Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I don't have much to offer, but!     I'll review DISCOVERY math,
    CON-SOUND-TRATION, and ABZOO.

   DISCOVERY math;

       My seven year old likes the DISCOVERY math program, I haven't seen
    any of the other extra packages, but they cover lots of subjects.
    The program itself looks very boring to me, but as I said, my son 
    likes it better than the few PD games we have. The plot goes like
    this. You walk one of four 1 1/2 tall characters down a various
    halls of a space ship looking for 12 crystals. In your search you
    come across various beasts, an inch worm, a blob, and a spider
    (all about 3/8's of an inch) that you must jump over or loose 5
    points of your 20 points of power.  The space ship has lots of levels
    and lots of chambers, but most of them all look the same, (boring).
    There is good space-age music going on while your traveling. As you
    travel, you'll need to open some chamber doors to continue your search.
    You do this by responding to a question relating to the topic you
    choose. This doesn't happen all that often, but often enough. You can
    choose what degree of difficulty you wish to answer questions to, and
    there is a large variety of choices. Unfortunately you can't change
    the plot. You win the game by collecting all the crystals and bringing
    them to the front chamber. We haven't won yet. There is no penalty for
    not answering incorrectly, just for running into a beast. You must also
    climb ladders, and jump down wholes to get from one level of the ship
    to another. There is an ongoing display of the entire ship and your
    respective location.  It's joy stick operated.
 My review: Good theme, slow action, and room for much improvement in
            the scenery type, the scenery quality is clear. Considering
            the goal is to sneak in the use of already learned math
            skills, it does that.  If the scenery doesn't vary between 
            subject packages, I won't bother to purchase many other disks.

    CON-SOUND-TRATION

        This is an easy picture to sound association game, much like the
     children's flip-card concentration table game, only with sound. You
     can select 4 degrees of difficulty (number of cards on the table)
     from 4 to 20 cards, you click a card from one group to see it, then
     find it's matching sound in the other set of cards. You can select
     pictures, alphabet, or numbers. Up to two players. Mouse driven. 

 My review: Good for younger kids, or learners under age seven, My son
            likes it, but doesn't play it now that we have Discovery.
            It won't hold a seven year old very long. But I believe my 
            2 year old will find it fun in a year or so.
     

      ABZoo

        This is an early level keyboard acclimation program that rewards
     kids with some nice animal pictures. You have two sets of pictures,
    (comic, or realistic), and three levels of play. The first level just has
     your children type a character on the keypad, it says the character
     displays the character, and paints a picture starting with with the
     character (I think). The next level shows a picture and says the name
     then types it above the picture, the child must type the word he sees,
     and he gets a larger version of the picture. the third is much like 
     second, only it blanks out the word, and your child must spell out
     from memory the word.
 My review: Nice learning spelling tool, good pictures, but I wish they
     were in high resolution when they painted the full screen size. The
     voice is fine enough to spell off of. Also, only two pictures per 
     letter of the alphabet, (one comic, and one realistic). It doesn't
     take long to see most of the pictures. My son usually only loads 
     this one for six or seven pictures. I place it more at the 5 - 7
     year old range.

       General comment:::  it all costs toooooooo much for what you get.
     I wish these people that did games like Battle Chess and S.o.Sodan
     would think about the under age 7 educational market. We pay almost
     as much, but get hardly anything in comparison.

                             *** may God Bless ***
                                 John Chicoine

    Amen! Thanks for the input, any others, c'mon there's got to be
    more stuff out there... isn't there? Anyone else have something
    else they would like to comment on, regarding educational software?
    
    		Mike

    After reading this note and replies I hit my software catalog for some
    answers. What I found surprised me a bit. I have kids at home 4, 7, and
    9 and they love the computer. We use the Sticky Bear series a lot as
    well as most of the Learning Company titles. Those are two of the
    biggest suppliers to the educational market. Another big one that we
    haven't tried yet is Davidson & Associates. The problem appears to be
    that none of those companies have developed anything for the Amiga yet.
    They have titles for the IBM compatibles, Apple II/GS series, and
    Commodore 64/128 series. Is this common practice in the Amiga world?
    
    If anyone knows of any other developer of educational software, let me
    know and I'll look it up for you.
    

    Geee whiz... a couple of you guys aren't taking this to well...
    Must not have kids, or don't like em or something like that. Please
    respond only to educational software reviews as indicated in the
    note. I don't think SEX VIXENS from OUTER SPACE would be appropiate
    for anyone's children. The reply on that would be better suited
    for the JOKE's note file... The idea on writting my own software
    is interesting, but like most folks, we usually don't have the time
    or man power or necessarly the experience to write our own high
    quaility programs etc... 
    
    mike

    Hi Mike,
    
    well I was being serious about writing my own. I have a 4 year old
    daughter.
    
    As you point out time is always a problem. However, when I get a
    decent compiler I intend to write some 'edu' type software. A few
    years ago I was writing courseware for high-school level for my
    previous employer. Writing educational software was one of the reasons
    I bought an Amiga as it has good colour graphics, sound, speech
    synthesis etc. It makes it ideal for kids.
    
    I'm not quite sure whether to use koystick or mouse for control/input
    for kids or not. My daughter seems to have picked up on the fact
    that it does move the little arrow thing on the screen, so maybe
    it would be ok ?
    
    regards
    	Mike

    >I'm not quite sure whether to use koystick or mouse for control/input
    >for kids or not. My daughter seems to have picked up on the fact
     
     My three year old does fine with a mounse. I was surpised at how
     quickly she got used to pointing and clicking. I wouldn't avoid
     it thinking it is harder than a joystick.
     
     Also, I saw a short item in one of the Amiga magazines about an
     "authoring system" designed to help people write educational software.
     I think the name was Claz, but I'll try to find out more. If
     anyone knows about this it might deserve a new note. I assume
     "authoring system" implies AI or a high-level language optomized
     for educational software. Interesting idea. 
     
     I agree that the educational software is inferior to the game 
     programming. But sometimes game programs teach too. The PD game
     Bally on a recent FF disk is teaching my 7 yr old about percentages.
     
     
     Dave

    .7 (MIKE) I think the mouse is a good idea as well, unless its an
    adventure type learning game, where one must jump over stuff etc.
    When you write it ask some of us to help you work the bugs out like
    the fellow did earlier with his space game, I don't remember which
    note but its in here.
    
    .8 Balley, I'll have to look for it. Sure wish there was more out
    here, even simple stuff like adding, subtraction, multiplication,
    division, reading, counting money. Speech included would be nice
    especially with reading. the AMIGA is such a nice machine, you 
    would think software developers would want to program on nothing
    else. Now that AMIGA has sold its 1,000,000 th machine, maybe we
    will see a big change...
    
    mike
    

    Back when DEC thought it was in the personal computer business,
    Digital Press published a book by Keith Reid-Green called "Create
    Your Own Games Computers Play" that I think is one of the better
    beginning do-it-yourself game books.  Unlike books that are just
    collections of programs that you type in, this book gives brief
    explanations of bit-map graphics, random numbers, perspective,
    gravity, mazes, plus much more.  It also includes code snippets in
    Basic that you can port to any machine that supports simple
    move-and-draw graphics primitives.  This book would be a good 
    companion to a machine-specific book, eg one that explained how to
    get at Amiga features using AMiga Basic.

    I don't know whether the book is still available or how much it
    costs.  It was published in 1984 by Digital Press, DEC# EY-00025-DP,
    ISBN 0-932376-29-0. 

    - Cliff

    
    Hi,
    	Have you seen the note in 2440.1
    I've heard of a similar package for the 'ATARI' but did not know
    it was available for the Amiga.
    	I've got 5 kids aged 7 downwards..and am also trying to write
    my own
    
    		Pete..
    

    I belive the version for the ATARI was DR. WACKO'S, I've got it
    but never used it... There should be more hours in a day for play...
    
    
    	Mike
    

    The book mentioned a couple of replies back is still listed in the
    Digital Press catalogs. I might check the price and order a copy.
    
    A subsequent note also querying educational software indicated a
    couple of decent packages. It may be worth getting one to get a
    feel on how the "professional" educational software writers for
    the Amiga are using the machine's facilities. (maybe next pay ?)
    
    regards
    	Mike

    Create Your Own: Games Computers Play by Keith Reid-Green, RCA Labs
    Learn to design and program games on a any personal computer
    with this fun-to-8se book.  Sixteen pages of four-color photos and
    150 lines drawings illustrate procedures.
    1984/Paperboud/256 pages ISBN 0-932376-29-0
    Order NO. EY-00025-DP-B5 $25.00
    Hm.
    From the catalog of digital press.
    Sue me.
    Tom

    Has anyone tried the titles available from MicroEd?