[kde-edu]: Number Munchers

[T. J. Brumfield]

First off, I want to say thank you for all the developers who have
worked on the kde-edu project.  There are some really great apps in
there.

I have a young daughter, and she loves playing computer games with me.
 Honestly, I'd love to see some more FOSS educational apps.  One of
the biggest issues I see in education apps, is that some of the apps
are so specific, that they somewhat only pertain to students of a
specific subject, or children at a very specific age range.  I would
like to see a remake/clone of Number Munchers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Munchers

It was developed by MECC, which is no longer in business, and they
haven't taken action against clones of Oregon Trail, their most
popular app.

Number Munchers has many nice things going for it as a concept.
* It is simple to learn and play.
* It should be simple to code.  I say that as a non-programmer, but
someone made a DHTML version in under 5k of code here:
http://www.numbermunchers.org/
* The app doesn't need much from an art perspective, unless you wanted
to add nice animations or cut scenes.
* The game mechanic appeals to children of varying age ranges.
* You can use different types of math problems to appeal to children
of varying ages.

I was thinking a KDE version could use Konqi to munch the numbers to
get away from completely copying the original app.  Perhaps gameplay
could even be expanded by allowing Konqui to breathe fire to deal with
the Troggles.  Correctly answer X number of math problems, or munching
X number of correct solutions awards Konqui with one flame.

-- T. J. Brumfield
"I'm questioning my education
Rewind and what does it show?
Could be, the truth it becomes you
I'm a seed, wondering why it grows"
-- Pearl Jam, Education