Activities/VisualMatch

The basics

How to play:

• 12 cards are on the playing surface at any time.
• Click on three cards to make a match.
• The most recent match is displayed on the left.

About Visual Match

Visual Match is a pattern-matching game written for Sugar; it is included as part of the Honey collection of Sugar add-ons. The object of the game is to find sets of three cards where each attribute—color, shape, number of elements, and shading—either match on all three cards or are different on all three cards. The current version doesn't yet support sharing with multiple players or saving to the Journal, but it can be played by a single player.

Version 10

i18n

Visual Match has not yet been translated into any languages other than English.

(See our Pootle server for details about how to translate Visual Match into your language.)

More details

Cards have four different attributes: color, shape, fill texture, and number of elements.

The number version works with prime factors instead of shapes and textures.

The word version works with semantic groupings.

Play by clicking on three cards to make a group. If it is a valid group, it will be moved on the left (in the blank-card zone.) It will be repaced by new cards from the deck.

A valid group is defined by cards where each attribrute is either the same on each card or different on each card, e.g, all three red cards or one red, one green, and one blue card.

An invalid group is when two cards share and attribute and the third card does not, e.g., one red and two green cards.

Groups must be valid across all four attributes. Examples of valid and invalid groups are shown below.

Note:

• The grid layout is arbitrary; there is no need to pick in rows or columns, or one from each column.
• The blank cards on the left are a place to display the most recnt match; they can be otherwise ignored.

Watch out, because VisualMatch can be very addictive.

Examples of valid matches

colors, shapes, and shade match; numbers are different

numbers match; colors, shapes and shade are different

everything is different

Examples of invalid matches

two of the same colors (red)

two of the same shape (X)

two of the same shade (solid)

two of the same number (2)

When there is no match

On occasion, there is no match. If there is no match, three additional cards are dealt as illustrated in the figure above.

The toolbars

From left to right:

(a) The standard Sugar 'activity' button used to access the activity menu, which includes sharing (the latter not yet implemented);

(b) The 'new pattern game' button used to start a new pattern game;

(c) The 'new number game' button used to start a new number game;

(d) The 'new word game' button used to start a new word game;

(e) The toolbar used to access the computer assistant and the number-game variants

(f) The number of cards remaining in the deck is displayed;

(g) The number of matches found is displayed;

(h) The number of seconds that have elapsed since the last match was found is displayed;

(i) The current status is displayed; Once all of the matches have been found, the total elapsed time is displayed. Note that there may be some cards left on the playing field at the end of the game that do not make a match.

(j) The 'stop' button is used to exit the activity.

From left to right:

(a) The level button switches between beginner (Level 1) and expert (Level 2) modes;

(b) The robot button is used to turn on/off computer assistance;

(c) The time (in seconds) before computer assistance starts;

Number card options:

products, Roman numerals, words, Chinese, hash marks, dots in circles, points on a star, dice, dots in rows

From left to right:

(a) Sugar Activity title;

(b) Sharing button (not yet enabled);

(c) Sugar Keep button;

(d) Journal-entry update button.

Note: In older versions of Sugar, these buttons appear under the 'Project' tab.

New features

As of Version 9, Visual Match includes number-search and word-search games in addition to the pattern-search game.

• 

  Prime factors (1,2,3,5,7 and 11) are used to determine matches

• 

  Roman numerals and dots in a circle

• 

  Chinese and points on a star

• 

  semantic word groups (animal, food, celestial objects) are used to determine matches

• 

  beginner mode (color, number, and shape)

• 

  expert mode mode (color, number, shape, and fill)

Note: Prior to Version 9, you needed to click the "+3" button for extra cards to be dealt when there are no matches on the board.

As of Version 14 there is a "robot" that will help you find matches. It operates on a timer—finding matches after an adjustable number of seconds. The robot is enabled/disabled by clicking on the button the the Tool menu.

As of Version 15 there are two levels of play: beginner mode and expert mode. In beginner mode, there are only 27 cards and only three card characteristics.

Show me the code

You can explore the Visual Match source code [cloning the project] directly from git.