Mubbles

QTMBA (Questions that may be asked):

What is Mubbles (supposed to be)?

The basic idea for Mubbles came from a game called "Geometry Wars(R)" (which you may know from as a XBOX360 arcade game or maybe even a much older version). In that game you have to hunt and destroy several geometric forms to earn highscore points, new equipment for your ship etc. .

But because the OLPC project is about education the main goal of the "game" is to get the kids involved in creating their own version of it - to modify it.
Some steps for them could be to influence the form and color of the objects, their behavior, create their own objects and share them with others over the mesh network.

I dislike the concept of a violance centered game especially as an educational project. So I came up with the idea to treat the geometric objects as creatures. They could then interact with each other or just show some bevavior.

It would still be possible to program some kind of "ship" and make it controllable by a player.

What programming language does Mubbles use?

Python

How could one ensure that the modding is simple enough?

The basic idea is, to create a base class (or classes) which holds the necessary functionality a object needs in the Mubbles game world and to implement some specific yet simple objects (i. e. a circle). It would then be possible i. e. to change a single value in the source code (like color, size). This would give immediant feedback to the kid and it's just changing a number (or three ;) ). You could do a subclass and overwrite a specific function to change a more complex behavior i. e. how the object moves or how it is animated while keeping the rest exactly like it was so your code does not get cluttered. Of course you can create a whole new object completely by your own by subclassing and overwriting.

Why use the name Mubbles?

This is just a crude combination between math and bubbles (= Mubbles) :).