8 or Bust - Gamification of Learning

8 Or Bust
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.siddbetter.numbercrunchpaid

Gamification of Learning is a new approach towards making learning fun. 

Mobile games have advantages:
  1) Easily accessible as everyone has a smartphone of their own.
  2) Even parents and grandparents who were never into playing are finding it as a good source of passing time with challenges.
  3) We have so many options to download from Play Store.
  4) Play it at your leisure, while waiting for the bus, in the metro, waiting for the doctor, in long journeys.
  
Games are fun, lovable and addicting. So if games are so much fun, why do we not use gaming at our advantage of introducing learning into it. And Mobile games are here to stay for good or bad ...

Humans think they know the best way to learning but little they know of how the brain functions.When we are kids we play games and learn the most till we go to school, stop gaming and start the formal education.

Research are now recognizing this and advocating to introduce the concept of fun, games in learning.

   

In Siddbetter,  we do not make games with motive of teaching something. Instead we make games which takes some basic fundamental concepts of learning and allows you to play and have fun with intuitive learning. Just like chess, which does not teach you anything but makes you think about your steps ahead, build concentration, make strategies to overcome your opponent.

Siddbetter's "8 or Bust" teaches you -

• Simple rules of using adding/subtracting numbers to reach numbers in line. 
• Pattern recognition of match-3 with same numbers/color. 
• It teaches you concept of even/odd numbers because when the odd number starts appearing the game gets more challenging.  
• It makes the player think of complements of number to identify quickly the add/subtract compatible numbers.
• The patterns can be horizontal/vertical.
• It makes you think ahead of your steps so that you can achieve the better pattern. 
• It requires concentration to be able to find patterns.
• Foremost, it provides you a goal of catching as many cute animals like cats, dogs, butterflies...
• You compete with your friends for a spot in Leaderboard. 

This does not mean, everyone who plays will become the master of multiple skills but the game offers a puzzle and challenge which aids in learning.

Adventure of Tony Dum Dum - My New Game in App Store

Finally released my new game Adventure of Tony Dum Dum.

Not many people know about the early life of our Tony…

Story goes when Tony was not as famous as he is now. He went totally dum dum over this girl named Ello Icky.  Now, Ello Ikcy was not so great looker but a very plain looking intelligent girl. May be that simplicity catch our Tony’s eye?

But Ello Icky’s father, François, is a rugged sailor having travelled round the World. He was mathematical genius and love solving puzzle. He challenged Tony to prove his smartness by solving these mathematical puzzles as he must travel around the world following Ello Icky with his father and win his heart.

Puzzles François lays down are number chips matrix which is between 1 and 9. Now Tony must align them in basic 3 match pattern to break and earn score. If make complicated alignment pattern in “4”, “L”, “T” or 5 he get a booster power which helps him to solve the puzzle.

In the puzzle that number adds or subtract when he move them up or down. He can also align them by adding or subtracting the numbers. But maths was tony weakest link in those days he could not add beyond 9, so Francois gave him allowance and restricted the number addition only to 9. So now chip adding and subtracting will be valid only if it is between 1 and 9.

So begins the Adventure of Tony Dum Dum….

1)    Power Animations

   a.  Fire Ball – Goblet of fire which travel in a line burn everything in its path

    b.   Sword Keeper – Swords which travels X direction and cuts everything in its path

  c.    Diamond Crush – Diamond crush which throws diamond and converts others to itself.

2)  Swaps – Horizontal swap. Very limited and needs to be used very rarely.

3) Moves – Vertical down– which adds to chips and vertical down – subtracts lower from upper number. Main moves ….

4) Use moves to make “Match-3” larger number combo – 8-8-8 gives higher score than 1-1-1.

5   

    5)  Complicated patterns gives the powers – 8-8-8-8 gives fire …. L –T (in any perspective) pattern gives powers. L can be standing or sleeping or inverted does not matter – gives power.

6   

      6)  Higher levels have fun like 

           a. Freeing Ello Ikcy from prison

           b. Moving Tony to a Broadway Castle

           c. Get Francois beer down to his cellar

           d. Get flower down to Ello icky

7   

      7)  Kids will love it because of mathematical puzzles like many ways to reach to same number. 

            2+3 =5, 1+4 =5, 9-4 =5 ….

  

Join the game to have Dum-Dum time and getting to Tony unite with Ello Icky  

      https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adventures-of-tony-dum-dum/id897421362?mt=8

                                                                                                                                

Game Development Cycle

This development cycle is how we developed our iOS based game Space Trap I which is now in App Store.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-space-trap-i/id768160652?mt=8

Conceptual Stage  Idea is conceptualized on many dimensions. Very important is its fun and entertainment Easiness (Easy or Hard- requiring extreme intelligence)   Target audience (Action warfare, Racing or Puzzle games) Any constraint you may have based on your skillset (Making high scene oriented movie like games) It is like thinking on storyline of a movie or theme love-story, action, sci-fi. You may think  out-of-box or make formula movie

Prototyping Stage Prototyping helps in Testing out the idea by actual playing or It also refines the concepts of playing It is iterative extension of conceptualizing stage It is adds another dimension to the game of the revenue model. Prototype can actual be released to smaller sample audience for getting feedback The idea can still be thrown of window, if it does not appeal. The investment is still to minimum till prototyping.

Development Stage All the teams start working on the game. Ideas are still conceptualizing but at more details level, Development is now more full scale with all miscellaneous screens, in-App purchases etc., animations Design team churning out design assets   Testing team - testing game on all dimensions of bugs, robustness, user friendliness, game play etc. It is interactive process with new ideas, implantation, testing and refinement. After all testing, game is submitted to Appstore which approves after approx. 1 week. Now you are ready for release.

Marketing Marketing is test of all hard work. You advertise on available channels, forums medium … Test out different geographies, channels, demographics, sources…    Analytics/Tracking -         Cohort Analysis (along multiple dimension) for target spending and target audience -         Cross platform tracking Metrics -         Engagement Metrics -         Retention -         User acquisition -         Monetization -         User acquisition cost (CPC, CPI) -         Conversion rates -         …

Space Trap I- My new game on Appstore

Space Trap I

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-space-trap-i/id768160652?mt=8

After a long time and hard work, finally launched my new game space trap I. This game is departure from my earlier games which were social games and had to be played between to players turn by turn.

This game is played individually by clearing multi-levels and episodes.

Story begins …

Space Trap starts with aliens with sinister design steals the earth magnetic field. Earth is on brink of disaster with entire world turn upside down.  ROCKA the super –hero is called in to save the Earth. Earth is put on life support on the local magnet providing the magnetic need of the Earth. Now ROCKA must travel to fight aliens’ and get back the earth magnetic field.

Aliens have put in the maze of hindrances blocking the highway to their homeland. Now, ROCKA must solve each maze by aligning the planets in vertical line to clear the highway.

The matrix of the planets though shown in 2-dimension is spherical with space-warp; planet moved further down re-appears from top and like-wise for horizontal.

The aliens try to defeat ROCKA with multiple tricks –

1. Blocks – These are blocks which block high way movement. And restricts the alignment by blocking the movement.
2.  Space Warp- there is special worm-holes created by aliens in middle of highway which warps the planets and further wraps the planet in middle.
3. Skulls- These are like asteroid bombs by the aliens which ROCKA has to move out of the highway for alignment.
4.  Hidden Planets – These are hidden planets which are revealing only after ROCKA can solve the stage 1 problem.
5. High Speed Lanes- these are special lanes which moves double the speed than the other lanes. 

 

Further up …. Many more challenges….

ROCKA Powers

ROCKA has some super powers up his sleeves to defeat few of these challenges posed by aliens-

1. Transformer – a magic power to transform the asteroid bombs into normal planet which can then be aligned.
2. Shape Shifter- a power to change shape according to its surrounding; align with majority of the planet.
3. Space Bender- A special launcher which create space warp by bending the highway in middle.

And many more powers….

The challenge of getting the planets to align along highway is a challenge ... The difficulty level is slowly sets in ....

After 25 levels, game gets very difficult to solve. Even for game addicts of puzzle solvers are finding it difficult to solve unless  they realize the trick. 

After 3rd episode, game is a real challenge even puzzle master solvers.   

The Trick

But there is a small trick (a small little secret) where the planets are aligned column by column should be aligned but the last row/column (which are kept for free movement). 

On solving the matrix but last row, i.e. last row is solved by bringing the last planets of last row in row order as in first row. This could work by moving the planets up in last column and bringing it down on same order as first row. 

Mode of Play

Space Trap is played individually without going online.  The game is without any kind of advertising. Facebook login is provided if you want to compare your friend’s progress against your own. Facebook API are also used for allowing you to request for your friends for life, episode unlock and moves for helping you to solve the levels.

Game was introduced to for beta testing to few game addicts during its pre-launch but only hard-core puzzle solvers could reach its level 26. After which it gets really gets tough with new twist and turns introduced on each level.

It needs smartness of problem solving and pattern recognising.  The game starts with all aligned planets and randomly shaken to misarrange the planets with series of complex vertical and horizontal moves (in range of 25-35). So ideally, person can solve each level in less than 25 moves.

Technical

Space Trap I is built in Objective C using XCode. It has been built using storyboard.  Use the ARC for memory management.

The major component used are:

1. Facebook iOS SDK : For integration with Facebook
2. Bug Sense             : getting crash reports
3. Localytics             :  For analytics
4. Google Analytics    :  For analytics
5. AFNetworking        :  Server connections (data sync with server behind the scenes)
6. ObjectAL               : Audio 

When game is played as a facebook user, the game records are synced with server database behind the scenes. This is in case the game is deleted from the device; the data game is synced back to device on re-login from the same facebook account.

No advertising in the game but we however advertise Space Trap in other games so for that we have incorporate Mobile Advertisement Tracker , Tapjoy, Charboost etc.

For Notifications, we use only local notifications.  

Next blog ... On life cycle of developing a Appstore game ... 

WhatZ'Odd - Client Technology

WhatZ'Odd iOS Client is built in Objective C using XCode.  It has been based on storyboard, viewcontrollers etc. Use the Automatic Reference Count (ARC) for memory management.
The major component used are:
- Facebook ios SDK : For integration with facebook
- Twitter  ios SDK : For posting tweets.
- XMPP             : Chat and buddies
- BugSense         : getting crash reports
- Flurry               : For app analytics
- AdWhirl          :  For advertising in game

Next releases:
- Apple PushNotification : for notification to mobile devices


Experience: 
Objective C is quiet similar to C++ in programming style. The toughest part of coding in Objective C was thread management. The code extensively uses the background thread for heavy perocessing leaving the main thread to respond to the users.
- And with use of Core data  and background thread there is lot of  synch and management of htreads upding the core data
- Also difficult part was the animation while navigating to different views.

Still improving ...

WhatZOdd - Securing purchases

Today, We got our first dose of hacked App Store purchase in WhatZOdd.

In App purchases are built in iOS device by sending the request of purchase to App Store along with purchase details. Appstore verifies the payment transaction and authorizes it. App Store sends back the purchase details among which is the reciept and transaction identifier.

Now, these is this  iAP cracker built by "urus" which is run on (jail broken) iOS device which  intercepts the AppStore request and sends back fake receipts back to the game.   The game on receiving these receipts assumes that payment transaction went through and authorizes the payment.

Game on client device can verify this receipt for its validity by checking with AppStore but again this appCraker intercepts the request and send the valid receipt message.    

This is quiet a  challenge for games running on client only model.

But, since WhatZOdd is a server model, receipts are received by the server and validated at server-side. This circumvents the crackers' interception of AppStore requests.

We also caught the culprits making these purchases and disabled their account.  The dubious purchases are easy to catch by looking at their identifier and making offline validity of receipt at AppStore.


Also created a twitter account for small tweets experiences -
 https://twitter.com/kapilsiddharth1

Making of my iOS based game WhatZ'Odd

For past few months I have been very busy setting up my company Siddbetter Ltd(http://www.siddbetter.com). We are a gaming company and would be making mobile games.

I released first version of  my game WhatZ'Odd in App Store  on 29th Nov. This is a social game and has architecture of client-server. 

Short preview of WhatZodd:

Client is iOS device off course. 

  - Game is built in Objective C , language for Mac development. 

  - Game interacts with Server using JSON.

Servers are hosted on Amazon Web Services. 

-  EC2 servers

-  RDS MySql Database instance

-  Ejabberd Server for jabbered based chatting.

In coming few days I would be blogging about my experiences and learnings in making this game. So keep watching ...

In simple terms if I had explain what can this game do-

Hider can change the image like 2 I did for fun  -

Using a simple editor which is touch based, I added a car, cloud and man walking. 

The objects to be added are chosen for vast library we provide in the game and can be cloned, swiped to vertical/horizontal flip.

The changed image is sent to the friend and friend has to tap on image object he thinks was not in original picture.  He has 5 chances to identify the 3 right objects. 

If taps on correct object the object disappears in  puff of smoke or else the is lightning for incorrect identification.

Visit http://whatzodd.com/ to learn about the game.