Re: [kidsgames] Just Subscribed.

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

jeff@smluc.org wrote:

> -->  Tux_AQFH is a kids game (it was written for my 7yr old
> -->son - Oliver - who ended up doing a fair chunk of the work
> -->on it!) - but it's not what I'd describe as 'educational'.
> -->(Although writing it was considerably educational to both
> -->Oliver and myself!)
> -->
> 
> Would like to tell us some more about that experience.

Well, you did take a while to answer.  Oliver is now 9 years old!

This came about because I write flight simulator software to
earn my daily crust.  That means I'm "into" 3D graphics.

Until relatively recently (about 18 months ago), there was no
reasonable way to do 3D graphics under Linux.  When 3Dfx released
GLIDE to Daryll Strauss so he could port it to Linux and David
Bechiarelli did a port of Mesa (the OpenGL clone) onto GLIDE, 
it suddenly became possible to write 3D programs on my PC at
home and get decent frame rates.

I played a bit to learn how to do this stuff under Linux and
built a 3D version of "Tux" the Linux penguin that just rotated
on the spot as a kind of screen saver.

Oliver (like most boys his age) was a fanatical video game
player - and had just finished Mario 64 on Nintendo 64 (which
is a GREAT 3D game).  Suddenly he realised that:

  "Daddy does 3D graphics" == "Infinite supply of free 3D games"

...which turns out to be *FAR* from reality.

I pointed out that according to the credits, Mario 64 was written
by a team of about 100 people over about 5 years!   For Daddy to
spend ~500 man-years writing a new Mario'64 was NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

Still, I changed my spinning Tux so you could drive him around a
flat ground plane using the keyboard - then added the joystick,
then some 3D terrain - and it began to become obvious that it
would be possible to build some kind of a game in perhaps a man-year
of evenings.

Pretty soon, Oliver got frustrated with the S-L-O-W pace of development,
and I decided to rope him in to the effort.  He wanted a house for
Tux to live in - and so I showed him how to build one using the AC3D
model editor.  Well, to cut a long story short, Oliver is now pretty
good at throwing together models quickly.

Well, about a year into the development, we announced the game on
Slashdot and my website took 150,000 hits in one day with about
15,000 people downloading the game in that first day alone. Since
then, we've had about 50,000 downloads - mostly for Linux - but
also for MacOS, Windoze, IRIX, Solaris and BSD Unix.

I'd originally planned to get one level of the game working perfectly,
and hope that out of those 50,000 Linux users perhaps a dozen of them
would get in and build more levels.

This would fulfill the desire to have a free video game that would
never end - since new levels would be constructed as fast as we could
solve them.

Regrettably, the number of significant contributions to the Tux game
hovers around the zero level.  Not one single person has contributed
anything significant to the game at all.  I'm at a loss to explain
why.

However, I havn't given up - and I'm gradually producing more levels.
However, it's become evident that the AC3D modeller that Oliver and
I have been using is somewhat inadequate to the job of building
Tux levels - and perhaps that explains why I've had no help (but
perhaps not - I don't think people have been trying to build new
levels and failing - they just aren't interested in offering their
time).

So, my current project is 'Pretty Poly Editor' - a polygon-level
3D editor that should be PERFECTLY suited to building 3D models
for Linux-based OpenGL games.  Once Prettypoly is working well,
I'll return to finish Tux.

Meanwhile, Oliver is now a "Harry Potter" fan - and like most
fans of that wonderful series of books he *desperately* wants
to grab a broomstick and play Quiddich.  He built a Quiddich
arena and all the various balls (Quaffle, Bludgers, Golden-Snitch)
- and now he and I are getting into the coding.  This is a
networked game - but it'll never see the light of day outside
our home because I don't want to get sued by the author or her
publishers.

 
> -->  It seems to me that someone with the right background in
> -->education could quite easily add teaching elements into
> -->Tux_AQFH to make a spin-off educational game based on it.
> -->
> -->  We showed Tux_AQFH at Oliver's school ("Family Math Night")
> -->and >300 children played it. On that basis, it's pretty
> -->safe to say that even with a regular 'gamepad' joystick,
> -->it can be played by Kintergarten through 10years old...
> -->at least.
> -->
> 
> Great... I haven't got to see it yet as I don't have OpenGL hardware...
> 
> :(

Well, you can *see* it using software-only Mesa - but the frame rate
will be about one frame every three seconds on a 266MHz PC - nearer
one frame per second on a state-of-the-art PC at 600MHz or so. 

To play it though - you DO need 3D hardware - although even a crummy
little Voodoo-1 will run it at 30Hz - and those can be picked up
second hand for about $20 here in the Dallas-TX area.

> -->I've been thinking about hacking something into Tux_AQFH
> -->to drill Oliver on his multiplications tables...but I
> -->just don't know enough about the educational stuff to
> -->know what would work.  By the time I get it done, he'll
> -->have the tables down cold anyway... :-)
> 
> Yes he probably will, but THINK of all the other children who won't;
> besides Oliver can help get it done and I think that would be something HE
> could be proud of.

Well, yes - but between thinking that this might help him and
actually getting around to doing it, he learned his multiplication
tables - so it's unlikely that I'll be doing this.

Whilst it's nice that other kids might benefit - you'll understand
that my efforts are going to be focussed where my son can get the
most benefit.
 
> -->  I also act as consultant for the FlightGear flight
> -->simulator project...they are a major user of my PLIB
> -->engine.
> -->
> 
> Sounds cool.

One recent development on FlightGear that may be of interest
here is that the terrain generation tools and the 3D renderer
for that terrain are about to be split off into a separate
project called 'Terragear' (http://terragear.sourceforge.net).

They have tools that can take real-world digital map data
and turn it into a 3D model.  You can download terrain models
for just about anywhere in the world from the FlightGear
web site (shortly to be moved to the TerraGear site) and
'fly' over them.

If you want to fly over Mount Everest - or down the Grand
Canyon - or over Antarctica, you can.

Seems like there would be some educational value here somewhere
now that the terrain rendering engine is a separate library
that could be incorporated into some new program.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)


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