My Maths Game

Morten Holland
Games Design L3 Extended Diploma
Teacher: Wayne Gallear

 My Maths Game:

Target Audience: 16+ Students
Theme: Maths
Game Type: Maze/Top-Down

I called my maths game 'The Greatest Maths Game There Has Ever Been or Ever Will Be'. I really didn't know what to call it so i just named it this so i could start working without wasting time.

The brief i was given said to "Create a maze game for the students to play that also helps develop their mathematics skills. Each level should show a different maths problem and the level of the maths problem should be GCSE grade C mathematics. You will be doing 5 levels all getting progressively harder."

Sprites

First, I made a few of my sprites. The player looking in each direction, the wall, a doorway, an enemy, a lever, and spikes.

This is the player's sprite. The direction you push on the keyboard is the direction the sprite will face.

This is the enemy's sprite. I later on made multiple versions so i could make them go up and down, and travel at different speeds.

This is the wall sprite which keeps the player in the game.

This is the doorway sprite, which when touched lets the player travel to the next level. I also made a door way which has been rotated 180 degrees.

This is the sprite for my lever. When touched by the player, it will either tell you that you got the wrong answer to a question, or it will unlock a new part of the level, which will conclude with a doorway to the next level.

I added a spike sprite so there was another way to die in the game to make it more entertaining.

Backgrounds

I then decided to make some backgrounds for my level, so it wouldn't look plain or empty. I used a different background for each level.

Objects

I started to create objects out of my sprites so i could put them into the game. I gave them the relevant tasks operate how i wanted. I didn't use any code for my objects, surprisingly. I made the following objects: the player, enemy, spike(each direction), wall, vanishing wall,and wall exit. Then, i started creating the questions to put in the game to make the game about maths. I made 7 questions, and 25 answers to pick from. This got very tedious. The extra objects you may see I talk about later in the 'Last Level' section.

Rooms

I started to create my rooms one by one, adding a higher difficulty to each map progressively. Here's what the finished products looked like. The blue dots will be the questions and the answers.

Last Level

Just before making the last level, I had the idea to make the last room look like space invaders. Kind of. so I made a spaceship sprite, an explosion sprite, a bullet and a cannon. When the question is answered correctly, the spaceships turn into the explosion sprite. I couldn't figure out how to make the bullet shoot out the cannon and create the explosion. When they are destroyed, 2 walls will vanish, revealing the exit which when touched by the player will display a message saying "You completed the game!".

I used a pre-made explosion because I didn't like any of the ones I was making.

Sounds

I have only used 2 sounds. 1 being my background music, and the other an explosion sound for when the last correct switch is touched by the player. Both sounds were from royalty-free websites and i had the rights to use them.

Text

I used the same text throughout the whole game, for all my questions and answers. The font was'OCR A Std' at a size of 12 and a black color. 

Bugs

There aren't too many bugs in my game, surprisingly. The first one is that the explosion sprite keeps playing and i never found a way to stop it. The other bug is that the explosion sound keeps playing until the player stops touching the switch. The last one is that the background music keeps playing after each level which is normal, but after each level, it will play another song as well which means there will be 2 songs playing, then 3, etc.