Final Description and Game Documentation

Purpose and Background: Sadina's Revenge, A Grammar Game was conceptualized, designed, and implemented by a team of Brown University students in Roger Blumberg's Educational Software Seminar. It was created for Ms. Diane Cresto's students at Mt. Pleasant High School in order to improve their proficiency in three aspects of grammar: tenses, capitalization, and punctuation. For more on the background and philosophy of this software, please see the About Sadina's Revenge page.

Main Plot:
Introduction - Long ago, Sadina and Chief met and fell in love. They had a baby boy named Mikkel. However, Sadina was revealed to be an alien and took Mikkel back to her home planet of Duna. When Mikkel grew up, he and returned to Planet Earth without Sadina's permission. Now, Sadina is trying to take over the world as revenge. Chief, Mikkel and the player must all work together to stop her evil plans.
Episodes - Through the five episodes, you must get initiated in to the Organization Against Sadina, Chief's secret agency that battles Sadina, prevent Sadina's kidnapping of Chief at a costume ball, find out about the origins and purposes of a mysterious yellow liquid, organize a rap concert, and try to defeat Sadina in Italy. Please see the Images page for a glimpse of the graphics and characters.

Main Characters:
Sadina - Evil Alien. Mother of Mikkel. Trying to take over the world.
Chief - Mikkel's father. Head of Organization Against Sadina. The person you go to for help with your missions.
Mikkel - Sadina and Chief's son. He is able to help you complete the missions.
Ms. Cresto - Your teacher. She introduces you to the OAS and helps you on your missions.
The Player - You. The obstacle standing between Sadina and world domination.

Structure of Software: Sadina's Revenge is set up as an overarching narrative with five individual episodes. Each episode comprises of a particular mission with a specific storyline: Episode 1 is the introduction episode that introduces the story line and initiates the player into the world of the game; Episode 2 takes place at a costume ball; Episode 3 involves investigation into a mysterious substance that takes the player to another planet; Episode 4 demands that the player try to organize a rap concert; Episode 5 takes place in Italy and is the last episode which presents a final showdown between the player and the evil alien Sadina. At the end of episode, the player is congratulated on completing his or her mission and thrust into the next adventure.

While the sequence of the episodes are pre-determined, the flow of action within each episode is responsive to the player. Each episode is divided into levels, and each level comprises of numerous scenes. With the completion of every exercise, the player goes a level further; the outcome of the exercise determines which of the two subsequent scenes the player is sent on. That is, for every exercises there is a "favorable" outcome and an "unfavorable" outcome. As a result, the structure within the episode is fluid and responsive, with all possible scenes branching out into a tree structure and with the player traversing a path in that tree depending on his or her grammatical proficiency. For more on the flow of the game, as well as a visual illustration of the episodic and overall flow, please see the Storyboard page.

Implementation of Grammatical Elements (Tools): We used three tools to represent the three different aspects of grammar being worked with by the student. The Time Machine tests tenses; the Transporter capitalization, and the Communicator punctuation. A tool pops up at the end of every scene (except for the last scenes of an episode) and requires the student to practice grammar elements before moving on. The use of the tools is explained both in the introductory episode and on the help pages for the tools. By implementing these tools, we are able to incorporate the grammar exercises in a way that furthers the overall narrative of the software in an intuitive fashion.

Scoring: The basic score is a way to keep track of the student's absolute progress. That is, the student receives one point for every answer right and no points for wrong answers/omitted answers. The scoring for the transporter, however, is different. Since the transporter deals with capitalization, where there are only possible answers for each letter, a point is subtracted for every wrong answer.

Responsiveness to Student: In addition to the basic score that's displayed, the player's progress is also monitored by the relative percentage. This element, which the program keeps track of, calculates the average percentages of questions that the student gets right. Every player starts out having to get more than 50% of questions right to get the "favorable" outcome. However, as they progress through the game, the percentage of questions they have to get correct changes according to how well they've done on the exercises of the previous episodes. The more questions they get right, the harder it becomes for them to get the "favorable" outcome; if they start off not getting very many questions right, the program responds by lowering the percentage that they need for the "favorable" outcome so that they are more likely to achieve it. This way, the program is, in a sense, tailored to each individual student's abilities.

Note to Teacher: Sadina's Revenge is geared toward engaging the student so that the repetitious exercises involving grammar are turned into something interesting and fun. The student's progress can be kept track of by looking at their absolute score (at the top- left hand corner of the software). This number shows how many correct answers they have achieved.

Technical Notes: Sadina's Revenge was made on Macromedia's Director 7; the projected result is for the Windows Platform. It needs a minimum screen resolution of 640X480 in 16 bit color.