Reflection Journal

First Cycle - 01/20/05

Project Summary: Who Owns the Octopus?
Create animated, visual game of traditional logic puzzle of the "whodunnit" variety. 5 people live in 5 houses of a particular color and order, each person has a particular pet, favorite song, and some other quality (drink, food, vacation spot, hobby, etc.). Based on a collection of limited clues, the user will determine what qualities go with what person, place, thing, or idea. Using the original octopus clues, I will replace given qualities with others.

Original Puzzle:
There are five houses, each of a different colour and inhabited by people of different nationalities, with different pets, drinks and cigarettes.

  1. The Englishman lives in the red house.
  2. The Spaniard owns a dog.
  3. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
  4. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
  5. The green house is directly to the right of the ivory house.
  6. The Old-Gold smoker owns snails.
  7. Kools are being smoked in the yellow house.
  8. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
  9. The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left.
  10. The Chesterfield smoker lives next to the fox owner.
  11. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
  12. The Lucky-Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
  13. The Japanese smokes Parliament.
  14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Who drinks water and who owns the zebra?
JFK solved the above puzzle in just 21 minutes -- can you?

Who Owns the Zebra?
The Zebra Problem

Logic Puzzles and Logic Squares Online:
http://edhelper.com/
Puzzles in Education
ThinkFun
BrainJuice
Open Directory - Games: Puzzles: Brain Teasers
River Crossing:
CRpuzzles Logic Problems Index
BouncingLemon Designs
Thundering Fleas
Logic Problems Page

Creating a Logic Puzzle in Flash:
While there is only one solution to the problem, there are three methods to come to a conclusion based on fact, inference, and deduction. 1) use pictures to arrange the qualities until the solution is found. 2) create a table of intersecting qualities and record matches and non-matches. 3) create a table based on one quality and fill in the rest based on clues. Only one method is necessary to come to a conclusion, but different people may approach it from various perspectives. Because there are 6 qualities, this is a rather hairy puzzle.

Being a designer, and having always enjoyed visualizing goofy things, I think that method 1 is most enjoyable. However, is it possible to record the user's interactions with visual representations on an intersecting grid, i.e., the user can toggle between visual reps and a logic square? This may be a means of checking for correct answers and recording the user's choices internally with AS.

Items can be hand-drawn (paper-scan-photoshop-streamline-illustrator-flash: phew! note to self: wonderful excuse to buy Logitech digital pen), scanned imagery (collage variety), or found online. At early stages, would be best to simply use a non-moving, simple shape to represent each. This is the best way to test the functionality of the draggable, rearrangable logic puzzle. (Create a 3-quality logic puzzle to test and learn AS). Remember, start small, make it work -- THEN make it bigger and better!

Look-and-feel: (pick one)

NOTES: clever pig for tuts, fuse.tv had an animated helper at some point, raolddahl.com has animated animals, think cut-outs w/ outlines like TBS "very funny" ads, tom goes to the mayor, Le Clown & l'Enfant, syl hillier's website and so on

Possible Qualities: (pick 6)

  • House order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  • House color: white, green, yellow, red, pink, blue
  • People: pirate, acrobat, dancer, astronaut, cowboy, opera singer, oil rigger, park ranger, mtn climber, sheep herder, scuba diver, ring master, fisherman
  • Animals: octopus, fish, monkey, rock, dog, hummingbird, tiger, elephant, fleas, opossum
  • Song: "This Land is Your Land", "Jingle Bell Rock", "Hound Dog", Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Jr., Ween "Dancing in the Show Tonight", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Born in the USA", "I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper", "Singing in the Rain"(folk, pop, oldies, rock, classical, country, rap, hip-hop, r&b, blues, jazz, new age)
  • Vacation Hotspot: Alaska, Key West, Europe, Niagra Falls, Grand Canyon, Redwood Forest, DisneyWorld, NYC, (roadside america?, 5 continents? seven wonders of the ancient/natural/modern world?)
  • Favorite Holiday: Christmas, Valentines, New Years, Thanksgiving, Your Birthday, St. Patricks, July 4, Halloween

Interface needs:

  • Space to drag and rearrange items (appx 60% of screen space)
  • space where items are kept
  • space where items belong together (miniature houses w/out color and 4 text areas to display qualities per house, porkfest house shape)
  • clues (always show one, method to toggle between single clue and all clues for scanning, remember DFCS quiz instructions)
  • instructions/help area, hint helper (perhaps it will randomly, correctly place an item--maybe based on clue)
  • check answer (does it check based on all relationships for accuracy or report if x are correct? does it clear incorrect answers?)
  • feedback section
  • about section for puzzle and creator/author
  • "cast" section to showcase each feature and it's functions

Making it Interesting:
Items have animated (visual or aural) qualities that appear based on the user's interaction with them. For instance, the octopus wiggles out of grasp if mouse movement is paused, the dog runs away when released, people lip-synch when a favorite song is chosen, the fish jumps out of the fishbowl when set down (and flops around until put back in), the spider climbs a web, slideshow starts of favorite vacation spots, opossum hisses at mouseover, plays dead at drag, revives x seconds after drop etc.

Mini-game Possibilities:

  • Vacation slideshow:
    1. tv viewfinder (see rock city) w/ pushbutton. viewfinder has "magnify" component like cleverpig orangutan.
    2. postcard book on binder (niagra falls)
    3. cut-out bodies w/ heads on top (helen ga, smiley's canada)
  • Tri-fold flip book: exquisite corpse, swap heads, torsos, legs, feet, etc.
  • Puzzle square: 9-16 tile image that shifts around

Introduction screen:
Animate cursive "Who owns the", hands arrange scrabble tile-like letters to spell "OCTOPUS", animate "?". Stop. Read "Who owns the Octopus" in a Babe-mice-trio voice ("Pork is a nice sweet meat"). Write clever subhead. On resume play (at user discretion), octopus tentacle reaches out and swipes all but one letter. Hand appears and thumps letter off screen. Screen shifts to show or load interface.

Questions:
Is there a place for digital video in all of this?
What is audience for this? Is nature of game fun w/out solving puzzle?

Papert - A Word for Learning
What strikes me the most in Papert's "A Word for Learning" is the excerpt about the fellow who learned how to fix things. It is this careful observation of the way things work that most of us fail to notice in our rush to get things done. Having experience in the creative field and a formerly sadistic penchant for putting myself in high-stress situations, I marvel at the beauty of sitting back, enjoying the process that unfolds around a problem, and appreciating the fact that silence and stillness can untangle any mental knot. I definitely identify with this. It is integral to be able to step back, take a breath and simply observe and understand a situation. Problems need incubation time, the human brain can work wonders, and surrounding oneself with more creative problems ultimately leads to some of the best ideas.

 

To Do List:

  1. EVERYTHING!
  2. Learn advanced ActionScripting techniques