My Achievements

We've been working on a new application for Adventure Author called My Achievements. You won't be able to download this one independently of the rest - it's tied to how the user works with the toolset.

'Inspired' (cough) by Microsoft's Xbox Achievements system, it tracks different aspects of user performance (for example, how many words of dialogue they've written), and gives them an award when they have reached a certain level.

The user interface will have more work done on it in future, but this gives you an idea - it's the user's award case containing each of the awards they've been given so far. This user has won Bronze awards for Imagineer, Wordsmith and Manager, awarded for spending sufficient time with the Fridge Magnets, Conversation Writer and My Tasks applications respectively.

They've also won a special custom award, Most Improved, awarded by the teacher. Teachers can choose to create a custom award to give a user at any time, giving it a name, picture (a nice neon star here) and description. This can be used to reward users for their behaviour, effort or anything else, and to help children who are not receiving as many awards to feel like their work is still being recognised.

This screenshot is only half the interface - eventually there will be a Profile bar down the right-hand side, where the user can record information about themselves, their likes and dislikes, their favourite games, and so on. An image of a Neverwinter Nights 2 monster will represent that user, and will change based on how many awards they have won - a starting designer might only have a rat, while a designer who's won every single award could have a dragon. This is intended to give the user more 'ownership' over their role as a designer, and to engender pride at having awards associated with their work.

As always, any feedback is welcome. Currently the user has to write 250 words of text before they are given the Wordsmith (Bronze) award, with higher word counts for subsequent levels. Teachers: is this too high, or too low, for 10 year old users? What about 14 year old users?

Comments

[Cathrin]

Keiron, this is looking great, and it's good to know awards can also be cutomised to reflect specific achievements. With my interest in the language and storytelling side of things I would always want to give particular recognition for skilful crafting here!

As for word count, our data from the conversation analysis should give us an idea of likely length - perhaps that would be a useful starting point to think about what to expect and we could work out average counts for each age band from there. Writing in the game is quite different from writing in class, partly due to typing skills, but also due to the need to test and check which will make for a slower output than a teacher might normally expect for any one child on paper.

Some children in the Campie study wrote impressive story text into significant objects such as books and signposts to help the player - I can't remember if we have a way of counting and analysing these so they can be included?

I love the idea of the creature to represent the designer - I wonder if at each level there could be a selection from which the player chooses, a bit like selecting your favourite piece in good old fashioned Monopoly! As you improve, you access a new range of creatures, on your journey to dragon designer status.

Can't wait to see this in the flesh, as it were - a great addition to the AA toolset!

[Kim Pericles]

This is a wonderful addition to your other tools. Students (and teachers) love to know how they are going and the feedback will be really useful to them.
I love the idea of the monster too, and Cathrins idea of a couple of choices means that the kids can really customise their interface and have even more control over what their interface looks like.
My students sense of competition, ownership and feedback will be well satisfied with this toolset I think.
Great stuff :)

Kim Pericles

[Keiron Nicholson]

Thanks very much for your feedback Cathrin and Kim. I love the idea that you could choose which creature you get at each level, as that allows them to personalise it a bit more while still giving the idea of ascending ranks.

Text which is written into objects like books and signposts will be automatically included in the word count - any words typed into either a conversation, or the 'Name', 'Localized Description' and 'Localized Description (Identified)' fields of a game object are considered to be story text. This also lets them get (a little bit of) credit for bothering to name their characters and plot items properly.