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 any of the other listed active members. Lemonade Stand is to be considered an open project, which is currently undoergoing active development for the RIT fall quarter 2010. Nathaniel will continue to have interest in the project and will continue to provide assistance and input as time allows beyond this time.

Releases

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

Structure

The game's 'day' is split into four parts

Morning

Supplies are purchased and plans are made for the day.
A recipe may be chosen if more than one is available.

Day

Customers queue at the stand and buy lemonade.

Evening

Profit is calculated by the player and 'put away'.

Midnight

The day's activities are put together into a digest, including:

Weather forecast for the next few days
Special events that happened during the day
Current discounts on supplies
Any supplies which have perished will be listed

Once the digest has been displayed, the game returns to morning again.

Difficulty Settings

Easy

Supplies will not perish
Prices are fixed at multiples of 25 and products yield more money per sale.
Subtotals are listed for all math problems
Math-based screens will not close while there are problems (trying to buy too many supplies, not collecting correct change)

Normal

Supplies will not perish
Prices are more complex multiples of 5 with slightly smaller profit margins
Subtotals are listed for all math problems
Math-based screens will not close while there are problems (trying to buy too many supplies, not collecting correct change)

Hard

Supplies will perish
Prices are the same as Normal
Subtotals are listed for all math problems
Math-based screens will allow you to give bad answers (buy too many supplies, not collecting correct change)

Impossible

Supplies will perish
Prices are not multiples of 5
Subtotals are not listed for math problems
Math-based screens will allow you to give bad answers (buy too many supplies, not collecting correct change)

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:
Weather patterns impacting sales
Making materials perishable to increase difficulty

In progress

Making the program more intuitive so that it can be easily learned
Implementing multiple difficulties
Redesign UI
Advanced mode: changing the recipe for your "lemonade"
- Strawberry Lemonade
- (Implemented but not purchaseable or usable)

Wishlist

Creating seasons to vary prices and product demand
Random events that may influence supplies and/or cost and/or customers
"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.
Perhaps showing currency the player has letting them find total profit

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