The goal of this project is to educate young students, ages 8-10, about the wonders of the solar system in which we live. Questions on all the planets, the asteroid belt, moons, black holes, as well as other cosmic entities will be included. There will be two modes: a practice mode where a question is asked about a topic and the player receives a score based on how many tries it took to answer the question correctly, and the actual game mode where the player gets only two chances to answer. The practice mode educates the student and the game mode allows that learned knowledge to be used in a competitive manner. In both modes, a paragraph or so of additional information about the celestial body is given to encourage a better understanding of the entity.
There are several design decisions that must be made concerning the implementation of the game.J One of these decisions is that the team will have to choose whether to design the game to run as fast as possible, using graphics as little as possible, or if speed will be sacrificed for detailed graphics, clear sound effects, and interactive video. While the load times should be minimized as much as possible, the game must have enough media to hold a child's attention for the duration of the game. Another decision the team will make is how to make the game appear simplistic enough so it is appealing toward children. A decision must be made as to whether the game will use bright and vivid colors or use a futuristic outer space theme. Large buttons are also being considered for many functions of the game instead of a menu bar. The team is also contending whether the questions will be displayed in a pop-up window or if the questions will be integrated into the main window. A pop-up window will grab the user's attention more effectively than a question being simply displayed on the main window. On the other hand, a child might think that the new window is a new application and not be able to realize that the new window is actually a part of the game.
Since this is a game is for children weUve decided to make it as graphic intensive as possible, in order to hold their attention.J To accomplish that, we chose two different points of view where the player can see the screen.J The first is a first-person point of view from inside the spaceship where the player will answer the questions.J The second view is a third person point of view, which will be visually display the spaceship traveling between planets.J The screen will be zoomed out so that the player can see all the planets and the solar system, which would enhance the attractiveness of the game to a person of a younger generation.
The game keeps track of all of the high scores.J Once the program is closed, rather than have the high scores reset, we have chosen to save these scores so that they can be viewed whenever the game is opened up again.J A design feature such as this will encourage the children to try beat the high scores since it wonUt be deleted after each session of play.J
Though not specifically stated as a requirement, the SRS did mention that the questions will have multiple-choice answers.J For answer checking purposes, we have decided to display the choices as radio buttons.J Radio buttons allow only one answer to be chosen, reducing any conflicts we may receive when the userUs answer is checked with the correct answer.J