Poverty Chat - Mircosoft Imagine Cup 2010

Luke (me) and Jimmy create a game to help the awareness about poverty. The key technology of the game are AI chat bots.

Game Overview
Poverty Chat is a unique web based game that uses natural language to explore a virtual world. The player will have an opportunity to meet an array of different characters. The player will have to solve the mysteries by chatting with other characters in the game. These characters don’t have the average computer response you are used to; they each have their own personality and will response to you differently using an AI Bot technology.  The idea is to get the user involved in conversations.  Some of the characters may refer to others to find the right answer.  When  the answer is found their notepad takes note for them for later levels.

The theme of the game is Poverty. The player will learn what, why, and solutions to poverty throughout the game and will be needed to win the game.

In Poverty Chat you are a reporter in which you must discover what is the reasons for poverty in this village (and in other places). Information is learned through chatting with the AI characters.

This is our entry for the Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2010 in the Game category. Team consisted of me and one of my brothers Jimmy. Our target was the end poverty section of the United Nations Millennium Goals. The goal of the game is to inform the players of the game of reasons for poverty in a creative way.

We did extensive work with AI bots, and built them in a way that you can learn what you need to do next, with out just giving you the answer. It would listen to what you say before he would know what he was going to say.

We did the bots using Pandora Bots. http://www.pandorabots.com/botmaster/en/home

Microsoft Imagine Cup - http://www.imaginecup.com/

MyMouseGames - Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009

MyMouseGames is a collection of educational games which is played by multiple people using multiple mice on the same computer at the same time.

MyMouseGames placed First place in the Imagine Cup US Nation final. The imagine Cup is a worldwide software design competition sponsored by Microsoft. Our team - Jimmy, Mark, and Luke Dickinson (brothers) advanced from first round to semi-finals to national finals in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our prizes was $8,000 to split among us and to continue on to the Imagine Cup World Finals in Cairo, Egypt.

Our Entry

 

The theme of the Imagine Cup's in 2009 was the 10 world goals of the UN, mostly helping developing countries. Anyway we chose to focus on education and to build it in Silverlight and ASP.NET. Basically our entry is a bunch of mini educational games that allow you multiple mice on one computer to play. The idea is one computer can work for many students. Also the teachers can change the lesson data that is being used in each game. On top of that, functioned completely though a simple web site. The purpose was to help every student have access to a computers in ill funded schools.

Website: http://mymousegames.com/

Videos: http://mymousegames.com/Videos.aspx

Press Coverage: http://mymousegames.com/press_coverage.aspx

   

This video shows some of the first games we made for MyMouseGames. Mine were the ones with the sound.

A big part of my responsibilities in this project was the building of a few games that could use the data teachers were using. I worked with a system called Popfly and JavaScript. In efforts that this could be an easy way for others to build simple games for this system.  I also did field testing of our project. Tested it with a boy scout troop, my Spanish class in high school, and a daycare.

This video shows some of the case studies which I managed.

 

 

Press Coverage
News - Winning US Imagine Cup
Microsoft Research Center -Cambridge, MA
May 10th, 2009

http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/06/tigard_brothers_will_compete_i.html
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41636 (videos)
http://blogs.technet.com/unlimitedpotential/archive/2009/05/05/u-s-imagine-cup-winners-team-multipoint-web.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/imaginecup/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/imaginecup/imageGallery.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2009/05/05/winners-of-the-2009-us-imagine-cup-microsoft-student-competition.aspx
http://netfornews.blogspot.com/2009/05/imagine-cup-2009-virtual-pressroom.html
http://www.designtaxi.com/news.jsp?id=26796&monthview=0&month=5&year=2009
http://www.sltrib.com/Utah/ci_12320477
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/clay-dillow/culture-buffet/young-minds-v-ancient-problems-imagine-cup-2009-winners-announced
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/multipoint-wint-microsofts-imagine-cup/17791649
http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/05/04/daily22-Web-learning-startup-takes-top-spot-in-Microsofts-Imagine-Cup.html (MIT)
http://www.inventorsdigest.com/?p=499
http://www.cio.com/article/496885/Imagine_Cup_Winners_Design_Software_to_Solve_Global_Problems?taxonomyId=3000

Cave Master

Cave Master is an app for the windows 7 phone and is in the marketplace.

This is a choose your own adventure style game, designed by Mark, and edited by me.
We (Mark, Andy, Logan, Angela and I) did the voices.

Made for a number of different reasons, one being we just all enjoy making stuff like these, and we were able to make it together.

It is supposed to be funny.

Its free, so you can go and download it right now and see if YOU can escape the cave.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/cave-master/85d7f26d-858f-4b6f-b2a6-51e200463c2f

Speed - Mix10kb Contest

Speed the card game is 1 to 2 player game made in Silverlight and C#.
(A playable version is available below -- this is the version under 10kb)

The objective of the game is to get rid of your cards before your opponent. The computer has 3 modes: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Control the cards and their placement with the keyboard.

"Rules of speed:
1.Cannot have more then 5 cards.
2.you can only place a card on top of pile if your card is 1 about or below then the current card.
3. To win get rid of all the cards in your hand and deck before your opponent.
Player One uses a,s,d,q,e.
Player Two uses (on the NumPad) 4,5,6,7,9 (With NumLock ON).
P will add a card to each pile.

There are 3 single player modes and one multiplayer mode. So go get a friend and play!"

This was made for the Mix 10k contest in 2010.
The contest is simple. Make a program in 10kb or less.
I made an entry and got a t-shirt sent to my house to prove it!

My Shirt!

http://mix10k.visitmix.com/entry/details/214


Speed the card game is another one of my favorite programs I made. Some of the original versions, used the mouse to move cards around, but in an attempt to make it a 2 player game, I switched the controls to the keyboard. I also had to cut out a lot to make it work under 10kb.