Thesis about the PlayPower project - missing idea

Hi everyone,

I'm a final year university student. So I've thought about which topic I should write my final thesis and remembered back on this project here. So I'd love to work on a paper about the playpower project, as well as contribute a piece of educational software for the 10$ computer (in a run of 4-6 months).

That's what I thought so far by myself, but I'm very interested in any feedback from the playpower community, specially about the following:

I'm still missing an great idea for a valueable educational software. It seems like all Educational Games/Application from the ideas wiki (http://work.playpower.org/w/page/37184803/ideas) are already in development state, so I have to come up with something by myself…
I'm specially interested in language learning software, so I thought it would be worth to considering to work on something in this field. But I'm still missing an specific idea - this is aggravated by the fact that it seems to be quite difficult to determine the native language of the 10$ computer users (because there are much more than only one language - and mostly there would be a too large bitmapfont needed for the necessary characters). I guess the playpower currently-in-development-games, are using because of that english on-screen-text (if theres any on screen text).

So I'm not exactly sure, in which direction I should go - or if it's even a bad idea at all.

Any ideas or feedback would be greatly appreciated - thanks in advance.

best regards,
Constantin

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Permalink Reply by Sebastien Van Damme on July 13, 2011 at 3:02pm

Hi Constantin,

Sounds like a great idea for a thesis!

In my opinion, language learning games do not need to be in the native language of the $10 computer users because you can use drawings or pictures within the game to make clear what they're learning about. If for example your character needs to find a key, you can use a drawing of a key, which they will associate with the word for key in their own language. If they still can't grasp the meaning of the word, users can ask around them, or the game might include some small glossary, like Zelda 2 for the NES did back when it was too difficult to add all the European language versions of the game.

Good luck!

Best regards,

Sebastien

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Mike Reddy on July 14, 2011 at 2:29am

I have a special interest in language learning games, as I'm project lead on an EU funded project aimed at creating learning games for children with dyslexia, which are focussing on support for learning English as a foreign language. We are developing 6 games to be as language neutral as possible, to allow other languages to be substituted eventually, but the project focus is web-based tools to allow teachers to be able to modify basic game templates. Clearly, this idea goes beyond what the playpower hardware can offer, but the basic game ideas that underpin language learning - spelling, typing, vocabulary and syntax, phrase and sentence construction, pronunciation and comprehension - should be in part achievable by the 8 bit hardware.
Do you have a specific language learning task/skill you want to address?

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Permalink Reply by Constantin on July 15, 2011 at 9:37am

Thank you for your replies,

That dyslexia project sounds very interesting!

I haven't really thought about any specific language learning skills to address, but on the playpower hardware everything except pronunciation and listening seems to be accomplishable for me. Maybe also using the DPCM channel - but it would still be of bad quality and not very reasonable.

I would really love to learn more about your project - specially what kind of tasks/gameplay it provides and how it's planning to be so language neutral as possible. Maybe in terms of excessive use of images & icons (like also suggested from Sebastien) or any other concept I haven't thought about yet?!

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Permalink Reply by Pasquale Barilla on September 1, 2011 at 12:19am

Hi Constantin!

How is your final year at Uni going? Have you decided on what you would like to do your thesis on?

Sebastian makes a good point about the use of images to express concepts common to everyone. When dealing with the NES (and by extension the Playpower hardware), you are dramatically limited to the amount of "Sprites" you can have. Each character of the alphabet takes up sprites. So if you can get away with not using so many letters, and instead use images that you can recycle, you will be able to achieve more with the limited space.

To give you an example, Super Mario Bros 3 does not have a complete alphabet. Some of the words that are displayed are "MARIO", "LUIGI", "AREA" "1-9" and "CLEAR". So from looking at this, you can eliminate the need for B, D, F, H, J, K, N, P, Q, S, T, V, W, X, Y ,Z, and instead use the sprites that would make those characters to draw images that can be used for different things. Again, using Mario Bros as an example (number 1 this time), the Cloud and the Bushes are the same sprite, just colored differently.

Sometimes, using Language is unavoidable, but keeping gameplay similar between games helps avoid this problem by reducing the amount of explanation a new player must receive before playing the game. As an example, on the original NES, everyone had Mario Bros. So the "B Button for Shoot, A button for Jump" configuration became standard. In fact, when games decide to flip this convention, the game is criticized for having "bad controls" (think Bart vs The Space Mutants).

By keeping your control and game play homogenized, and by using clever gameplay clues, you can create a rich gameplay experience without needing to fall back on language to explain it.

Finally, the TV's that are used by people who typically have Famiclones are not high definition, so letters and words are hard to read without getting right next to the TV.

I hope that this has helped explain some of the challenges faced in developing for this very unique platform, and provided some practical work-arounds to these problems.