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Times Table Challenage

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This is a game to test your mental maths, and help you improve your basic times tables.

This is an old game I created, but I like it so I uploaded it.

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Nothing long winded here. I just would have liked some music as I failed. :)

Acroy responds:

I actually never thought about music or sound effects before, I will have to look into it, thanks!

great game but would I recommend some music and design but besides that it's amazing and educational

Acroy responds:

This game was actually designed for use in a school, so I am glad you seen the educational use!

Let me start out with the good things:

The math is there. As far as I know, all of the answers to the multiplication tables are correct (this would be a horrible game if they weren't). I also appreciate that the answer to the previous question is below. You have a simple, easy to understand interface, and I like being able to put in my own name and time.

Problems I had:

I am having a hard time distinguishing between the difficulties. I will admit that I saw more multiplications by 10 and 5 in the easy level, but between hard and medium I really didn't see much difference. Perhaps having numbers higher than 12 in the hard level would help to differentiate the two. I have no idea what the "extension" button is for. I ended up clicking it, expecting that it would let my score carry over between games, but it appears for me that this is the case regardless of the difficulty chosen (I restarted the game and did not click the button to make sure). The biggest problem that I had with the game was the lack of number pad controls (although I do give you props for allowing people to type in with the numbers along the top). I spent a good couple of seconds mashing my number pad to see if numbers would come up (checked in Word to make sure that they would come up), going back and still getting frustrated that nothing popped up. Along those lines, having to double click on the enter button after using the numbers along the top of the keyboard was annoying as well. I was surprised that pressing the enter key on the keyboard didn't move to the next question since you were able to type in number using the keyboard (costing me a couple more seconds). Finally, I had no idea what the score was for, given that it didn't go down with an incorrect answer from what I could tell, and there were no leader-boards or past scores to look at.

I decided to separate this from the chunk given that I found this one especially important: if you could add in some type of delay before the game puts down multiple numbers, it would improve keyboard control. I will say that if I held any key for longer than an instant, it would put down multiple numbers, and without a backspace key, this became pretty annoying.

If you were to improve upon this game, then I would suggest that you add in higher difficulty times tables for the hard difficulty, some explanation of the extension button, some music to pass the time, and number pad controls. Having a review button for things that you missed would be helpful as well.

I apologize if I came off a bit harsh anywhere.

2/5

Acroy responds:

The difficulty determine which times tables appear, for example in easy only 2's 5's and 10's appear (if I remember correctly). If you look at the number on the left or the sum you should be able to notice this.
I did notice about the keyboard controls, that the numbers repeat too soon and the backspace and enter key do not functon. However, I created this game awhile ago and feel as though it is a good point of reference for my skill level. So I can look back in the future and see my improvements. All feedback is still greatly appreciated and then applied to new games, thank you.

This "game" has several flaws. i'll list a few.

* There's a severe lack of diversity.
The player will get bored after two minutes. Add some extra problems, like addition, subtraction, division, modulo, etc. But "Times Table Challenge" by itself is hardly a game. And adding difficulty levels that don't seem to do anything is not diversity.

* No visual queue of whether the answer was correctly guessed.
How about, as a tacky example, turning the background green for correct answers, and when an answer is incorrectly, make it red.

* Bad graphic design
For example, the "Try Again?" button is not even close to centered. You have a powerful IDE for developing games at your fingertips. How about using it to properly design your buttons?

* No checks on user input.
Ex. 1. I can leave the username field blank, and it names me "<INPUT NAME>". How about making a default value, like "Johnny"? How about putting an array of names in your code and having it select randomly from the list in the event that (username == "")?

Ex. 2. I shouldn't be able to spam-click the answer button. Why is there no check for (answer == "")?

* Score builds up throughout game without ever being reset.
The fact that the game wants me to "try again" is a pretty good hint that it wants me to start over. The fact that the score just keeps on accumulating points throughout all plays is just plain absurd. Obviously, this is not right. If you want to keep track of "all time scores", either make an array of all scores and make it available through some "stats" menu, or just keep an individual "score" and "high score"

* Wrong answers don't cause point penalty
How can I have 550 points when I have 55 correct answers and over 300 wrong answers from spam-clicking? Shouldn't the wrong answers count against my score?

* Can't play via keyboard.
It's not hard to implement. Really, it's not. There's an entire class called Key that is devoted to making it as simple as possible.

* Timer ticks at an interval of about 2 ticks per second.
Obviously, this is way too fast. The general assumption here is an interval of one second. To make it tick twice a second is non-sensical. If you're using getTimer(), don't. Use setInterval() or setTimeout() instead.

Overall, this game feels like something that you made in less than an hour. Am I wrong? Did you take longer?

This game deserves a 1.5/5 in its current state.

Acroy responds:

There is the answer to the previous question displayed, but your idea about the screen changing colour to green or red receptively seems like a very appealing improvement. I never thought about fault testing the user's name, that is a very nice extra for games. I have realized the score accumulates throughout, I shall try to fix this in future games. I believe that is wrong answers would subtract from the score then people would end up with negative scores a lot, bearing in mind this game was designed for primary school children. I never realised the timer ticks to fast, thanks you for your feedback and ideas!

Not bad, but I've got some remarks that could make it even better:
1. I barely noticed a difference between the levels of difficulty, maybe only a bit in the case of the "extension" level;
2. Many times you get the same question during one game, once I even got the same question twice in a row;
3. Maybe it would be good to add even harder multiplications like with two two-digit numbers or even three-digit numbers (yes, it is possible to do this just in mind without writing it :-) )
4. If one or more multiplyings are wrong there should be a summary presenting the errors, because while trying to get the best score you don't have the time to check the answer below;
5. According to the scores: maybe a highscore list? :-)
6. I noticed that instead of clicking on the numbers by mouse I can simply write the numbers, but two things need improvements:
a) while writing, it should be like this: you want to write 33 for example, so you should press 3 twice instead of holding the 3 button. Why? Because the game is at the moment too sensitive to writing and for example when I wanted to write 12 it gave me 112 or even 111;
b) the usage of backspace and enter should be enabled, it would make the game much easier to deal with.
Keep it up and it can be really a good thing! :-)

Acroy responds:

Thank you for the feedback. The difficulty within the leveling is the multiples which come up, for example on the easy setting yo should only see 2's 5's and 10's (if I remember correctly), if you look at the first number in the sums you should notice this. The numbers are randomly generated so the chance of getting repeats during the game are slim, but possible. Presenting errors at the end of the game would be a fantastic addition, thanks for the idea. I have noticed the problem with keyboard controls and I shall try to work on this for my next game, thanks!

Credits & Info

Views
2,025
Votes
6
Score
3.00 / 5.00

Uploaded
Jun 7, 2014
7:00 PM EDT