All About Incrementing Numbers Jeff Bush Scalable Game

All About Incrementing Numbers Jeff Bush Scalable Game Design University of Colorado

Lets use Agent Cubes to learn about Math and build a counter for our games! Get them to explore different ways to count Counters help them keep score and is a useful tool for games they make

Consider these prompts Pretend I am a robot keeping score for a game. I have a board which holds numbers. How would you program me to increase the number by 1? What if I already had a number on the board? What it the current score was 5…what would I do? What if the current score was 0? What if the current score was 9? How do I continue to increase numbers? What if the current score was 29? 59? How can I program it for all circumstances?

Push student to justify their answers. How do they know their rule works? Does it work for all situations? Does it work for all place values?

Eventually, the rules should generally look like this: 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 0 and the number of the left increases by 1 (e. g. 29 30…the nine changes to a zero, and the 2 increments by one to a 3) 9 0 and a new number 1 is added to the left (for the case from 9 10, where there is no current digit to the left)

Agents Create an agent called “Digits”. Then create shapes that represent the numbers 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -56 -7 -8 -9 Create an agent called Controller

Agent Behaviors First – tell the controller to make the number increment. In this case, we used a special method using the tools…the method is called when the user clicks on the controller using the finger tool.

Agent Behaviors Then – tell the number HOW to increment. The first three are shown…the rest must be added.

Agent Behaviors Remember, there are special rules for what happens when there is a nine in the one’s digit!

Challenges Count by 3’s… 5’s… 10’s? Count by decimals? Count backwards? Include negative numbers when we count backwards? Count in Roman Numerals? How can we use this in a game to… Keep score? Count steps? Other ideas? ?