Using Marble as the base for an educational 1st person game

[William Temple]

Hello,

As I am not a programmer, just a father who wants to build a game for his 3
year old, I need help understanding the current capabilities of Marble,
where it can be taken, or if I need to find another option.

Why I want to use Marble...
1) The basic interface is the best I have seen it is very easy to
manipulate the globe to find a place on the Earth.
2) The GeoDataPlacemarks are exactly what I need as long as they can be
expanded to include video.
3) The basic philosophy of KDE.

What I am trying to accomplish...
1) A game in which the player can travel to different place or times and
experience the place.
Scenario... player will board a double decker bus (there will always be a
seat available on the top deck), travel to a train station and board a
train, the train will travel through a portal ( like on the television show
Dinosaur Train), again board a bus to travel to destination ( get to enjoy
the sights of Paris on the way to the Eiffel Tower or the sights of Rome on
the way to the Coliseum),  study the GeoDataPlacemark to learn about the
history of the site, experience the site first person ( hopefully a user
will video an experience, strapping a camera to a helmet and take the mule
trip down the Grand Canyon).
2) Make the experience developmental by having puzzles, quizzes, et cetera.
3) Allow kids to interact with each other learning about different cultures
as the visit different places. Making friends and understanding differences.

Maybe I am spending way too much time at pbskids or nickjr but I believe
the time my son and I spend playing the games will only benefit him when he
starts school. Maybe the repetitiveness of the games are specifically
designed for peschoolers but I belive he would benefit from an experience
such as this even at his young age (and of course the game can have
different levels of complexity straight through high school.

I have looked at various options and to be honest I do not understand them.
I have as yet only got the first 3 Marble tutorials to run. To date the
Proland project is the the most like what I would like (from their youtube
videos, as I have not got it to compile) but they are not very friendly and
I believe my computer is too old for their system. I am not even sure if
Marble can be developed to allow a 3d experience at ground level.

But, if there is some one involved with Marble and if KDE finds merit in
this project I would enjoy discussing how I can use Marble to achieve my
goal.

Thank you,
Bill
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