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ProjectStella is the code name for a HTML5 game project being produced as part of the PSU Open Source Software course. The goal for the project is to produce enough of a playable game to evaluate the effectiveness of HTML5 for game development as well as creating an environment that makes learning programming and/or computational thinking fun for elementary aged children (ages 6-10).
The game itself will consist of a series of levels, each presenting a specific goal to accomplish. The only way to interact with the world will be through an autonomous agent the player must "program" via a series of visual tiles. The tiles available (the player will incrementally earn these over the course of the levels) will cause the agent to move, turn, manipulate elements, and destroy elements. In later levels there will be control structures (loops, ifs, while) as well as sensing functionality. Hopefully, by introducing these concepts slowly and with interesting levels elementary aged children will have fun and learn computer science/computational thinking skills at the same time.
The Lego Mindstorms programming environment and the Scratch programming system are both inspirations for this project. Both systems work well as a stand-alone programming environment but they do not present clear objective-based goals. I want to explore how children respond to targeting, incremental, and specific goals in learning programming concepts.
The game will be written in HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. Modern, standards-compliant browsers will be targeted. The game should run effectively both on a desktop system as well as an iPad/Android tablet.
All source will be published via github and is available under a MIT license.Full details here: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php All images will be in the public domain or licensed under fair use/creative commons.