Finally, Available on the Android Market

Click here for my first game that's published on the Android market:

Click here: Hangman on Android Market

To be honest I'm excited that it's there. Whether it get's any sales or not, is another thing.

But I do hope to get some sales, through to the promise that it will be updated regularly with new topics and words.


currently it has 18 topics and over 600 words. I hope to add a new topic every week.
Also, I'd like to add some new features like

Hangman, nearly finished!

I've nearly finished my first game. It's a version of hangman for learners of the English language. It hasn't been the most taxing of projects, but it has been a nice little project to help me learn my way around creating simple educational games for Android. And another thing it's a finished game, which has been one thing I haven't achieved before.

The game features different selectable subjects, such as animals, sports, countries, from where the words are randomly selected. Also, it has the option for the user to use Google's translate application to translate the word into their own language.

I still have to improve the look of it a little more and also add some more word lists, but tomorrow I hope to upload it to the Android Market place. I'm not sure of the price I'll give it, but I'll keep you updated on my progress.

After it's published, I hope to add regular updates, such as a new word lists every so often. (ideally weekly or fortnightly). I also hope to add a score, so the user can keep track of their progress in each subject and also difficulty levels.

Screenshots of current progress (95%):

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Android

I've downloaded a copy of basic4android because I'm interested in developing mainly educational games for mobile phones, and was looking for something that's not too far away from what I'm used to.

So, I was pleasantly surprised with the ease basic4android allowed me to do this, from testing the game on my own mobile phone to designing the screen for it.

In the first afternoon that I've played with this not overpriced toy, I've managed to create a simple hangman game, that's shown in this screenshot. I can't let anyone play it at the moment as I haven't yet got an Android developers license and am only using the trial version of basic4android, but I'm mightily impressed and am considering buying it. I do feel that it could a good bit of software for the type of educational games that I'm thinking of creating.

Fourth Day (Planning)

Today, I haven't done that much work on the game.
I've used most of the day planning, as I still haven't decided definitely what the 7 games on each planet will be about or if this first version will mostly be just about vocabulary.

The only new part to the game, was setting up a new empty level ready for the next mini-game to be started next week.

Learn English Educational Game Diary

Just a quick update.

In the first 3 hours.
I've starting creating the basic navigation system of the game.

version 0.01
-Created basic program structure.
-I've got a simple menu at the top of the screen for exiting the game, and returning to the main screen.
-I've created the navigation for entering the different themed sections (Currently they are badly drawn planets, such as number planet, colour planet, animal planet, etc..)

New Start. New Game. A Project for 2011

Announcing: Project 2011

Today, I've decided to make an educational video game for young foreign learners of the English language.

The game will have different themed sections (such as a section on colour, a section on animals, numbers, etc..) and within each section there will be various fun games for children to play and learn.

About 2 years ago I did actually start making an identical game called 'Learn & Play' (as seen in the games section on my website) but it never got completed due to my lack of programming knowledge at the time, I've put it available to download on my website, although it is a bit of gamble of which games in which planets work, and which ones don't.

As for the new game, It will use none of the code from the old game (because basically, it was a mess and full of simple mistakes. Even though I'll keep it at the moment while I'm starting-out, I'm not sure if I'll keep the space theme for the final game.

My ultimate aim is to be able to sell this game.

Here are a few small screenshots of the OLD ORIGINAL game:

Switched to PureBasic

As much as I like BlitzMax, I have found the PureBasic programming language to suit my needs more, in that for me at least it has been a lot easier to set it up so I can use it when I running Micro$oft Windows or my favoured operating system Linux Ubuntu.

Also, being based on basic, switching from BlitzMax to PureBasic has been a fairly easy process, with only a few problems learning the slightly different ways that PureBasic does things. However, I have already got the basic menu system of my English learning game running and working perfectly. So unless I come up against any problems or limitations I think I will stick with it.

In other news I've also had some interest in my educational game, but it's only early days.

Now, If only I knew an artist!

One year on: Developing a Commercial Educational Computer Game.

It was just over a year ago that I came up with my initial designs to create a computer game to help non-English speakers learn English, and what are my thoughts about the last year? Well to be honest, mostly negative.

What have I got to show for a year of work, well not a lot really. A semi functional program with only about five or six working games out of the twenty (or even more) that I had hoped to do. To me it will be a year of wasted opportunity, with extremely sporadic bursts of work and enthusiasm for the project.

But, I guess everything hasn't been bad. I do actually have a good framework of the game, where pieces and games can easily be inserted into it. and the framework could be used for future projects too. One of the card games from the project is complete and it could easily be taken out and made into it's own separate game, which I am seriously considering.

Secondly, I now can actually program well in a language (blitz, pure basic and some others) and even enjoy it, something which I was nowhere even close to last year.

I also have done extensive research of other so called bedroom programmers who have sold their games, whether they have been successful or failed. And from this I also have an idea of how I will market and sell my game, whether online or in person.

So overall, I guess even though in terms of progress on the programming side, I have achieved no where near what I wanted to, there are some really good positives to come out.