[Sugar-devel] Alpha release - Deducto and Color Deducto activity

[Dan Krejsa]

Hi,

Cool game! It really ought to be called 'Inducto', though.

A few comments:

 -  I found the help and instructions not terribly clear.  I eventually figured
    out what to do, but I'm not sure many children would have the patience.
    Here's an initial attempt at an improved 'How to Play':

--------------
How to play:

   Start in the 'Sample' mode (Help -> Sample).

   Deducto displays a board that is a 5 by 5 grid of black and white squares.
   Some of the boards are 'True' and some of the boards are 'False'.
   You can ask Deducto to display a 'True' board by clicking on the 'True board'
   button, or to display a 'False' board by clicking on the 'False
board' button.

   All the 'True' boards have some property or pattern that all the
'False' boards lack.
   Try to figure out what the difference is between the 'True' and the
'False' boards.
   You can ask for as many samples as you like by clicking 'True
board' or 'False board'
   buttons as often as you like.  When you think you know the
difference and can tell
   whether a board is 'True' or 'False' on your own, resume the
testing part of the game
   (Resume -> Resume Game).

   In the testing mode, Deducto displays boards and asks you to identify
   whether the boards are 'True' or not.  If you think the board is
'True', press the 'Yes'
   button.  If you think the board is 'False', press the 'No' button.
Deducto will
   tell you whether your guess was correct or not.. If you get 5 correct answers
   in a row, Deducto will move to a higher level, with a different, usually more
   difficult rule telling whether a board is 'True' or 'False'.  Go
back to the Sample
   mode and try to figure out the new rule!

   If you guess wrong, you can also go back to the Sample mode to look
   at some more examples in the current level.

   ...

--------------
 - Working in jhbuild on Fedora 11, the 'Resume' tab and 'Sample' tabs
   don't seem to really be tabs; they are menu items. 'Sample' occurs under
   the 'Help' menu.  I would suggest instead of a separate sample tab,
   one added buttons for  'Give me a True sample' and 'Give me a False sample'
   to the main view.

- Moving the mouse over the array of squares, the white squares slightly
  dim and the black squares turn white.  This is misleading since it makes
  the squares seem as if they would respond to the mouse, but they don't.

- It wasn't at all clear to me how the 'Make New Game' feature worked,
  although I didn't spend a long time on it.

- Dan

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Manusheel Gupta <manu at laptop.org> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am delighted to announce the alpha release of the Deducto and Color
> Deducto activities.
>