room topic changed to Discussion on "How to build repetition into a game that won't ruin the experience": See the question at: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/141968/… (no tags)

Thank you for creating this

@Growler Hi, you said you were struggling on the repetition in the game, what do you have so far?

Hiya

Well I have a playable demo

that I've beta tested with 60+ students

I found the students were using mostly trial and error to learn the words (they'd get it wrong, then try a different order)

Info on the game is here: lexicanasdestiny.com

Playable beta here: custom-env-1.us53cxnpxi.us-east-1.elasticbeanstalk.com

@Theraot

I'm building this game for Mandarin and Spanish. Currently I only have Mandarin

the goal is to make generic enough "modules" or quests such that I can plug and play any language

@Growler That doesn't sound bad, did the students enjoy the game?

yes

most of them said they'd play again

I'm reading a lot on game design now (about 200 pages into The Art of Game Design)

but that doesn't necessarily help with the repetition aspect of education

your comments did help a lot though

You were asking me about retention of the words, I suppose you are keeping some statistics, right?

2) I measure how well students do per module, and also compare each student to the rest of the class in a dashboard

@Theraot you live in Colombia now?

Are you familiar with the concept of the Forgetting curve? - The known model is that retention falls in an inverse exponential curve. From there we get the idea to use a logarithmic function to decide the frequency of repetition

I am from and I live in Colomiba

Indeed

I posted about that here: languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/2844/…

@Theraot I guess the thing I'm struggling with is the mechanic of making repetition fun

I'm aware of the forgetting curve, Anki, etc

My approach to this is from engineering, because predicting "fun" is a hard topic for science. What we know are best practices and things to avoid or to pay attention to, yet at the end it will be testing what will tell if it is fun.

indeed

I would suggest to try to follow up on the students after a while, say a month, to test that retention.

Another thing I would look into is using random and procedural generation to make sure the game keep the same beats but without making playthrough too similar.

this can be a good way to repeat

I was going to do this but you call it out in your answer

By the way, crafting scenarios and history instead of having it computer generated will lead to more meaningful and emotional experience for the player - just to keep in mind if you go that route.

I was going to have battles with enemies and whatnot be part of the practice

How are you introducing words in your demo?

through dialog, items, and puzzles

It is ok if I try to enter in the link you gave me?

please do! I'd love some feedback

ok

Nice to meet you, Alfonso J. Ramos :)

Your English is great for living in Colombia

@Theraot are you lost/stuck yet?

lost: no, I'm near the star location. stuck: kind of, I'm not sure what I should be doing.

did the NPC talk to you?

yes

did you press T to cycle dialog?

no, there you go... I had found T to talk, yet I assumed it was a single line dialog

ah

how did u find T to talk, thru the menu?

yes, menu

great

@Theraot How's it going?

Sorry, I got distracted with something else, the NPC was asking to ask for meat

I see

Did you press B to open the backpack?

@Theraot the fact that you're already distracted is a bad sign :D

haha

It could be, yet that's because I was asked a favor

and other modules... like Ordering food, puzzles, etc

right

Well, the first thing I noticed opening the game was that it had overflow (the scrollbars), yes, I know that's not what you are asking me about...

Then you have an intro story, but it seems to have no relation with what follows

Before I went into talking, I did wander around for a while, at first I didn't know how to tell that what doors I can enter or not

I found the menu, I found the minimap, I found the backpack...

I like that you have the pronunciation of the words on mouse hover

@Theraot Okay. I guess the idea there was the main player is dropped into this world after learning about their background (Similar to Link in Zelda: Ocarina of Time when he wakes up in Kokiri forest. He roams around and talks to people which doesnt seem to connect to the introduction story)

(Referring to your comment about the intro story disconnected to opening in game)

In Ocarina of Time you start at your house in Kokiri forest, not exactly the middle of the street

@Theraot true!

Although, the original Zelda did pretty much put the player in the middle of nowhere

@Theraot what I'm working on is making the levels smaller and a bit more directed...

Have you played Magicka Wizard Wars?

That way you won't necessarily get so lost

To start sleeping is a common trope of RPGs, in particular from the 90's on, you may try that. You can still place the player in the middle of the street, but this time he was unconcious and a worried person comes to see if you are ok

I haven't played Magicka Wizard Wars

that's a great idea

@Theraot the basis for Communicative Learning comes primarily from the backpack

To use each item, you click on the item, and a list of actions for that item is displayed

you need to speak the phrase correctly to use the item

Yes, I saw that. When I first went to the backpack I didn't know what to do with the input box

@Theraot yikes. Thanks for sharing that

I didn't talk with the NPC at first, I guess that conversation needs a part that can't be skipped

wait, how did you not?

he comes and talks to u and u cant move

Yes, the NPC salutes and you can walk away

yeah

I was able to move

okay

good point

@Theraot some stuff I've read says to not put onboarding stuff within NPC dialog

Not knowing to press T yet (that was before opening the menu) I missed the conversation

as it hurts immersion

what do u think about that

I would agree

okay

Have you played Chrono Trigger?

SNES

No

I will play it if you think I'll get good ideas (I can get an emulator on mac)

It starts with an stablishing shot, followed by the PC sleeping in his room, the mother comes to wake him up (that is one dialog you can't skip), but for most of the dialogs you can.

I see

Consider Zelda, A link to the Past... again, you are sleeping, but you get the message of Zelda asking for help and your uncle going away before you can move

Originally I thought I should force ppl to go thru dialog because a lot of words are given in dialog

but then I thought... well, I can't force people

(Im referring to all dialog, not just the opening dialog)

In some sense you have a dialog you can't skip, which is the one setting the story

so I can deliver the same words through the player's experiences within their environment as a whole

(e.g., fighting a nearby enemy, or picking up an item, will require the same words that you would have learned had you been talking to the NPC)

I think chrono does this better... when somebody talks you get a dialog box, but you can sill walk, if you walk too far away the dialog box goes away

essentially, each level will focus on a vocab set... and enemies, items, spells, dialog will all revolve around that particular dialog until they can move on

Yeah, my game actually does that

if you walk away the dialog box disappears

Righ, I mean... dialog dissapears in you game, the dialog box is always there

Anyway, back to my issue... I didn't know I had to press T or that there were more dialog

okay

Adding an icon (perhaps something similar to the T key in the keyboard) on the dialog box would solve that

Which makes me wonder... do you want this to work on touch screens?

Yeah I originally thought that Menu button on the right would be obvious enough

later, yes. But I have much to prove before I do that

Now that you say that, I went to hover on the menu button and I noticed it get highlighted, but the backpack don't. I just tried clicking on it (instead of using B), I was unaware that works.

okay

@Theraot are you done playing?

Nope

okay

there are 6 quests altogether

each with unique modules in teaching the language

@Theraot btw if you need, the speech bubble icon on the top right allows you to send feedback on the fly

Alright, I'm done playing. I went exploring, there is a lot of empty space, and collision boxes to work out

okay did you get to the part where you were selling food items?

I did close and reopen the tab, the game restarted, consider storing the game state in client storage (cookies, et. al.)

I did complete the selling part, that needs some animation of the customers

@Theraot thank you for trying it

People said that I should be helping somebody else... they are all a hive mind that are watching what I am doing what I should not o,.,o

@Theraot the reason for that was to give "clues" that someone else may need help

in a sense, funneling you to whom you need to talk to

Which is why MMORPGs have exclamation marks :P

@Theraot what do you mean?

Quest givers... wait there is a video on that...

Part 2:

While I was playing I had another idea... I do not know the name of the genre... Have you seen games that mimic chat or instant messaging? I am not saying games where you have a cellphone and you text messages, but games where that is the main mechanic. They are often about some mystery to solve by talking with the right people, with a lot of dialog trees. Given that most of your game is in dialog, I wonder if - at least - a section like that would be fitting.

hmm

like Myst?

No, I'll try to find an example to link you to...

Okay

My goal is to market this to schools

@Theraot the game pipes in your progress directly to a teacher dashboard: clg-dashboard.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/#

@Theraot what do you think of the Player response mechanic?

(the player's input box when the respond)

It works well, I wonder if too well

@Theraot what works well?

what do you mean?

At some point I wondered if it could work by dragging and tried to drag the words, in particular to reorder them - yet, perhaps it is better if you can't, perhaps removing words instead of starting over is too much

@Theraot are you saying you'd prefer to be able to drag words?

@Theraot what do you mean it "works too well"?

And did you find the response box constantly popping up annoying?

From a pure usability stand point, yes, I would have prefered to drag words

I see

Did you learn any vocab?

Yet, I know that would lead to guessing by reordering. So, I think, it is better to just have the option to remove them all at once (I know that is there, but there is also the option to remove only one) and start over

The start I remember: wo de ming zi shi theraot

wow

nice!

I have seen some basic kanji trying to learn jap. That helped with the numbers :P

So the goal then is to follow the forgetting curve and re-introduce that later as you continue playing

which is what I'm working on

@Theraot do you think this style of game could be effective at teaching?

I understand that could be pretty hard to answer, but please be honest

Because the kanji helped with the number I did struggle with the selling part (which is audio), I did try and error on mos of it.

I think it will work, of course you already know you need to expand it.

About teachers, it would be good to have a way for them to be able to promt "quests" to the student. Such that they can have some direction on what they practice. On the other hand, I wonder if having it linear or giving the student alternative paths is better.

Which reminds me of something else...

@Theraot exactly... I'm debating between those two right now. Giving the teachers control makes the storyline a bit trickier as linearity is lost

This other thing: freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/pathways-to-education

But it also.. you know... gives the teachers more control

I guess you are already familiar with Khan Academy, and Duolingo (which I mention in the answer) and how they handle that

@Theraot neither of those tools have a story. Meaning, they aren't games at their core

They are games, even if that is not their origin (Khan Academy was first video explanations, and Duolingo was first about translation), yet that does mean they mechanics don't translate

A game doesn't need to have a story to be a game, unless you are telling me things like Tetris aren't games

okay

@Theraot then I'll need repeatability on "quests", but not so much that they become boring to the player/student... so that's where I guess random/procedural generation could come in

and by quests... I mean a vocab set/grammar lesson delivered through a game puzzle/medium

About branching, consider Mario World. In the game you have a map which serves a stage selection. Using it you can go back to revisit previus stages, and at some places there are branching paths. The Mario World map is a tree, except the representation give a better immersion.

good thought!

Right... you need some sort of framework if you want to use random/procedural generation

...

For grammar puzzles, I have no idea :P

yeah

btw thanks for sharing the freakonomics

I'll listen to it tomorrow!

it is a good show, enjoy it ^^

@Theraot I don't want to take much more of your time

But...

Going forward, as I revamp and iterate

would you mind if I reached out to you more for feedback?

I think this game can be a hit

Yeah, no problem, I'll while I can

I'll be adding Spanish next month

I did a web search for grammar puzzles, one of the first result is crosswords, and that is something that could be randomly generated

I do this now through "mazes"

Which gave me another idea: unscrambling phrases

you didn't get to that point I don't think in the game

but you need to cross a maze where the order of instructions are in the target language

Another thought I had was Building Items

That sounds good

A cross between Minecraft and Scribblenauts

Because building things forces you to know object vocab

then putting the objects together to build a thing requires construction of meaningful phrases, such as "put x on y to make z work" (obviously, this would be in the target language)

But are these things "fun"? Who knows

Playtesting i guess will tell

I am thinking about grammar, so far I think there could be a part where you get a letter (or some sort of message) but it is broken in pieces, and you have to put it together - that would requires to know, at least, what words are nouns, verbs, etc... and in what order to put them

Yes, testing, fail fast

yes, Myst does this quite well

And to build the game quickly, I'll basically be reusing common modules to teach: puzzles, search and rescue, build this thing, navigate to x, order food from y, and converse with NPC

stuff like that will be common modules

and battle enemies

enemy battling will be Rock Paper Scissors

where a minion will have weakness of "fire" (fuego), so you need to equip fuego to defeat it

or to defeat a minion requires the right combination of attacks

my thought process: battle enemies -> battle enemies with language -> rap battles -> PaRappa the Rapper -> selecting words to complete phrases in time, but with multiple valid options with different reward

This was the chat game I was thinking of: saraismissing.itch.io/sim - it looks like an instant message app

that looks neat

@Theraot the issue with rap battles and tasks/activities that use the language overtly in the activity is that it makes the fact that it's a learning game too overt

do you know what I mean?

The idea is to more or less have a RPG with language seamlessly tied in as simply a tool to complete normal/everyday RPG quests

Yes, I know

okay

@Theraot these quest design videos from EC are great!

yup

You can try Chrono Trigger online here: loveretro.co/play-online/super-nintendo/chrono-trigger-u/4429 (no flash, or any other plugin, required)

wow this is great

this is really great!

@Theraot I can totally see having a Mario World-esque screen where they can go back and play certain quests/levels again

There could be rewards for revisiting them with some frequency, and that could be a way for teachers to guide the student: the teacher could add rewards to some already visited areas - there you probably want those areas to change (with random/procedural generation), perhaps they stay the same for a while, but when the reward appears they have changed... I don't know how viable is that.

the rewards could be in game, which could be somehow connected to a teacher's actual physical reward

that could be great

yeah

Another idea: consider to have an stage like the maze but in reverse... instead of you getting the instructions, you give them, then you see other person try to follow the instructions, and if they fail you have to input the instructions again - alternatively, you are talking with them via phone while you see from a ventage point - perhaps you can have both versions.

I think reversing modules that already exist is a great way to double the amount of content

@Theraot I'm playing Ocarina of Time now and Chrono Trigger for some more ideas

@Theraot 1:30AM here. Going to sleep. Would love to keep discussing this with you. I work on this game every day

You can add @ me here, I should see the notification when I log in. Have a good night