Lemonade Stand

Description

This is your basic "Lemonade Stand" style game, where the player manages a lemonade stand (or similar such store) and tries to make as much money as possible. The game is designed to incorporate money and fractional math skills to teach basic operations.

Localization will be implemented in the final phase, with the stand being written to use more regional ingredients and products.

Project Status

Status:	Released/Hibernation Version 2.1 Released 11/12/10	Group Members:	Nathaniel Case, JT Mengel, Sarah Wagner, Mitchell DeMarco, Anthony King, Anthony Lubrani, Jonathan Sanger, Steven Schoenfeld, Justin Lewis
Lemonade stand (or more likely, *Insert produce here* stand) is a collaboration project at RIT. It is designed to test children on fractions, working with money, estimation, and other math topics. While our time restraints limit the extent to which we can implement features, the current goal is a feature complete program even if lacking in graphics. We plan on having a system based on buying and selling commodities and an eventual season based economy. The largest and most complex task of the project will be the introduction of a basic AI to handle the economy, more graphics, and localization. We are planning on introducing the game with a generic currency model while being easy to replace for regional types. Lemonade Stand is taking a short hiatus following the 2.1 release to identify the next series of features to implement for the next release.

The project has just been re-written and should be a bit easier to localized in the future.

Any interest in helping can be directed towards project leader Nathaniel Case as well as the other listed members below, under contacts. Lemonade Stand is to be considered an open project, with updates varying based on availability. Nathaniel will continue to have interest in the project and will continue to provide assistance and input as time allows.

Updates

• 04/28/09: Wiki reorganized, content added
• 12/03/09: 1.1 release imminent
• 07/20/10: 2.0 release, activity page, wiki update
• 09/21/10: Add a few ideas, restructure

Releases

• 1.0.0: initial release.
• 1.1.0(git tag): Updated game code.
• 2.0, XO Release 4: Game Rewrite

Goals

We're looking to create a workable prototype with the ability to buy materials and sell a product.However, the most important goal is to have a working game. While possibly not feature complete, the game should have basic functions working.

Additional Ideas & Features

(Based on available time)

Completed

• Creating a GUI based game
• Incorporating counting of money (bills and coins) to make change
• Cool Random Events:
  • Ants steal your supplies (-10% sugar)
  • A lemon truck crashes in front of your stand (+10 lemons)
• Weather patterns impacting sales
• Making materials perishable to increase difficulty

In progress

• Creating seasons to vary prices and product demand
  
• Making the program more intuitive so that it can be easily learned
  

Wishlist

• Random events that may influence supplies and/or cost and/or customers
  
• Advanced mode: changing the recipe for your "lemonade"
  
  • Strawberry Lemonade
  • (Implemented but not purchaseable or usable)
• "Tools" to buy to increase efficiency
  • Juicer reduces lemon requirement of recipies by 1/2
• Hidden values 'advertising' and 'loyalty'
  • Upgrading the stand / buying more recipies increases advertising (does not decrease)
  • Prices close to customer's expectations / satisfying demand increases loyalty (decreases over time)
  • Both could act as a multiplier to customer demand. (base demand x advertising x loyalty = actual demand)
• Implementing Bargaining / Haggling
  
• Potential use of network, competitive, or cooperative modes
  
• Choosing location of Lemonade Stand within the town, would influence sales, cost of supplies, etc.
  

Fall 2010 Milestones

• Week 3:
  • Get JT's sketches into image files
  • come up with more events and weather ideas
  • add recipes

• Week 4:
  • new background image
  • get into constants.py
  • define what difficulties entail, implement lowest difficulty
  • nail down ideas about overlays, startup screen

• Week 5:
  • implement two difficulties, simple and insane
  • Get counting game images
  • implement basic splash screen

• Week 6:
  • Get store images
  • implement counting game

• Week 7:
  • Get activity log images
  • Implement store

• Week 8:
  • Implement activity log
  • Get images for other parts of the game (events, weather, etc.)

Potential Problems

Localization is likely to be a big problem in this game. Not simply translating the words, but also translating the idea, ie. finding out what kind of shop would be reasonable to open in a country, what it might stock, etc.

This becomes even more difficult when moving to a graphical environment. For every localized region we will need a different set of graphics depending on what the stand is selling.

Design Decisions

Is lemonade made at the beginning of the day (make all available lemonade at once) or on the fly (a customer asks for lemonade and it is made for them)? This is important as it impacts the resources from day to day. In the former, normally non-perishable objects like cups will be used if they can make another drink (even beyond demand), however in the latter, it makes the game easy if you stock up on resources and slowly sell them each day. This is usually mitigated by having perishable resources (lemons, etc) and variable prices.

Educational Standards

Standards found here

4.N.4 Select, use, and explain models to relate common fractions and mixed numbers (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8, 1/10, 1/12, and 11/2), find equivalent fractions, mixed numbers, and decimals, and order fractions

4.N.6 Exhibit an understanding of the base ten number system by reading, naming, and writing decimals between 0 and 1 up to the hundredths.

4.N.10 Select and use appropriate operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) to solve problems, including those involving money.

4.D.3 Construct, draw conclusions, and make predictions from various representations of data sets, including tables, bar graphs, pictographs, line graphs, line plots, and tallies

Contacts

Current

• Nathaniel Case
• Justin Lewis

Historical

• Mitchell DeMarco
• Anthony King
• Anthony Lubrani
• Jonathan Sanger
• Steven Schoenfeld

Links and Resources

• Activity Page
• Git Repository
• Project Trac