Re: [Tuxmath-devel] Factoroids game customization and reporting

[David B. <dav...@gm...>]

Hi,

I've also been thinking of tinkering with Factoroids.  At the last
GSoC Mentor Summit, I had a chance to chat with Sam Lantinga (the
creator of SDL) for a while. Sam loved the idea of Factoroids and had
a suggestion for an enhancement that sounds really cool - instead of
having to type in the "factor" separately before each shot, make each
small prime factor a different "weapon" a la Quake.  So, if the player
enters "2", Tux loads up the "2 Gun" at the console, and similarly for
3, 5, 7, 11, and however many primes we want to support.  We could
modify the "laser" function to show the tux ship shooting a "2"
numeral at the asteroid, and perhaps even flash the corresponding
equation (e.g. " 12 = 2 x 6") for correct hits.

I think kids would enjoy something like that.  It would also make the
game a little less awkward to play - as it stands now, it is a little
hard to jump back and forth between the arrow keys and the number
keys.  As a further mod, we perhaps might want to support custom key
mapping for anyone who might conceivably take the game seriously.

Just a few thoughts -

David