The Frog Community Project - early thinking

This is forward-thinking for a Small Basic Community Challenge.

The idea is that we have some sort of Frog game or simulation. This would be a community collaboration challenge, meaning that anybody can build upon the existing community game.

Here are the initial requirements or goals of the game (but we’re leaving it loose because it could head in any direction).

Extension Idea

Here are some loose guidelines for an extension:

• What if Frog was an Extension?
• It contains the Frog object.
• It includes the Jump( ) method.
• It includes the Eat( ) method.
• When you call the Jump( ) method, you expect the frog to jump.
• You pass a distance as a parameter to the Jump (Distance) method, to specify how far the frog would jump. For example: Frog.Jump(5)
• The frog loses energy with each jump.
• It includes the EnergyLevel method that stores and displays the hunger status.
• As the frog jumps more, the EnergyLevel decreases, and the frog cannot jump as far (the distance decreases more and more).
• You’ll need to execute the Eat ( ) method to restore energy into the EnergyLevel state.
• As the EnergyLevel increases, so does the frog’s capacity to jump.

Here are two different articles that guide you through the different ways to build extensions:

1. Small Basic: How to Create an Extension Using C#
2. Small Basic: How to Create an Extension Using VB.NET

Game Idea

Also, at the same time, we will try to get a similar project going as a game instead.

The game has similar requirements:

• The frog can jump and eat.
• As the frog jumps, he loses energy.
• Store the frog’s current energy level in the energyLevel variable.
• As the frog jumps more, decrease the energyLevel status.
• As the energyLevel decreases, the frog can’t jump as far.
• The frog collects flies and eats them.
• As the frog eats flies, his energyLevel increases, and he can jump further again.
• The object of the game is to eat enough flies to stay alive and get through the game. If your energyLevel gets all the way down, you stop out of starvation, and the game ends.
• The goal would be to get one “level” done, but a stretch goal is to continue building more levels.
• Level ideas include:
  • A pond with pads and marsh to jump through.
  • A field with picnic blankets.
  • A freeway with moving cars that can squish you (like Frogger but with the focus on the above gameplay).
  • A river with moving logs that you jump to (like Frogger but with the focus on the above gameplay).
  • A suburban neighborhood with front yards, a street, and some cars.

So there is some early thinking of what this challenge could be! It’s still a work in progress, so leave a comment with any thoughts, to help guide us!

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Small and Basically yours,

   - User Ed