game play is the CAPTAIN QUIZ. After first two minutes and then every one minute Captain Quiz activates. (user allowed to skip it) If user acquired any item from island, quiz system will automatically recognize this item and assign question "from captain" to user in order to check his knowledge.


3. One of the most important features of the Explorers of the Horizon is fact that the user can select his own path of learning. When the user’s ship docks near island, Character Bar is displayed, allowing user to select one character from three available. By selecting Writer user will face task more related to writing or crosswords, when cartographer is selected user can expect more logical tasks. By selecting Ratboy user will be given mini game quest when often by navigating character user has to complete given quest.

EOH experience can be very subjective, therefore I would like to ask everyone for Beta testing contributions towards EOH. By selecting following link: http://rapidshare.de/files/39552587/userExplorerBeta6.zip.html Explorers of the Horizon(OFFLINE VERSION) can be download to your computer. Please uncompress the files and ensure that the folder structure will remain same as in compressed file. After the experience is completed please don't forget to leave me some comments or suggestions.

[PS. due to offline limitation of Adobe Flash Player 9, you will be presented with actionscript error during the game play please press Continue when error is displayed to proceed and enjoy EOH word.]