Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Lemonade Stand - First Impressions

I think I have officially decided that I want to work on Lemonade Stand as my project for this quarter. I remember playing the game when I was younger and it was pretty simple but fun and I definitely think there are things I could add to the game.

So this is the main screen for Lemonade Stand. I have never used Python before so I have no idea how to do graphics but I would like to try to improve the interface. The background seems like a static image so that might be an easy change.

The game works by the user buying supplies (Sugar, Lemonade, and Cups) and then the Day Log says how many cups of lemonade are sold. The user then has to enter the amount of money made in terms of dollars, quarters, dimes, etc. When I first played the game I tried just entering the amount made by selling lemonade and kept getting a message saying "You dropped your money while trying to count it." This was very frustrating because I didn't know why I kept dropping the money and I couldn't seem to make any money. I would find that I would run out of money and there was nothing that I could do but start over.

Eventually I figured out that I needed to find the profit (sales - supplies) and if I got it right I would actually get to keep the money I made. Eventually I started actually making money in the game. I got to several hundred dollars in the game and would buy and sell a lot of supplies when I made a math error and lost everything. This was very frustrating because I didn't even have enough money to try again.

Overall, the game seems interesting but it isn't necessarily as user friendly as it could be. I am hoping through my involvement I can add more features but also make the game easier to use.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, Sarah - thanks for blogging! It's great to see how your thoughts about your project are evolving.

    One thing you might want to do is get your blog aggregated on http://planet.sugarlabs.org/ - it's where the Sugar developers, including other Activity developers, hang out, and they may be able to help make the modificiations you're suggesting, or point you towards how to make them on your own. Instructions for getting on the Planet are at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sysadmin/Planet_syndication_request, and you can also ask Dave to help you through them (actually, it would be great if the entire class could blog here).

    Also, this post seems to point out the need for user documentation - maybe a players' guide of some sort. :)

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  2. Hi Mel,

    Thanks for the input. I actually did request to have my blog on the Sugar Labs site (the entire class was supposed to post their blogs as an assignment) but never received a response to my request.

    Documentation is also something I could work on. I have done some previous work with writing instructions and documenting eye-trackers.

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