Monday, November 30, 2009

Silverlight Game: Froggy Math

by andy@andybeaulieu.com via Andy's Blog on 11/30/2009 2:46:00 AM

"Froggy Math" is a little educational Silverlight game that I've been picking at when I had a free hour here and there for the past several weeks. The goal was to create something for my kids to practice their math facts (which I learned are now called "combinations"), and at the same time pique their interest in programming. I think the result was pretty good --- at least the kids seem interested in playing for awhile!

In Froggy Math, the player feeds worms to a hungry frog - but the correct worm must be picked out of the pack. The player can choose to practice Multiplication, Division, Addition or Subtraction and a "Report Card" keeps track of their grade in each subject.

The game was pretty quick to knock off and here are some notes on the development:

• Uses the Physics Helper Library (Behaviors) for Physics.
  
• The Worms are manipulated using a "pick spring"
  
• There is a lot of use of Perspective 3D transforms - see if you can find them all :)
  
• Uses the Fluid Container Behavior for the water effect
  
• Uses GPU Acceleration, which greatly reduced CPU usage with all of the physics and fluid container action.
  
• Isolated Storage is used to store the player's "report card" statistics.

I would consider this a "beta" release so if anyone has any suggestions or bugs, please let me know!