Vikings is an educational game being designed with the intent to teach children of ages 8-12 world geography. The game begins by displaying an initial game start menu where the user can choose to set the difficulty level, view the high scores for the game, as well as begin his or her new campaign. When the game has begun, the user is given 3 Viking ships and a clue with which to find the first country. If the difficulty level was left at it's initialized value of normal then the clue will be the country's name, however, if it was set to advanced then the clue will be a nation's capitol. The user is then anticipated to drag his Viking ship across the displayed map onto the country for which the clue alludes to. If the user is correct then he receives an amount of gold to add to his working total, however, if he fails then he looses one of his ships. Once the user has lost all of his ships or found all the countries then the game is over. If the user has matched or beaten one of the top scores then he will be prompted for his initials and added to the high score list. The user may then play again if he or she so chooses.
The design team has decided that the main introductory menu will include the high scores, buttons to begin a normal or advanced game, and an exit button to quit the program. There is no reason to have a separate menu to select game difficulty or show the high scores. There should be plenty of room on the introductory menu and the addition of extra menus will just make it more complicated for an 8-12 year old to play.
The design team has decided that it will use a bounded region in order to tell whether or not a ship has been dragged across a countries shoreline. This decision is based upon the ease of programming and the nature of the situation. In most languages it is very simple and concise to set up a bounded region and then use an event loop in order to control the ship's interaction with the shoreline.
The design team has decided that the game should not be able to save. The reason for this is not to make the game as beatable. If a saving feature were implemented then the user would be able to save it after every correct answer and reload a perfect game after every incorrect answer. We must also keep the age group in mind when considering something of this nature. Typically an 8-12 year old child will not be patient enough to save a game and come back to it later.
The design team has not yet decided the best way to store each country's data, as well as the picture that must be displayed. Should these items all be saved in the same data structure(s)?
The design team has not yet decided how to make our game available to expansion packs. How will these items be stored and loaded?
The design team has not yet decided how it will handle music and graphics that correspond to the successful or unsuccessful docking of a ship at a country. Will there simply be two different graphics and musical pieces for each of the success conditions, or will our graphics and music tailor itself to the country with which the user must find?