Food Force 2
Food Force was one of the first "serious games" produced, describing the work of members of the World Food Program and some of the situations they experience in their work around the world. When it was released, there was an entire campaign around it, including badges and banners linking to it from other sites.
A version of the Food Force game, currently only available on Windows and Mac platforms, is being considered for the XO.
External links
Design considerations
The existing game is built in Macromedia Director and has a very large amount of video, 3D animation, and voice acting. It's too big to run on the laptop (over 200 MB download), which is why a rewrite is being considered.
Here are some of the constraints that need to be considered:
- The OLPC laptop is a relatively slow machine (by modern standards) with limited storage space -- video is pretty much out of the question.
- Any language in the game must be translatable -- thus, sound and video containing language would need to be translated (and would then take up correspondingly more space, which there isn't much of). Consequently, audio will generally want to be limited to sound effects with no speech.
- Short time frame -- delivery in early fall
- Python/Pygame development environment
Several of us at OLPC looked at the existing game with Muriel and talked about how to structure a game that we felt could be completed in the time available. It's not exactly a port, but it would reuse the same design structure and story and gameplay.
WFP should comment on whether such a game actually meets their needs.
