Progress

It's been a couple of months without progress, because I have been too busy with real commitments. However, I have recently started working on SplotchiTown again.

I moved the development off the kids home computer to my work laptop, which gives me easier access to working on it, as well as a better working environment.

I've implemented a rudimentary model for a "creature". The creature has energy (0-100), health (0-100), food level (i.e. how full is the creature's stomach, 0-100). A timer has been added to "ping" the creature each second, which allows for time-based adjustments to the above variables. Food translates to energy. Energy is required to maintain good health. Energy slowly decreases on idle.

I got this creature working in the environment. It is very basic, and you can only see the numbers for the variable. All you can do is feed it, which keeps it alive. If you don't, it dies.

I had about 15 minutes with the kids after dinner, so I decided to show them what I'd done. To my amazement, they remembered what we were doing from January. After showing them how the variables change in the program running, I drew on the whiteboard to show them the concept of class and object, which I had told them 3 months ago. Again to my amazement, they remembered what a class was, what a property was and what a method was. So that was successful.

The next challenge will be to extend the interface to include an "emotion" variable, how the creature feels in basic terms. The other variables will have a bearing on this.

I need to introduce food in a more complex form, too. At the moment, food is just a number, so it's like all the creature eats is sludge and that keeps it alive. I will introduce a food class, so there can be different foods. Each food will contribute something towards energy, something towards health (like vitamins), and something towards emotion (e.g. ice cream has a higher "happiness" content that a bowl of rice, for example, but not as much energy content.

There are so many possible directions that I have to keep my mind clear and focussed, and stick to implementing the basic dynamics well first. Getting a good handle on the variables and their dynamics is important to establishing realism.

Another deviation from the tamagotchi concept is to use the visual area spatially, so it becomes like a little virtual world ala the sims (but simpler and with cruder graphics!)