[gcompris-devel] [GSoc]Games + ReadingWriting

[Alex Burghelea]

Hi,

Sorry for the late delay, I had 2 deadlines for this week on my 
university assignments.
I have compiled GCompris and played a little with it.

Below you will find my ideas more detailed.

On 3/26/2011 6:47 PM, Bruno Coudoin wrote:
>> at the dominoes i think that i could combine it with the spelling and
>> writing case association.
> tack toe, and dominoes
>
>> Another game i'd like to implement is Dots and Boxes
>> (http://jocuri.clopotel.ro/Q7ij8IFL/Dots_and_Boxes/).
>> I think this game could have great potential in being integrated with
>> the Reading/Writing Category
> Hum, Dot and Boxes does not requires any reading / writing skills.
Sorry for that one ,  it was meant for the dominoes game.
I saw on the Idea Page the different levels proposed for dominoes, and I 
think that I could implement
some levels based on letter ( Case - Sensitive / !Case Sensitive  have 
to decide which is harder)  and then numbers
and finally a harder level with dots (double 6 or double 9 set should be 
sufficient enough for kids ).
The main part of the games I'm thinking of implementing the rules of 
Block / Draw dominoes.
I also want to write another domino game based on the rules from "5s and 
3s".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domino_games#5s_and_3s

But maybe bended to accommodate simpler math operations ( +/- simple 
levels | */ : harder levels, or not at all).
In this part I'm thinking at something interactive like math hints for 
when the child is making a move that isn't the best one.
Let's say that a rule is: "You get points by this formula sum of the 
dots on your piece and the half you are connecting
to."
For example: If the kid has in hand 6-3 , 4-2 + other and the deck would 
end with  4 **** 6  and he chooses
to use 4-2 , the sum would be 10 < 15 (by playing 6 -3 ). Here is where 
the math feature is bigger where a child is
asked a question like "How much is 3 + 6 + 6?" .

I'm still thinking if this should be a feature for the easier or as a 
game style.
What do you think?

A final game I think of working on, is Connect 4. I would like to 
implement an interactive tutorial,
where the user is presented with some hints that will guide him to 
victory and
maybe even explain (somehow) why the current move it's good/bad.
I'm thinking on a solution based on alfa-betha prunning algorithm.

I hope that I made myself understood.

For the reading writing category, I'm thinking that a calligraphic 
application would be cool.
But I don't know how it would be received by the users , because it's 
limited to using graphic
tablets.

I really want to know what's your opinion here.

I saw a game that gave me an idea for the Letter Classification

http://nobelprize.org/educational/physics/laser/challenge.html

At the end of the first level after talking to the police officer, there 
is a challenge where
objects come on a conveyor belt and they have to be categorized.
I'm thinking of doing something where the kid has to select letter
and put them on several places , so that he could form the words.

The dictation of letter i think would be fairly easy to achieve
based on a a set of pronounced letter for every language that
GCompris supports.  The pronunciation can be used in domino,
especially for the level with non case -sensitive letter as hints
to match upper to lower-case

I see the part with word pronunciation trickier
because it needs a large database for different languages .
A possible solution would be using ogg + Speex . I'm also taking in
to consideration some linear prediction ( I had an assignment
last year where I had to implement compression and decompression
for voice prediction using wav files in octave) .

Do you think it would be enough for a GSoC application (or on the
contrary , that I'm biting more that I could chew ) ?

I will also add some bonus task to the proposal like checkers.

I will start to write the application for GSoC , and based on your
feedback for this mail I will send you a draft by this weeks end.

I hope you like my ideas and look forward for your review.

Alex.