Super Practica
I’m working on a game to optimize learning mathematics, called Super Practica. When it’s done, anyone will be able to play it to learn mathematics from arithmetic to a very advanced level.
I spent a long time researching and prototyping to develop and become confident in my approach. No other game (that I know of) does anything like what I’m planning. I had to write a short book just to introduce the theory and design.
But I only have this rough demo right now. It proves the concept (to me at least) and is technically playable, though I don’t recommend it.
It’s Open Source
Would anyone be interested in working together with me on this? If so, then I would spend some time posting design specifications and contribution documents to make it easier to contribute.
Either way, I’ll be working on making a really representative demo.
Links
Website (including a more complete introduction)
The “Blueprint”
Play Demo Online
Project Repositories
Chat
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Educational games are a not very exploited niche. If its for childs, you need to do some eye-candy and simple interface. If its for adult learning too, It’s not that important.
Making good graphics and optimizing usability will be done later. My focus right now is on making the core mechanics.
v0.7 Released
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Progress is coming along. The new version has a better interface, but there are fewer levels now.
I did a lot of stuff on the backend which should be mostly done for the representative demo I have planned. So from here on I hope to release more v0.7.x versions at a faster rate that add more and more levels to this basic system.
Maybe the level selection is the most interesting thing here. The idea is to eventually have 0 camera cuts when moving between topics. But zooming into a viewport texture or viewport container with a camera makes it blurry, so it’s an interesting technical problem. I have an issue about it that goes into more detail. Maybe just zooming out by 10,000x and having very large nodes will end up being the best solution. (lol) Anyone have any better ideas or experience with doing something like this?
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I totally understand you https://superpractica.org/resources/blueprint/#e.10
This is definitely a huge work. I often have thought of the essence of mathematics, such as explaining the distributive law of multiplication as boxes or thinking about derivatives as velocity, just as the Super Practica is doing.
v0.7.1 Released
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The verification system is back and better than ever.
It might not look like much, but it’s one of the major innovations I came up with to make Super Practica (eventually) optimize learning mathematics. You have no idea how many redesigns it went through to reach this point. Though it’s still far from complete.
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As a person who loves this idea, I wondered why you chose Codeberg instead of Github. To be sure, most of us use Github, there will be more contributions to this project if it’s hosted on Github.
- Github has a bunch of minor things I dislike about it. This ranges from the more noisy UI to the way the docs are written.
- Codeberg respects its users more. It’s enough to say that I never got shadowbanned by Codeberg.
- Relatedly, Codeberg has the easiest flow (out of Github/Gitlab/Codeberg) going from starting a new account to making a pull request. It’s somewhat likely that considering the nature of this project (such as using GDScript), there could at some point be many good contributions coming from people who haven’t previously used any of these websites. Codeberg makes the most of this possibility.
- The added features that Github has over Codeberg are mostly ones I don’t need or could easily live without. Though Github had some benefits in features, it wasn’t enough to make them worth it.
- Codeberg is more appropriate for a FOSS (and copyleft) project like this. See for example: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come! - Conservancy Blog - Software Freedom Conservancy. The link also has some more relevant reasons, but the biggest one for me is that the SFC is a potential source of funding. Godot Engine can find allies and funding from non-FOSS game developers, but for Super Practica, I think I could find more funding by sticking more strictly to FOSS lines.
- If Super Practica is successful, then it will come into more-or-less direct competition with Microsoft, which owns Github. I see initiatives and projects from them such as for example: Get Minecraft for Your Classroom | Minecraft Education. Perhaps it’s a little paranoid, but it’s also good business to not give your competitors the ability to hurt you.
- I think it’s at least a little likely that Github would get worse and lose users over time while Codeberg gets better and gains users over time. Considering the above makes Codeberg the better service for me, other users could choose it like me. Starting with Codeberg means I won’t have to switch later.
But all that said, I might have made a mistake not mirroring this project to Github already. I guess I should do that and see how many people engage with it through there.
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hi, i just wanted to say this is super interesting stuff. i appreciate it when people try to do something new and i can really see your drive to do so. as someone who wants to learn mathematics (and is actively doing so) but is a rather slow learner and sometimes has issues grasping concepts, this is a project that really grabbed my attention. i am currently reading through your website. i will definitely be following this from now on!
Featuring double the levels to make a small example of a complete level progression!
This sounds cool, I’ve always wanted to make a learning game. One problem I would have with this game is that dragging all the items looks annoying. I think an option to have things “select” by clicking them, and with another click placing it down would be helpful.
With the advent of technology in learning spaces, I wonder if this kind of game will be common on devices for students, especially if they’re fun. I would definitely have preferred this kind of game as a child over multiple worksheets of just numbers.
One problem I would have with this game is that dragging all the items looks annoying. I think an option to have things “select” by clicking them, and with another click placing it down would be helpful.
This is an interesting design problem. In a way, it’s supposed to be annoying. The extra effort of dragging ones over and over to solve addition problems illustrates the value of counting by five, ten, thirty, etc. instead. The early level 1-2 where you put six ones down effectively says “See, this is annoying. For larger numbers you should count by tens instead.” (In that particular case the suggestion would be to count like 2 + 2 + 2 or 5 + 1. I would like to redesign this progression to have more levels like that.)
With all the varieties of number blocks introduced, you never have to drag more than 4 blocks to make any 2-digit number. For example, you can make 99 by 50 + 40 + 5 + 4.
However, maybe there’s a solution to illustrate this that’s less annoying. I’m considering a design as you suggest, but with a 0.5 second delay showing an animation that moves the object to its destination. Then adding a time limit later will make clear the benefit of counting by larger numbers to minimize this delay.
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