See Dr. Joe Chase (jchase@radford.edu) for further info.

Project Description:

The web-based game would be a simple target acquisition game where the user clicks on a target to “blow it up”.  Animating the explosions, and making them variable based on time (the faster, the better) would help motivate the player.  We would also keep a dashboard of scores where the lower the score, the better.  Score would be based on time with misses (clicks outside of a target) counting against the score.  We would provide a dashboard with the best scores, and the best scores separated by control device, and maybe best scores by age range.  Keep in mind, this would be like golf, the lower the score the better.

We would have to collect information either from the user directly or from their computer such as what kind of cursor-control device they are using, age, experience, etc. but we would not collect any identifiable information.  We would create a unique player number and then use a cookie, or something like that to keep track of whether a person has played before so we make sure we use the same number each time.  We would encourage players to try the game with multiple cursor-control devices (e.g. mouse, track pad, joystick, game controller, track ball, tablet, touch screen)

The original game would be a series of stationary targets of different sizes and in a different directions from the last target.  The game would start with the user clicking a start button.  Each target would then be presented in turn with the presentation order of the targets randomized.  We would use the 4 axial directions (N, S, E, W) and the 4 off-axial directions (NE, SE, SW, NW), along with four target sizes (VS, S, M, L).  For each player, we would create a line of data per target that would include the description of the target, the device, age, experience, the time, number of misses, and of course the unique player id.  We would also store a separate line of data for each game with the id, device, age, experience, score.

We would then have the option of expanding the game to include moving targets, perhaps as a second level.