electric puzzle; too complicated?

[spook1]

This puzzle has been create to be used in school, as aprt of an adventure.
can anyone please reflect on the difficulty and maybe suggest improvements on the conceptual level?
I am aware of the crapy shuttle graphics.

The goal of this puzzle is that the players learns that resitors in parallel conduct a higher current that in a serial configuration.

The compiled version is zipped at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~koops/ags/spacespy_devel17.zip

cheers, martijn

[jetlag]

It's okay. But sometimes the sliders arn't working.

The second part isn't working?

[spook1]

The second part should also work fine.
Pick a resistor and place it on the print, build a cicuit to control the current.
Slides are broken now...

[stuh505]

Ok, I start out with a spaceship that is EXTREMELY difficult to control with the left/right thrusters...it seems like the only thing I can do is crash it into one of the walls or one of the big black things.  I think I have somehow messed up, and a bunch of german appears half off the screen (I don't speak German).  Instead of asking me if I want to reload the game, I'm on a new screen with some wierd gadgets...I have no idea what I am supposed to do here.  I guess something broke, and I have to fix it?  But I don't know what's broken.  The only tools I have is a wire and a bunch of unlabelled resistors.  It takes me a while to figure out how to put the resistors/wires on the board in the right place or take them off, but since I have no idea what I'm supposed to do that's where it ends.  Eventually I get a fatal excepion that crashes the game after I click on something.

Ok well...that is from the players perspective.  You have obviously spent a lot of time programming this, but it's all to waste since there are no instructions.  

I am an electrical engineering student myself, so I was hoping to get some enjoyment out of the circuit puzzle...but I don't see what can be done with nothing but resistors and wire...especially when the resistors are unmarked.  And why are there so many?  Sorry, just way too confusing.  

[kaaZ]

Controling the spaceship was not that bad...Though I think as you turn off an engine the ship shouldn't loose all it's velocity instantly....just bring it down slowly...
As for the second part...just as stuh I had no clue on what to do...well you said the purpose is to set up a parallel and a serial configuration...but most things I tried didn't seem to work...the wires and resistors that did fit in place on the board seemed totaly random to me...(but that could just be me )...after randomly clicking around for like 5 minutes I got agitated and pressed the quit button...
so yeah like stuh said...give some clues on what to do...(That german that's actualy dutch didn't help me out either)....

[stuh505]

The goal of this puzzle is that the players learns that resitors in parallel conduct a higher current that in a serial configuration.

There is no such thing as a serial connection, you mean series.

This is parallel (ignore ....):

..........---R1---
____/.............\___
........\__R2__/

R total = R1*R2/(R1+R2)

This is series:

----R1---R2----

R total = R1+R2

What age group is this intended for?

[TheYak]

There is no such thing as a serial connection, you mean series.

My just-ordered SATA drive and long-retired serial mouse will be sorry to hear that.  There is such thing as a serial connection. It just means a connection arranged in series.  Yes. I'm just being an ass. It's well deserved since you're picking on technicalities that are probably due to a Dutch-to-English translation.  

You make excellent points though. Particularly without instructions, I've no idea what I'm supposed to "learn" in order to solve the puzzle - it more or less becomes a trial-and-error thing.  I had the same experience. I futzed with it for awhile until it gives me an error and closes.

[spook1]

Thanks for all the feedback !

I have improved the instructions in some way.
In the first shuttle screen you already see the current meters, connected to the throttles (is that correct english for the red knobs?)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~koops/ags/spacespy_devel18.zip

After the crash (in the final game it will be triggered by some other event) you open the dashboard and can create the current by applying the resistors and wires, to bypass the throttle.
I understand that this was not clear for you.
I would greatly appreciate suggestions to make this more intuitive. Maybe make the places for the components to be placed more clear?

BTW, another sample of a similar puzzle can be accessed by Ctrl-X to room 3.
is that puzzle more intuitive?

Thank you in advance for the feedback,

martijn

[Peter Thomas]

I think that's great!

sort of self-explanatory, really, and quite basic (as long as you have a decent understanding of resistors and serial configuration )

I think the kids (or whoever the target audience is) will find it a breeze, whilst still being educational.

[stuh505]

Yak,

Your "serial" port/mouse has nothing to do with a series connection.  The serial port is called that because of the way that information bits are sequentially sent across a wire, whereas we are talking about the way that electrical components are arranged on a circuit board.

However, I admit that you're right..."serial connection" does grammatically work, I just hadn't heard it stated that way before.  But I do think there is some merit in having an educational program use common terminology.

But onto the 2nd review:

1) Some of it is in English, some of it is not in English....shouldn't it be one way or the other?  I don't know what "stroom" means.

2)The ship is difficult to control because usually you would have some kind of steering device that would let you choose the direction and it would automatically adjust the throttle to both engines.  Also, you have wrote "left engine" and "right engine" and when you think "i want to go right" you automatically click on the right engine and then realize you have to click on the opposite, which is a little confusing too.  Not hard to understand, but it makes it difficult to control the ship well.  I guess for this screen it doesn't matter, but if you plan on having the user navigate this ship a lot...I would change that.

3) On the first puzzle:

I believe that the first puzzle is confusing because I do not really understand how the ship operates.  Most people know that space shuttles move about with jet thrusters.  I've never really thought about it, but my guess is that to ignite these thrusters, they use a spark plug similar to that in an automobile.  So they probably need a coil/inductor to generate the high voltage to make this igniting spark.  Once the thrusters are ignited, you have two throttle valves which control the gas flow to the thrusters.  This makes sense.  But then you have "motor stroom" written below.  "stroom" is not an English word so I don't know what it means, but you have described these as current meters.  What are we measuring the current of?  What do you need motors for?  We can see that the ship is NOT being controlled by motors...so this is confusing.

Then the ship crashes, and I guess it is not damaged...the only damage is that there are 2 wires broken to each motor.  I still don't know what the motors are for.  I am also confused because there are no switches or variable resistors or anything that could be used to reduce or turn off the signal to the motors, which doesn't make sense because that would mean that the motors would be on all the time even when the ship isn't moving.

You can see from the broken wire that in the existing connection, there was a direct connection from the battery to the motor.  In your first version, I made a connection with wires that would bypass this break and supply the same current from the battery to the motor.  However, this did nothing.  You have explained that you wanted to show that resistors in parallel conduct a higher current than resistors in series, so I am guessing that in order to complete this circuit "puzzle", I am supposed to connect the motor and battery with a certain number of resistors in either series or parallel.

However, the game crashes whenever I click on a resistor now.  But still, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever...because if the ship was working with NO resistors, then we shouldn't have to put in resistors that were never there to fix it.  And EVEN IF we knew that we needed to reduce the current to safely operate the motor (we still don't know what the motor does), we STILL woulnd't know how MUCH to reduce the current by.  And even if we knew how MUCH to reduce it by, we wouldn't have any way of knowing what combination of resistors to use, because they aren't labelled!  And even if they WERE labelled, there would be numerous ways that they could be configured to produce the same current.  So, I think you need to label the resistors, and then tell the player how much voltage the battery provides, and what the current limit on the motor is, and label the resistors, and then program in Kirchev's voltage law as well as the equivalent resistance equations for parallel and series connections, and then have the line "glow" brighter when there is more or less voltage...and if there is too much voltage, have smoke coming off of the motor to show that they need to reduce it.



On the third puzzle, there is a funny shaped device and I have no idea what it is.  You need to let us know what this device is somehow.  I have no idea what the purpose of this circuit is, but I very quickly discovered that by connecting the unknown element and then putting wires to connect it, the wires glowed red.  I don't know if that means I completed the puzzle or not because you didn't say what the point was.

On this puzzle, it also crashes when I click certain places, a coffee mug gets created when I click sometimes, and also it is difficult to find out where to click to place/remove a wire sometimes.

[Erwin_Br]

The game's language is DUTCH, not German.   And no, the Netherlands are NOT a province of Germany  

And stroom means current. (it also means flow, in another context)

--Erwin

[TheYak]

Yak,

However, I admit that you're right..."serial connection" does grammatically work, I just hadn't heard it stated that way before.  But I do think there is some merit in having an educational program use common terminology.

Not to distract from the topic (and I'll be checking out v.2 when I have time) but I was primarily being an ass about your electronic anal-retentiveness by being the same about grammar & nomenclature.  You do realize that as 1 of the few eyeball-related avatars, I must have regular and vicious conflict with you, yes? Thanks for the clarification on the series connection . . . I've got a little experience with electric theory (Sorry..  tongue-in-cheek now.. the avatar's to blame).