Abstract
Games have an engaging nature, and educational games can help make the learning process more interesting. At present, there is no Norwegian educational game that simulates the system development process. This master’s thesis explores the technical aspects of creating such a game through the development of a prototype game generator.
The main goals of the software, were for it to be user friendly, extendable and reusable. Another important aspect, was for the games produced by the game generator to be appealing to play. Such a product can help transfer the fun aspect of games to education.
In this system, a game consists of assignments. Each assignment is a task the player must solve. The player’s actions should, in part, determine how the game unfolds. Thus, the concept of handlers was introduced. They determine what is the next assignment based on the player’s answer to the current assignment.
The handlers are separate from the rest of the code, thus they are easily extended, added to, or changed. To demonstrate the functionality of the concept, several handler types were developed. The most noteworthy of these is the custom handler, which
allows the game author to make his own handler. Consequently, he can extend the system without changing the code.
The system is datadriven. The logic resides in the data, rather than in the system. Hence, by changing the data, you change the game. The entire system is built upon the idea of separating logic from content.
A qualitative test was conducted to see if the software was usable and user friendly. The results were promising, and revealed that it is relatively easy to create a system development game using the game generator. The resulting game is also very easy to use.